I Hope…
One night, I went to sleep on a very rainy evening. I laid down on my bed and fell asleep very quickly. I had the best night of my life. I didn’t have bad dreams, not even good ones, just slept like I haven’t done in many years. The first sense that woke up was my nose. My bedroom smelled like if I were in the middle of a forest. My ears woke next, and I could hear a waterfall in the distance. I told myself that I must be starting to dream in that moment. Then I felt like if I was lying on the ground and when I open my eyes I saw the sky right above me!!
Right away I put myself onto two legs, although I should say on four. I was a tiger! I took a look at my claws; they were sharp as the sharpest knife in my mom’s kitchen. I had trouble trying to coordinate four extremities. I was clumsy at first, but after many, many tries I walked slowly. I was finally walking. My main concern was to get to know why I was out of my home in a forest in the middle of nowhere and why I was a tiger. Who could’ve possibly done this to me? Someone I dated in the past hired a witch to cast a spell on me? What could I’ve ever done in my entire life to deserve this? What? Why?
Suddenly I was thirsty and I remembered I heard water running, so I concentrated on listening to find out where the waterfall was located and my ears gave me the right direction and with slowly and awkward movements I walked over there. I drank and drank, but my thirst didn’t stop. So I figured it out that I had to be hungry and so from that moment started my hunting lesson. What was I going to hunt? I didn’t want to hurt some other being and I haven’t felt no one’s presence. There were just plants, water and the ground. I could hear some crickets, frogs, snakes, but not a big animal. I turned towards the water and saw there were many fish swimming in the pond that created the waterfall at the end of the fall.
I jumped into the water and I realized I didn’t know how to swim. I started to drown. It was a deep pond. There was no one that could help me, and even if there was, it probably would’ve been another animal. I began to paddle as hard as I could and reached the shore in matter of moments. I was still hungry and I didn’t know what to do. It came to me, an idea; I should stay in the shore and see if I could grab any fish that happen to swim nearby, but I guess the fish might have deduced my plan because no fish came close to the shore. I was still hungry and wet, but mostly hungry.
It came to me another idea, if I stood there calmly and in silence, maybe the fish would approach the shore and then I could grab as many as I wanted. So I did, I stood there peacefully waiting in the shore, I waited long, I don’t know how long and at a moment I lost faith, but then one fish swam close, I let it stay. Then another did the same and another, and soon there were many fish swimming near the shore. I dropped my claws into the water and caught nothing, only made the water splash, and that scared away the fish. I declined to try it once again.
I decided to go and try to eat some plants, I told myself, “I’m a human trapped in a tiger’s body. Humans eat plants and animals; my brain is accustomed to both so it should not be hard to eat either. Mind over body.” I walked back through the woods and ate the first plant I saw, a big mistake! I took a big bite, and my tongue was in flames. It itched like hell! I went back to the river. Maybe if I drank tons of water the flames would reduce and calm down. So I did. It didn’t help much. Then I remembered that tiger are cats, but much bigger. Cats clean themselves with their tongues. Maybe if I did that the itchiness would disappear completely. I did clean myself once, twice and that helped a lot. That has been the nastiest thing I’ve ever done.
I certainly was hungry and I wasn’t going to try to fish again. I nearly drowned. I decided to eat the plants, I knew for sure. I went back again into the woods and looked for fern, I told myself, that it could not be a harmful plant. I searched for several minutes until I found it. I couldn’t hear the river anymore. I chewed it and it tasted awful. That was awful! It tasted really, really awful!! The river was far from where I was located. I cleaned myself again to try to take the awful taste out of my mouth. It helped. At the time I was doing that, my body felt the presence of another being. I’m not sure if it was another animal or a human being. I stood quietly and didn’t move a single hair.
As the presence came closer I was still not able to see it, but my body definitely could feel it. Suddenly the creature stopped moving and I heard a bang in the distance. I was being shot. I started to run. I had no direction. I just ran to escape from the hunter that wouldn’t stop shooting at me. I ran faster than the hunter, I lost him, or he lost me. I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t know where I was at. I guess I climbed a mountain, because at some point I felt like I was going up and I didn’t have the strength to keep on running up. So I stop running, I was out of danger.
The adrenaline of the moment made me forget about my hunger. I stopped to rest. I panted long. I didn’t even realize when I slowly commenced to close my eyes and soon I fell asleep. I guess I slept there for the entire evening. When I opened my eyes it was dark already. I could hear wolves howling to the moon. Actually, I had a pretty nice view from where I was standing. I had laid on a rock and I could see the moonlit forest. It was beautiful, but at the same time scary. I was a lonely person trapped inside a tiger’s body. A beautiful one, I should say.
I started to descend into the mountains and it took me a while to arrive at the mountain’s foot. Once I was down there I felt lost. I didn’t know if tigers cried, but deep inside I was crying. Without notice, I started to wander. While wandering I didn’t see another tiger. I didn’t even see the wolves I heard before. The moon was my only company, so I began to talk to her. In my mind I was pronouncing words, but my mouth didn’t make recognizable noises. I guess that’s how tigers pronounce words. Suddenly I saw what I believed was a deer. I ran towards him. I felt a little sting and fell asleep again.
When I woke up I was inside a cage. It was still dark. I knew it was a cage, because I was hitting the walls. I was in a cage that was on some kind of vehicle that was moving. I could feel every bump on the road. When the car stopped someone came to take my cage and transported me to someplace with much light. I could hear people talking and I wanted to tell them I was a person inside a tiger’s body, but they wouldn’t listen. They opened the door of my cage and I was scared to come out. They had to put a piece of meat in front of my cage in order to get me out. I was so hungry, I didn’t think twice. I ate it like if it was my last meal.
Once I finished eating I realized I was inside a bigger cage. It was a special cage, it was clear but had small rods, horizontal, and vertically. The people wouldn’t stop looking at me. I felt as if I was a freak in a carnival. They looked at me with curiosity. I could see them nodding. I don’t know what they were talking about. Someone was filling a chart, because I saw a pen in his hand and was wearing a white coat. He might have been some kind of doctor. I was really nervous. I didn’t know what they wanted from me. They put more meat inside this cage and then left the room and turned off the light.
The next day they came again and more people were wearing white coats. They fed me again and that food made me dizzy. They opened the door of the cage, pulled me out and started to examine me. They checked my teeth, my claws, and every single part of my body and they filled out another chart again. After they finished they put me into another cage and transported me to where it seemed to be a forest. They left me near a big tree, down its’ shadow. The dizziness effect lasted a while. As soon as I felt better I got back up on my feet and started to walk to get to know the place. When I came out of the shadow, I could hear clapping. It took me a while to identify the origin of applause. In the section that had no trees, a wooden bridge crossed over and the people could see me. I assumed I was at some sort of zoo. The warders put the food near the bridge, in order to allow the people to see when the animals were eating. The tree area was wide enough, but at some point there was a high wall that marked the limit of the tigers’ area.
My days went by… I lost notion of time. Living here was like heaven to me. I was an inexperienced tiger, for me it was a good thing; I didn’t have to worry about starving, hunting or running away from the hunters. I used to look at the other tigers and they seemed sad and depressed like they were missing out by not being out there in the woods living large. I don’t know what it’s like to be a free tiger. On my first day a hunter tried to kill me, I don’t miss that. I don’t want to go out there. I can’t imagine myself hunting, taking some animal’s life, although, in here the zookeepers feed with meat, but at least I didn’t slaughter that animal. The meat I have comes from cows, pigs and chickens. Those are not special animals like deer, monkeys, peafowl and hares.
During my time in this zoo, a female tiger got pregnant and gave birth. The day the three baby tigers were born it was a huge event. Many people with cameras showed up. The three babies were the new sensation. It lasted long, many, many days and even months. I guess because wild animals always remember how their lives used to be it’s not easy for them to get accustomed to living in a small territory and also constantly being watch by humans, but I got used to that routine until my last breath.
During my last day on the land of the livings, I finally understood why one night I went to bed and when I opened my eyes I was a tiger. I used to kill them and sell their skins, meat and bones to dealers. I helped to reduce the number of living tigers in the woods and when someone trapped me and brought me to this zoo, I should say the wildlife reserve, was created in order to save and protect the few animals that remain alive and help them to reproduce to preserve the species from extinction.
If only I would have been smarter maybe, maybe I wouldn’t have to live here as a prisoner and I wouldn’t have missed to see my children grow up, go to school, graduate from the university. I would have seen them get married and lived happily ever after with my wife. I was an idiot. “You were the best hunter”, my friends used to tell me. Stupid of me!
Now with my last breath I hope… I hope… I do really hope… it’s not too late.
Original idea and written by: Me
Revised by: Carmella Afilani-Waters
