Every night I would come home and hear my neighbor’s Macaws squawking. I imagined they were beautiful with plumes of red, orange, and blue, but I never cared to see them because I didn’t really like my neighbor. Besides, the noises they made were unsettling.
Berry, my neighbor, dealt in illegal exotic animals. It was none of my business, but it was obvious. Sometimes I worried. He was always bringing in crates and cages of various sizes. Some so large they had to be moved with a hand cart. I asked him on several occasions if any of his animals were dangerous.
“You don’t have lions, and tigers, and bears in there do you?” I once asked him.
“Hell nah, that’s not worth the money. I only sell cute and cuddly.”
One night, the parrots sounded weak, their bellowing was faint and pitiful. They sounded as if they were in pain, so I went to investigate. I stepped through the hedges and walked around to the backyard. I moved towards the patio where I could see two large decorative bird cages. They were unusually large, about six feet in height, with a circular bottom. I didn’t see any swings or mirrors, the normal pet accessories you would find in a bird cage.
I could hear the birds, but I couldn’t see them. I snuck up closer to the cage. There was a figure lying in the bottom of each cage. I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but it looked like two people huddled against the sides of the cage in the fetal position.
The motion sensor set off the patio light. Light poured in through the cages, illuminating to my poor eyes not elegant birds of paradise, but filthy, ragged human beings that acted like birds. They were nude and covered in dirt. There was a woman in one cage and a man in the other. Both had their hair painted bright orange with streaks of blue and red.
They flapped their arms and banged up against the sides of their cages, lamenting as loud as they could. The man was especially frightening. He would poke out his tongue and pucker his lips, with each shriek, as if he had a beak. The woman started moving her head from side-to-side, never staring at me directly, but looking with only one eye at a time.
“Damn, I got careless,” I heard a voice speak as the patio door slammed open.
“What the hell man?”
Berry grabbed me by the arm, overpowered me, and forced me inside his house.
“Shit, I thought they would enjoy a little night air, but you had to go rootin around like you owned the place. Hell, I been puttin them outside for a while now. Let my guard down.”
I tried to run to the front door, but he pushed me from behind. My head went crashing against the corner of his coffee table. Blood started pouring down my forehead and into my eyes. I felt him come up from behind me and shove a moistened cloth over my nose and mouth. All went dark.
When I awoke, I was in a square cage with thick rusted iron bars. I was in a basement with three other cages. In one cage was a man hunkered on all fours meowing and purring, not even aware of my presence. In another cage was a woman jumping all over the place and shaking her back end, genuinely happy to have company. Instinctively, I thought dog, and when she barked my suspicions were confirmed.
There was a third cage, but it was covered with a tarp. There was no noise, no sound of any kind coming from that area. If there was something in there, it was asleep.
I heard a door open and the sounds of boots descending down the stairs.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s awake.” He had a bowl in each hand, one with water, in the other what looked like dog food. He shoved them through a slot in the cage with the woman. She didn’t hesitate, burying her face in the bowl with the food.
“What in the fuck is going on?”
“Weird I know, but its good money. I mean exotic animals is one thing, but people raised as animals, that’s another. I get a 100 K at least for the man kitty.”
“So, they’re crazy!”
“No, my friend. Well… shit, I guess technically they’re crazy, but they weren’t born that way. These folks were raised from infants to believe they are a certain kind of lovable pet. I don’t know who it is, but there’s this organization that adopts infants to raise as experiments. Usually, they try to convince them that they’re a different species or what not, other than human, and then when they’re done, they have me sell these things, kind of like when a Greyhound can no longer be a reliable bet. Fucked up shit, isn’t it?”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Hell, I wish I could sell you but no one wants to buy a human that thinks he’s a human.” He turned his head and looked over at the cage under the tarp.
“But man, I do got an idea. Under that cage, is a special request. Some rich prick wanted a human that thinks he’s a monster. I been feeding this thing raw meat. He’s vicious. Good lord I wish I could afford him. He is magnificent.”
Berry walked over to the cage and slung off the tarp. In the middle of the cage, on the concrete floor, lying on his back was a large, thick man. His feet were facing towards me. They were humongous with long crooked toenails. He turned to his side and huffed like a lion. Without any warning he leapt up and ran shoulder first into the cage. He fell back onto the ground, but immediately pounced back up and grabbed ahold of the bars. His knuckles were bloodied and stripped bare. He had long unkempt fingernails, not unlike his toes. His hair was curly and black in spots where it was allowed to grow, otherwise there were numerous bald patches. I soon found out why as he belted out a most barbarous scream, while at the same time pulling chunks of hair out of his head. When he opened his mouth, I could see two rows of jagged teeth both on the bottom and top of his jaws.
“Magnificent. They surgically implanted those teeth. Tranquilized the sum bitch and then had those put in. What this guy is going to do with this beautiful creation I haven’t a clue, but I would love to see it.”
Berry went over behind my cage and started pushing it towards the man-made monster’s cage. The casters squealed, irritating the beast even more. My cage slammed up against the other cage and bounced back about a foot or two away. The beast unsuccessfully grabbed for my cage. The other two human pets whimpered and huddled to themselves, hiding their heads in their arms, hoping to avoid the monster’s gaze.
“Now, how do I do this?” Berry took out a ring of keys and started flipping them in circles. “No, I need my gun.” Without thinking, he laid the set of keys up on a workbench and ran upstairs.
I hurried to the side of the cage opposite the workbench, put my arms through the bars and started frantically pushing the cage forward. I could hear Berry’s footsteps upstairs and him cussing himself.
“How in the hell do you lose a gun, a goddamned gun?”
I moved back to the other side of the cage when I had butted up against the workbench. I reached up through the bars. I could barley feel the tip of one key with my extended middle finger. I pressed hard down on the key and started dragging it toward me. The keys jingled and fell down on the ground. I grabbed them and tested each key on the padlock. No luck. The steps upstairs had ceased.
“Finally, dammit.”
I was out of time. There was nothing for me to do, but I noticed that the lock on the monster’s cage was unique. It looked antique, bigger than a normal lock. I looked down at the keys and noticed a key appropriate for such a lock, itself being unusually large. It was my only chance. I wheeled myself back over to the other cage, key ready in my hand. I heard the footsteps descending, getting closer. I grabbed the lock, inserted the key, pulled down on the bulky padlock, and pushed it out of the cage door.
The beast pushed my cage away in anger. There was a look of exasperation on his face as he realized he had missed his chance to snag me.
“I’m back baby. This is going to be fun. I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do to you. Oh man oh man.”
The hinge from the cage door squeaked. Berry had his gun pointed in my direction. The light from the room was temporarily blocked. Berry turned, screamed, and got off one shot before the monster bit into his face. The monster was staring directly at me as he chewed into Berry’s face. He knocked the gun out Berry’s hand and snapped downward. Berry’s hand hung limply from his wrist. The beast shoved Berry to the ground and began tearing out his throat with his teeth.
I watched him tear Berry to pieces. When he was done, he crawled on all fours to the front of my cage. He thrust his arms through my small cage, but was unable to reach me. He ran around to the other side of my cage. I scooted as fast as I could to the opposite side. He tried to grab again, but with the same results. I was weary, fearing that I was going to have to play this game all night. I didn’t know how long I would have the strength to keep this up.
Finally, the beast heard something outside. He perked up and listened for a minute. It was a strange site to see this phenomenon, a man with all the features of a human, acting like a monster, covered in blood and bits of flesh. His mannerisms were animalistic. He looked over at the other cages. The two pets hadn’t moved or made any more sounds. For a minute he looked oddly human to me, like he was making a decision, a spark of rationality firing in his head, but then he got on all fours and scampered up the stairs.
I waited for a long time. I didn’t know if it was an hour or longer. It could’ve been a whole day, but time was dead, at a standstill as I processed what had happened. I was in shock and too scared to leave my cage. In time, I became cognizant of Berry’s gun lying on the ground. I felt a little safer, knowing that I could at least have a gun to defend myself. It didn’t work for Berry, but that was because he was unaware. I finally found the right key and freed myself.
The basement floor was a mess, covered in what was left of Berry, his entrails strewn across the floor. I was going to free the other two when I noticed the dog-woman chewing on a part of Berry’s small intestines, having a happy good ole time, jumping and flinging it up into the air. I thought better of the idea, went upstairs, and called the police. I told the dispatcher that there’s a maniac on the loose, that he’s liable to kill again. The other details were too strange to explain. They could figure that out for themselves. I made myself a cup of coffee and waited.