ANIMALS

Freeze time.

The movie’s on pause.

This is the ’90’s so it’s an ugly pause. The room looks like someone shredded a photograph and couldn’t put it back together, but you can still make it out clearly enough.

It’s dark.

Maybe no bigger than a two-car garage.

There are one, two, three- there are seven sources of light. Four security monitors, a computer screen, a sliding window and a door to the daylight outside that looks like it’s about to slam.

• • •

There are lines everywhere the light pours in. Sharp lines from the screens, smoke lines from Rosa’s cigars. Her old cheeks are sucked in like leathery bellows and she’s closed her eyes like it hurts a little after breathing out smokey lines of despair from Alex’s questions. Lines of escape from Hannah. From Hannah being Hannah. There are ashtrays and staff radios and old coffee mugs and broken pencils and zoo maps and marker pen corrections on zoo maps.

Here’s how the room’s laid out. That sliding window? That’s where Hannah sits. She has a bell that says ring for attention and she has a fake wedding ring that’s just for attention and she has a wooden holder full of timetables and she has a sickly positive outlook on the world that drives Rosa insane because Rosa is jealous because Rosa thinks Hannah thinks Hannah will live forever.

Rosa’s desk is on the left wall of the office, a desk she sits at with her chair arched back so she can stare at the soap opera action on the zoo’s black and white monitors mounted on the wall. It goes: monitor, cable tangled in cables, monitor, monitor, dried up silly string from the Christmas party ‘85, more tangled cables that aren’t plugged into anything anymore, monitor. Below that, a long desk. Rosa. Next to Rosa, Alex. Alex is the work experience boy who pretends he doesn’t want to be there but his secret is he actually thinks this is all really cool. Alex asks curious questions even though he doesn’t understand the answers.

The movie’s on pause, with less than an hour to go before Hannah, Rosa, Alex and everybody else in that VHS room will all be dead.

Ready?

Play.

• • •

Bang.

Rosa jerked in her chair as the door slammed hard and she yelled “Harriet,” emphasising the T like her spit was a dart and the ceiling was a picture of Harriet.

The slamming door also made Hannah jump and she jabbed her nail file into her thumb as she turned to answer the visitor’s question at the window.

“We close at nine, but the last road train to the car park leaves at eight-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty,” said the room in unison.

“What’s that?” asked Hannah, beaming, and still talking to the outside world. “Yes, absolutely. The penguin shows are at one, three-thirty and six-fifteen, but they only dress up for the last one.”

Here’s Hannah - twenty years old, crooked nose from a childhood accident she’ll tell you about sometime, eyes like badges saying have a nice day hiding signs saying I’m lonely help me. Mousy blonde hair tied up with giraffe-striped shoe laces from the zoo gift shop.

“You can get your tickets for the show at the entrance.”

She’d worked there for two months and, knowing almost nothing about the Maricopa County Zoo just off I-10 between Saddleback Trails and Lowes, just made it all up as she went along.

“We don’t have penguins,” muttered a voice from a shadowy corner at the back of the room. It was a quiet voice with a strange air of authority, the way a teacher might tell the class they’ve had an hour already and there’s only half an hour to go.

Hannah slid the window closed and rang the bell with a little hand tap of achievement.

“It’s not a typewriter love,” said Rosa. “The bell, you know, it’s for them to get your attention and you have to leave the window open for them to use it,” and then without taking a breath she hissed into the radio, “Don’t- Martin don’t go in there. Oh god.”

Rosa wore big headphones with only one ear covered and the chunky spiral cord rested in her line of cheap coffee-stained novels she bought from goodwill because she had a secret crush on the woman that worked there and would spend no end of loose change on junk just to hear her say good morning.

Complete story available to agents and publishers. Contact Russell James at russelljamesauthor@gmail.com