Screw the Zoo

The leonine samurai Dijas Kai watched and waited high in a tree for the perfect time to strike. Even with his massive frame, the dense foliage provided a perfect camouflage for his green robe. His breathing was shallow and measured so as not to attract the attention of zoo patrons. He didn’t want to throw his blade around so recklessly, but these rifle-wielding zookeepers stationed at every cage might give him a reason to. The thought of having his own prison to live in brought a vicious glare to his face.

“Nobody deserves to be caged like this,” Dijas thought to himself as he scoped the zoo at the various “attractions”. Monkeys flipping around for the giggles of small children. Elephants lazing around on the concrete while being bombarded with peanuts. Giraffes trying to find space to stick their heads out of their undersized cages. The one attraction that made Dijas’s muscles tense was seeing baby lions moping in their enclosure with no mother to play with.

Seeing these imprisoned animals sent a hot rage through the samurai’s veins. He wanted to stain the ground with these insufferable humans’ blood. He wanted to snap necks, slash limbs, and smash faces, all with extreme prejudice and no absence of malice. It wasn’t his time to strike just yet.

Too many zookeepers with their tranquilizer darts ready to fire. Too many fat obnoxious patrons munching on cotton candy and drinking caffeinated sugar water while ignoring the cries of their bratty children. In Dijas’s mind, these people deserved each other. Then again, it was better to pull this operation off during the day than at night when the security intensified with robotic traps and even more powerful guns.

In addition to the lonely lion cubs that customers were blindly “awing” over, another enclosure grabbed Dijas’s attention: one that was covered with a surrounding curtain. Even with his distance high in the tree, he could make out the sign that said, “Sarah Tonin”. A cheap joke, no doubt, as if these animals needed more humiliation at the hands of careless owners.

When the zookeepers removed the curtain, however, Dijas’s blood boiled like molten lava. It wasn’t a family of monkeys. It wasn’t more miserable lions. It was a shackled human being. She sat on a tree stump with her head hung low and tears dropping from her eyes. Her face was painted like a skeleton clown and her only clothing was a black athletic bra and gray sweatpants. Her hair was done in the style of red pigtails, as if to add to the cuteness factor in the same way baby lions did by rolling around.

“Hey, monster! You want a peanut?!” shouted a little boy before chucking a handful at Sarah. She barely flinched when the salty snacks hit her. Her flinching intensified when cotton candy was being thrown at her. Her flinching turned to thrashing when she felt the coldness of an energy drink splashed against her smooth skin.

The patrons’ fits of laughter and mockery were hushed as they looked around for the source of a lion’s growl. Surely, the baby cubs couldn’t have made such a frantic noise. They were just children. Another growl sounded off across the zoo. And a much louder growl made the customers shiver in their giant shorts. Once noisy children were now whimpering against their mother’s thunder thighs. Ignorant fathers also huddled with their wives as the lion’s roar descended upon their fragile ears. Zookeepers’ rifles were locked and loaded as they looked around for the source.

The group of gunners huddled close together and formed a circle around their disgusting patrons. One shot from their rifles and their target would snooze and drool for hours on end. Dijas didn’t care; this was his time to strike! With his katana drawn and his roars deafening the crowd, he leaped down from the tree and sliced one of the zookeepers in two from asshole to appetite. Customers bundled together and shrieked in terror at the sight of organs and blood splashing all over the pavement.

The zookeepers aimed their rifles at Dijas and were ready to take him down if it wasn’t for the massive anthropomorphic lion grabbing a heavyset couple and using them as human shields with his blade firmly against their necks. “Go ahead! Fire! Shoot those tinker toys like you actually stand a fucking chance! You think I give a shit about these so called innocent lives?! Nobody here is innocent! You all are a bunch of disgusting shit weasels with too much self-esteem and not enough discipline! You’re teaching your children to be just as hateful as you! You people make me sick!”

“Take it easy, big guy. Nobody needs to get hurt,” said one of the eight remaining zookeepers as his arms shook the entire time.

“What do you mean nobody needs to get hurt?!” shouted Dijas. “I’m hurting now! These animals are hurting! And most of all, that poor girl you so cleverly named Sarah Tonin is hurting the worst! She’s a human fucking being, for god’s sake! And you decided to give her a cute little punch line for a name?!”

“It was my idea,” said Sarah in a medicated tone. Everybody’s attention turned away from the sword-slinging lunatic and towards the teary-faced “clown” with her neck and back painfully hunched over. “I deserve to be here. I’m not a human being. I’m an animal, just like the lions and monkeys. I don’t deserve to be loved. I’m just a freak of nature. Don’t take pity on me.”

Dijas’s heart sank like a brick tied around a drowning man’s ankle. Tears formed in his once fierce eyes, a frown sagged his rough features, and his blade’s grip around the obnoxious family’s throats loosened to where they could slide underneath and be free.

“Hey, assholes! Pay attention! Shoot him!” shouted one of the zookeepers. A popping noise sounded off and Dijas dropped to his knees, shedding the last of his waterfall tears before slumping over to the ground and weeping like the bored animal he was about to become. His whimpering became progressively softer until his animalistic drool mixed in with the pool of blood he left earlier.

“Holy shit, that was close!” said one of the zookeepers. Patrons silently backed away with tears in their own eyes as the riflemen gathered around Dijas’s prone body to try and lift the heavy beast. They kept debating among themselves who took the shot that knocked the samurai out. Nobody would admit to it. The debate turned into a cacophonic shouting match as the zookeepers held the lion by his arms and legs.

Their ear-piercing jibber-jabber was silenced by the sound of Dijas letting out a monstrous laugh. The zookeepers let go of him as the lion produced the shell of a tiny cherry bomb from his pocket in the palm of his paw. He rolled on his back, smiled evilly at them, and said, “All of these advances in science and technology and none of you idiots can figure out if you’ve fired your rifles or not. Great job, nimrods!”

The wily samurai drew his blade once again and flew around in a circle, slashing the throats of all eight zookeepers surrounding him. Patrons screamed and dispersed as blood shot up in the skies like Old Faithful. Some of the zookeepers even fell on their own rifles and shot themselves as their corpses went limp.

All that mattered to the blood-soaked Dijas was sitting in a cage with clown makeup on and tears smearing her paint job. The lion wiped a tear from his own eye with his paw and sauntered over to the cage before ripping the bars wide open and letting himself in. He placed a gentle paw on the slack shoulder of Sarah Tonin, who looked up at him with puppy-dog eyes and said, “Go away. I don’t deserve love.”

“Why not?” said Dijas in a sweet voice. “Is it because that’s what people have told you your whole life? Is it because you see no other way to live than by sulking in this cage? This zoo is not your home. Even the coldhearted streets would be better living conditions than this shit hole. This zoo has been home to countless health violations that the government chooses to do nothing about, because they’re too busy imprisoning minorities and apparently animals too. I know this because I too had my self-esteem ripped away by this cruel system. I didn’t belong anywhere simply because of who I am. Society wanted to lock me up for good. I had to fight for my freedom, just like you have to fight for yours. If you’re looking for love, look no further than me.”

Dijas gave Sarah a sweethearted smile and hugged her with all of his animal warmth. He even rubbed his mane against her face like a domestic kitty would. He also purred like a lawnmower in her ear, allowing a small grin to form on her face. Even with shackles on, Sarah managed to hug Dijas around the neck and cry softly into his fur. “Please get these chains off of me!” she begged, to which the lion smiled at her and with one powerful rip tore the shackles like paper.

Their moment of love was interrupted by the sounds of boots pounding the pavement and rifles clicking off in the distance. Sarah grabbed a wooden staff in the corner of her cage, smiled even wider at Dijas, and said, “Thank you so much for the love you’ve given me. I won’t forget you. But if we’re going down, we’ll meet our fates together.”

The two warriors hugged each other one last time before the one of the reinforcements shouted, “There they are! Shoot them!” The lion and the “freak” nodded together and drew their weapons with the intent of going down with a blaze of glory. In no uncertain terms, Sarah Tonin shouted, “Die, motherfuckers, die!” before shattering the bones of zookeepers left and right with her staff. Dijas roared like the mega beast he was as he slashed at anyone who moved (except for Sarah) with both his lion claws and his katana.

The two renegades didn’t know when death would take them or how violently it would happen. But as long as they were going to hell together, Dijas and Sarah would drag a few souls down with them. Blood, bones, and organs splattered across the floor of the wildlife park as more zookeepers rushed in on the scene to meet their splatterpunk deaths. For the first time in a long time, Dijas and Sarah were happier than pigs in shit. Hell, they were already rolling around in shit anyways in the form of zookeepers, so they might as well enjoy the ride.