S.L. Kletz

First published in Collage Magazine in 2025.

All the others here must have been bred into captivity. I, on the other hand, went kicking and screaming into my cage.

The people at the zoo sneered at me at first, lifting their noses up at the black stripes along my body, imagining all the ways I’d be better off – cut apart for meat or skinned and sold into the black-market trade. I’d make a gorgeous lampshade.

The zookeepers thought it would be best to keep me in here where I could be controlled. Monitored. Every piece of meat flung at me in contempt and every excrement passed from my body was seen under the watchful eyes of my jailers. To them, I was a danger to the world outside of this cage. A predator. They shaved off my canines and pulled my sharp nails from my body. Now I am a humiliating husk subsisting on what little they have to give me. Do the onlookers peering into this manufactured habitat know that my ribs are not meant to protrude from my body like this?

I prowled at the edges of my cage, examining each bar for a way out. I thought of starving myself enough to slide through the gaps in between the iron bars, but after careful consideration I deemed that to be impossible. The gaps were simply not wide enough to account for the circumference of my head.

The others in the cage with me, with striped bodies just like mine, never bothered getting up from the spot where they lay on the rocks. The only time I saw them move was when I first got here. The zookeepers entered the cage and chained one up by the neck, dragging the emaciated creature out of the mocking structure of our habitat. To make room for me, perhaps. I don’t know where they took him.

The rest of my fellow striped inmates at this zoo just sleep on the rocks and let the sun roast them. I’ve tried many times to rouse them from their lounging, but they displayed a shocking indifference to escaping. I grew sick of them quickly, but at the same time I couldn’t blame them. I suppose if you do not know what the world is like, why would you suppose the edges of your enclosure are not the very limit of all there is to know?

But I refused to become a victim of apathy. There was still opportunity to escape, but after many days of stalking the perimeter of the cage, I came to the conclusion that I would not be able to escape from the inside. I required the help of a person to get me out of the zoo.

The onlookers cannot understand me, and they speak in tongues foreign to my ears. However, I know well that emotion can jump any barrier that our mouths cannot cross. People can understand my suffering and possibly extend that understanding into empathy and that empathy into action.

It doesn’t take long for my ribs and sad eyes to catch the attention of the onlookers. Their sneers turn to consternation – furrowed brows, chewed lips – a huff, a sigh. Until one day, I notice a young lady carefully removing a camera from her tiger-print purse and lifting it up to meet my eyes. I stare down the barrel of the camera and do not blink at the flash.

In the days after the woman took the picture, more people came to see me at the zoo. I tried to rouse the others lying on the rocks but they did not bother. It was their own choice.

More and more people came to the zoo, thronging to see me. They spoke words I did not understand. Some screamed and beat at the bars of my cage. Some tilted their heads and whispered soft words to me. Some wept.

I would crouch at the bars, doing my best to direct the people towards the keyhole on the gate where the zookeepers would enter. I hoped it was clear to them that the only way to get me out was through the zookeepers. Some of the onlookers nodded, but the days went on and no one tried to open the cage.

I growled, I roared, I screeched. The people screamed and wept and beat at the bars. I clawed at the keyhole. The people held up signs. Many displayed the photograph the woman had taken of me. They marched in circles. The zookeepers even stood on, watching with pleasant smiles. I lashed out at the bars. The zookeepers frowned. One removed a blow dart from the deep crevices of their pocket. The glint of a tranquilizer needle soared towards me, implanting itself into my skin before I even had the chance to duck.

When I woke, the massive crowds were gone. They left behind their signs and their trash, which blew into the cage. I dragged myself to the bars. Had they forgotten about me? It was daylight, which meant the zoo was open, yet no one was there to witness us. No one but some zookeeper at the gate who was skinning fish into a bucket for our food.

The crowds did not come back. I’m not certain they were ever truly there at all. The occasional person would stop by, but that was it for a short period of time until one day the zookeepers brought another, kicking and screaming, into the cage.

The zookeepers threw him to the ground, where he thrashed. The only difference between me and the newcomer was his lack of stripes. Instead, he had bleeding wounds across his naked back. The thwack of a whip opening a new gash across his back stilled the new prisoner, and the zookeepers retreated from the cage.

He looked towards me with desperation. He rose to his feet and threw his hands out towards me, digging his thumbs into my shoulders.

“Where are we? There’s been some kind of mistake!”

I parted my lips to speak.

“There’s no mistake,” I told him. “They meant to put you in this cage.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Neither did I.”

He released me from his grip and backed away from me. A flicker of fear flashed across his eyes. “Yes, you did. You’re dangerous. Everyone knows it. You’re a predator – you know that, right?”

“Yet we’re in the same cage.”

Panic took hold of the man. He ran his hands through the uneven patches of buzzed hair on his freshly shaved head and returned to a crouch position, shaking. His eyes twitched and his pale lips quivered.

“I didn’t do anything wrong! They won’t listen when I tell them they’ve got the wrong guy!”

The man’s eyes seized away from mine and latched onto a lone onlooker on the other side of the iron bars. The man threw himself against the metal barrier, rattling the bars with his desperate hands.

“Please! Please! You have to let me out! There’s been a misunderstanding! I’m not supposed to be here with them!”

The onlooker stared down at the man with disgust. The prisoner reached his fingers out through the bars.

The onlooker spat on the man’s outstretched hand.

“¡Bestia”