A Day at the Zoo

is Patti Abbott's latest flash challenge. I wrote one story but it really sucked and Saturday I finally came up with another idea. While it doesn't exactly take place in a zoo (haven't been to a zoo in over thirty years) it does have cages and animals. Enter at your own risk :) You'll find links to the rest of the stories over at Patti's blog http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

ZOOZ
by Sandra Seamans

"C'mon, don't be such a girl," whispered Cody. "It's just a cave."

"In case you hadn't noticed, I am a girl. And that cave? It's dark and full of spiders and God know what all," said Jessie. "Besides, if it's so great in there, why the hell are you whispering? You expecting something to jump out and grab you?"

Cody had the grace to look embarrassed. "I just don't want to stir up the bats."

"Bats, yeah. And you want me to go exploring in there?"

"Bok, bok, bok," taunted Cody, scratching his feet in the dirt and flapping his elbows like a pair of wings.

“Okay, wiseass, can the chicken dance and let’s go.”

They ducked low to enter, but once inside the cave they could stand up straight. Their flashlights beamed over the glistening walls and slimy floors of the giant room. Stalactites dripped down from the high ceiling onto their mirror image stalagmites. The air was dank and cold, chilling them to the bone. Their noses wrinkled as the scent of mold and decay assaulted their nasal cavities.

“It’s beautiful in a weird, creepy way,” said Jessie. "Hey, look, there's another opening back there. Maybe there's a second cave."

"I don't know, Jessie, maybe we should leave. If we start exploring, we might get lost and nobody knows where we are."

"Now who's the chicken?"

Jessie walked towards the back of the cave and ducked through the entrance to the second cavern. As she entered, the room filled with a shimmering green light. The walls were covered with drawings of women and animals and creatures she couldn't identify. She shivered, then jumped as Cody touched her shoulder.

"These are the strangest drawings," she whispered. "A woman and a wolf severed in half by a green eye. And here with a bear, and over there is a tiger."

"Looks more like she's giving birth to those animals."

"And why would a woman give birth to an animal? It must be some sort of Native legend or something."

Cody shrugged then pointed towards the far wall where two metal bar cages stood on a large shelf of rock about six feet above the stone floor. ZooZ was scrawled on the wall between the two in red paint.

"Now, that's creepy," said Cody moving closer. "That red paint almost looks like blood."

A loud humming leached through the cracks in the wall as he walked closer to the ledge.

"ZooZ, I wonder if whoever put those cages up there thought they'd caught themselves a god? You know, ZooZ, Zeus," said Cody. He stepped closer, stretching his hands toward the ledge so he could pull himself up.

"Don't," said Jessie, grabbing his arm to stop him. "Something's not quite right here. I think we'd better leave before we disturb something we shouldn't."

Cody laughed. "Disturb something? Like what? Ghosts, or maybe aliens? I promise not to touch anything, I just want a closer look."

Together they stood on tiptoe to peer over the top of the ledge. There was something about the cages that freaked Jessie out and made her feel uneasy in her skin.

"There's something inside. And there, in the other one, too," said Cody. "I'm climbing up to get a better look."

Pulling himself up over the edge, Cody turned and reached down to help Jessie up, but she shook her head.

"No, I don't want to get any closer. There's some writing and drawings here on the front. I want to look at them, maybe find a clue about what this ZooZ is all about."

Jessie knelt down and began brushing the moss off the markings on the stone. As her hand moved across the stone front the strange engravings took the shape of words in her own language. "Wow, that's cool."

"What's cool?" asked Cody from above.

"The symbols on the stone. As soon as I touched them they translated into English. What did you find up there?"

"There's a skeleton in one cage and the skin of what looks like some kind of animal in the other," he said. "They're both reaching through the bars, trying to touch each other, I guess. Maybe they were lovers, like Romeo and Juliet."

Cody jumped down from the ledge to stand next to Jessie. There was a silly grin on his face. "So what does it say?" he asked.

"Listen to this," said Jessie. "ZooZ translates to 'then there were two'. And here it says beware the green eye that splits a woman in half to reveal the beast inside. It sounds like some husband got jealous and used the beast as an excuse to lock his wife away. Maybe like a witch and her familiar."

The green light in the cavern began to flicker and the humming sound in the walls grew louder.

"Maybe he thought his pussy cat was turning into a tiger on the prowl and needed to be locked up," laughed Cody. He dropped a chain over Jessie's head and a sparkling green gem dropped into place between her breasts. "He should have covered her in jewels to sooth her savage beast."

"Where did you find this?"

"Up there between the two cages, just out of reach for both of them."

Jessie's heart began to beat faster, her breath coming in churning gasps as she stared into the green eye of the jewel. A low growl sounded in her throat and the cave went dark. The humming replaced with the nocturnal howl of a moon wolf on the hunt.

*****

As the full moon rose over the mountain ridge Jessie walked out of the cave, beside her was a white wolf. Both were bathed in blood.