The Zoo - Chapter 2

Its face was pressed up against the glass. It had a bulbous nose and large inset eyes. Mortimer shouted while scrambling from the floor, his feet flailing as he pushed himself away from the window surface. The creature pulled away, Mortimer’s movements clearly startling it.

Mortimer tried to bring his panic under control. What the hell was going on? Memories from the day before started to return. His head swiveled from side to side, feeling the claustrophobia induced by these surroundings. Fear shot through Mortimer and he struggled to suppress the terror surging from within him.

The creature continued to stand there watching Mortimer, its eyes vacant of any expression. Mortimer willed himself to come down. He was safe. It was out there, and he was in here. It was not lost on Mortimer that this safety was only imagined and that he was trapped in a cage much like an animal. A sense of calmness came over Mortimer. He was always known for being good at keeping a cool head. His friend Margaret used to tell him that if he was set on fire, he’d probably be more worried about her panicking, then about the fact he was on fire. No use getting worked up about something. You needed to think about it. You needed to keep a cool head.

Mortimer supposed that Margaret never imagined a fire quite like this. In the span of a day, Mortimer’s entire life had been turned upside down. He had no clue where he was. Was this some kind of alien planet? He supposed that could make sense. That would mean that the creature in front of him was some kind of alien. Was the creature outside his window the one that had kidnapped him?

Mortimer took another look at the beast. In some ways, the alien resembled Mortimer himself. It had two arms and two legs. It had two eyes, a head, a neck, and what appeared to be ears. The ears where strangely lumpy and misshaped. It has pinkish skin that appeared somewhat translucent in some places, showing veiny blue and red patches that were nauseating to look at. The creature was virtually hairless. Even its head was absent any hair. Its skin was also smooth, far smoother than anything that looked natural on any living being Mortimer had ever seen.

Still, the creature did not seem malevolent. If Mortimer could assign an emotion to the difficult to read face, he’d say that it looked curious. Was it curious about him? The creature shook its head up and down before writing something on a wooden board that Mortimer hadn’t seen before. He grudgingly admitted to himself that had the roles been reversed, he may have had a similar curiosity about this alien.

This allowed Mortimer to come to a realization. His back was stiff and his body ached from a night’s sleep on the uncomfortable concrete floor strewn with hay and straw, but so far he was alive. Whoever was holding him was not trying to hurt him. He glanced back to the door that sealed him in and saw a fresh tray of food. The tray he had left the night before was gone. A shiver shot down Mortimer’s spine at the thought that one of those creatures had retrieved it while he was sleeping.

Mortimer abandoned the observing creature and moved over to his tray. He picked it up, walked over to the glass and sat down. Mortimer decided that if this creature was going to watch Mortimer’s behavior, then Mortimer was going to watch the alien’s behavior in turn.

The creature continued to watch Mortimer, taking occasional notes. It wore the oddest clothing. It was striped green and brown and covered his entire body as a unitard. Every once in a while the creature would look down at Mortimer’s untouched food, and his lips would twist in a weird way. Mortimer couldn’t tell if it was a grimace, a smile, or disdain.

As the morning wore on, Mortimer’s stomach began to growl, and he realized that this strange little game he was playing with the alien creature would have to end. In Mortimer’s mind, the creature was trying to wait to see Mortimer eat. Each time its eyes flickered to his untouched food, he saw it as a personal victory on his part. However, as the creature continued to make its observations, Mortimer continued to become hungrier and hungrier. Eventually, he caved, realizing that there was no use in punishing himself.

The tray held new food that Mortimer was unfamiliar with. The tasteless green things were no longer present, and the bowl of mush was absent as well. Instead, the tray contained a mixture of brightly colored blue, red, and yellow beads. Mortimer finally reached down and grabbed one of the yellow pieces. The creature became more attentive to Mortimer’s actions all of a sudden. Anxiety shot through Mortimer. He was convinced that whomever these aliens who were holding him probably was not trying to poison him, but at the same time, he could not shake the feeling that he was being drugged. Mortimer did go to bed shortly after eating the night before. Was that coincidence?

Mortimer placed the food into his mouth anyway. He had just woken up. If this food was drugged, he’d know it if he went to sleep shortly after. The food was surprisingly sweet, and Mortimer took another bite and another. The alien shook its head up and down and continued to write. Mortimer grabbed a blue piece and found that the taste didn’t differ all that much from the yellow. The red pieces were also the same. Mortimer mused as to why they would bother the color the foods at all if the colors were completely meaningless.

The last morsel of good entered his mouth and Mortimer realized there was no other food available. He rinsed his mouth and hands in the higher flowing water and discarded the tray. He glanced back to the window and found that his voyeuristic companion was now gone. Mortimer raced up to the window, trying to scan the darker hallway. The flutter of the green and brown unitard caught his attention.

The creature was shuffling away. It had a peculiar way of moving, almost like its legs were stiffer than they should be. The movements caused the creature to bob up and down as it walked, an action that almost looked ludicrous to Mortimer.

Strangely, Mortimer didn’t feel relief as the creature moved out of sight down the stretching corridor. Instead, he felt loneliness. With the creature there, Mortimer had something else there with him. The creature may have been strange and alien, but it certainly beat the crushing loneliness of this cell. He made a deliberate point of not glancing into the glass cage across from his own before turning back to his prison room.

The tray he had left lying on the floor caught his notice once again, and it gave Mortimer an idea. He moved over to the side of the cage as far removed from the door as he could. He then lied down on the floor, placing his arm across his face. He left a hole from which he could glance under his arm and positioned his line of sight so that the tray was in full view.

Mortimer wasn’t tired. Quite the contrary, Mortimer was wide awake and his heart was pumping exuberantly fast. It seemed like such a simple thing, really. If they opened the door to recover Mortimer’s tray, then Mortimer would simply wait for them to do just that. He could then storm the door and overpower his captors.

The alien that had examined him seemed a bit smaller than him. He felt like it would be possible to overpower them if he tried. At the very least, it was something to do. It was about the only mystery he could solve at the moment.

As time passed by, Mortimer realized that he might not have thought this out properly. He had no clue when they would come to recover the tray. They might only do it once a night, or once a week even. Mortimer just didn’t have the knowledge yet to make any kind of decision.

Still, Mortimer waited. There was really nothing else he could do. His heart had long since returned to a normal heartbeat; the anxiety and excitement from his planned escape were gone. In its place came the gradual increasing boredom.

Mortimer tried to pass this time with thoughts of his friends and his home. Mortimer didn’t have a family, his parents had died from a mysterious illness years prior and him being their only offspring. Of course, Mortimer didn’t feel sorry for his life. He lived a good life. It was a rich life. One that he looked forward to returning to as soon as possible.

Of course, the thoughts that this might not be a temporary situation crossed Mortimer’s mind, but he shied away from those thoughts. That line of thinking caused misery and despair. No. Mortimer would be able to get out of this. He would be able to return home. Then he’d regale his friends with stories of this event. Some of his friends might even believe him, although he admitted that most would tell him that he should stop staying up so late partying.

The loud snap of the slot opening dropped Mortimer back into reality. Instead of excitement though, Mortimer somehow found himself terribly afraid. He was just starting to work up the bravery necessary to rush forward when he realized that the door wasn’t opening. Instead, a strange hook jutted through the slot at the bottom of the door. It felt around before catching on the tray. The hook then began to pull back, taking the tray with it.

Mortimer lifted his head, but by the time he was in sitting position, the slot was already closed again. He raced up to the door, but it was locked as solidly as the night before. Mortimer felt like an idiot. Of course, they wouldn’t open the door. What was he thinking?

Mortimer sighed and moved to the stream to get handfuls of metallic-tasting water. Then he plopped down on the floor, shaking his head. There wasn’t anything to do now. The alien was gone, and who knew when he would come back. Mortimer imagined lunch would be arriving any minute, it had to be lunchtime by now, didn’t it?

Of course, Mortimer’s sense of time was completely destroyed. He had no idea how much time was passing in here. He had no clue if these alien’s even followed an eight-hour nighttime cycle. He had not seen the lights dim the night before, and they were already bright when he awoke in the morning.

Mortimer felt exhausted. He was pretty sure enough time had passed by that this was not the effect of drugged food. However, all that early excitement followed by him spending what felt like hours on the ground waiting for his tray to be taken left Mortimer feeling emotionally drained.

At this point, going back to sleep seemed like letting this place win. Mortimer would not be beaten by this prison. He could not let it wear him down. He had to keep fighting. He needed to keep trying.

Mortimer stood up, and for the first time truly began to examine his cage. He looked at the solid concrete walls, examining for cracks and dents. He traced the floor, examining the rocky surface. He looked at the glass, seeing if there were any imperfections. There were none that Mortimer could see. He even looked at the water pump. The water seemed to emerge from a hole. The hole was solid rock, and the source of water was not apparent.

Mortimer covered the hole with his fingers, then pulled it away. The pressure did not appear to build. As soon as Mortimer covered the hole, the flow of water stopped. When his hand moved away, the water began to flow again as if nothing had happened.

He began to pick up the hay, pushing it and gathering it together. The hay was spread out across the floor fairly evenly, on concrete and gravel alike. However, all of it combined made a pretty substantial pile. He picked the far corner of the room opposite of the area he had designated the day before as a bathroom and began moving the hay there, laying it as evenly as possible so that none of the hay was sticking out. The end product was a pile a little over a foot tall about the size of a person.

Mortimer lied down on the hay and immediately regretted not having thought of this sooner. It certainly wasn’t as comfortable as back home, but it was night and day over the concrete floor. When Mortimer had finally gotten himself into a modicum of itchy comfortableness, his stomach grumbled. When was that food coming?

Mortimer continued to wait on his new pile of hay and straw, and the food continued to not come. Impatiently, he stood and began giving the room another run through. He had managed to grab every ounce of hay that was not soiled. He had checked every nook and cranny for a structural weakness. He had done everything this room had to do. He began to pace back and forth. Where was that food?

He noticed that his agitation was getting worst which each passing moment. At least the food would be something that could help him take his mind off of the predicament he was in. Boredom was the real enemy. As long as he could think about his next goal, he didn’t have to think about the fact that he was deliberately trapped and completely out of his element.

The hours continued to ebb on, and Mortimer’s anxiety, as well as his pacing, continued to increase. The concern, the worry, and the hungry began to grow until Mortimer’s was pretty sure he’d burst. Therefore, when the latch gave with a resounding creek, and the door swung open, Mortimer jumped back. He stared down the hallway revealed by the open door.  That seemed so simple. Just like that, the door he had been trying to get through was now open. Behind it was a nondescript hallway which ran straight down from his. It included dozens of other closed doors. It had been Mortimer’s greatest chance at freedom for the moment.

Except that it wasn’t. A cage had been set around the door, and right in the middle of the cage was a tray of food. That was as clear of a trap as Mortimer had ever seen. At least his captors could be sly about it. Apparently, finesse was not their forte.

Mortimer decided to dismiss the obvious trap. He walked over to his hay pile and lied down. The door remained open, and Mortimer continued to ignore it. Hours passed, and the hunger began to eat away at Mortimer.

This was ridiculous. Could they not just feed him? Why did they have to put the food in there? That lace was strange. That place was not this place. A few hours ago, he was trying to think of a way to escape, now all he wanted to do was stay put, and still, the hunger grew.

Finally, Mortimer couldn’t take it anymore. He walked up to the door, glancing into the cage but keep his body firmly outside. He tried to reach a hand out to the food. He wished he had one of those hooks they had used. If he could just get his finger around the cage, he grabbed onto the edge of the door, leaning in. His fingers were close. He was just a few inches from snatching the tray.

He continued to lean, straining his fingers. They slipped a little. He could make it. He could… his fingers gave way, and he fell face-first into the cage. The tray was knocked to the side, spilling the food onto the floor. He spun around, desperately leaping for the safety of his chambers. The door slammed shut in Mortimer’s face.