The Thing in the Cage

  It was not at first, an unusual Friday afternoon in any regard. Dan had already mentally departed from work, envisioning himself shutting down his computer and leaving it all far behind for the duration of a weekend. But the freedom of 5:00 p.m. would continue to elude him for another hour and a half.

  When five o’clock did come Dan wasted no time in leaving, casting a quick wave and a smile as he strode silently out to his car. He had no weekend plans, but this wasn’t all bad, because it was the very definition of freedom. “One is not truly free,” reasoned Dan, “Until they have reached a state of blissful boredom.” But true boredom appeared highly improbable. Nothing seemed at the moment as though it could match the displeasure of work.

  While he drove a plan came to him, as a sudden flash of recognition within his mind that showed what he truly desired. It was the peaceful bliss of solitude that he yearned for. He decided without hesitation that he would remove himself from the masses of people within the city, for a night of solitary comfort within the undeveloped woodland north of town.

  He knew precisely where to park his car lawfully, and where the trailhead began. And most importantly, he knew where to exit the trails and head due north into the untraveled old forest where men’s feet did not tread. He wished to encounter no one whatsoever, and the old forest was all but a guarantee that this simple goal could be attained.

  In less than an hour he had packed (for he kept all camping supplies and foodstuffs readily at hand), dressed for the weather, and packed all of this along with his tent into the trunk of his car. Some of his neighbors were still arriving home from their jobs as he backed out of his driveway. He offered of himself more half-hearted acknowledgments to the neighbors who looked his way.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” he thought, feeling the burdens of modern life begin to seep away, the houses beginning to become fewer and fewer and each of the roads he turned upon become more desolate than the prior.

  And then there it was; the dirt lot off to the side. Behind it was the trailhead and nothing but glorious trees for mile after mile. There were four other vehicles, one of them having recently arrived, for the owners were still engaged in their unpacking.

  Dan parked as far from them as the lot would allow and turned his back to them as he unloaded. His haste served him well and he was soon wearing and carrying all of his gear. He left the other campers behind him in the dirt lot, as they still busied themselves unloading their vehicle.

  “Glorious, glorious,” he thought as the enormous old growth trees surrounded him, and he trekked determinedly toward his fixation; the point where he could secretly depart from the worn trail and step through the brief wall of thick brush and then into the spacious mature conifers that he knew grew beyond. He had glimpsed them while on a hike prior, and noted them mentally for future exploration.

  He passed no one on the main trail and soon recognized his own personal preliminary destination, at which point he would break away; stepping from the well-worn dirt path and into the growth beyond. He smiled broadly as the thick branches enveloped him. Their pliable girth first resisted him and then gave way, before swinging back to their original posture and leaving no trace that he had passed to the beyond.

  From that point onward the journey in Dan’s mind was perceptibly altered. It was as though the wall of thick brush he had passed through was a literal barrier to the now distant world that nurtured all of his problems. The knot in his guts untwisted a bit and he knew that soon they would dissipate altogether.

  Dan looked toward the sun and it still showed early evening. Yes, he could feel it now distinctly as he walked on; the knot was beginning to melt away. His legs were strong and his wind fair, and he therefore did not anticipate any problems.

  He kept the arc of the setting sun roughly aligned with his left shoulder so that his direction was maintained approximately northward. But roughly is a relative measurement, but he did not ponder this as a point of concern. His mind was still full of the pleasantries of the solitude and melting tension.

  And so it was when darkness was only an hour or so into the future that Dan came to a seemingly older growth section of the forest. It was not so remarkable, except to say that the trees had changed to old and gnarled conifers and the undergrowth had all but disappeared. It was darker as less light penetrated the canopy overhead. Soon Dan walked beneath the twisted limbs, upon browned pine needles which had accumulated over the seasons of many years. This new area of the forest brought with it an even more profound peacefulness because he sensed inherently that human footsteps had not passed over these grounds for many, many years.

  It was with this generally blank frame of mind that Dan followed the openness along the trunks of the massive trees until he emerged quite some distance later into an abrupt space void of plant life. The openness of the place shocked him as strongly as a sudden slap to the face.

  Man had been here after all, or so it now seemed apparent. The space was perfectly rectangular and it contained a metallic cage of some peculiar sort. It was like no cage Dan had ever seen formerly, with thick uneven bars which appeared welded at random and lacking symmetry.

  “The work certainly of an old-world blacksmith,” he pondered, “but why here in this distant forest and what purpose could it possibly serve? The work of a madman…,” or so it first seemed to Dan.

  It was with these questions that he stood transfixed and pondering when he first saw the shape that was occupying the space in one of the far corners. To Dan’s brain it seemed immediately similar to the irregular structure of the cage. That is to say, peculiar and purposefully elusive. Appearing simply as a mass of hair and leather-like tissue upon the welded floor, perhaps asleep or now long dead, he could not at present say.

  “An orangutan certainly,” he thought as his brain wanted badly to believe this conclusion, because it would have provided the first bits of comprehension to such a surreal finding her in the woods. But no, he realized quickly, that simply was not an orangutan, despite his vehement desire for it to be so.

  And then some limb of the animal-mass showed movement, as some limb perhaps sniffed at the air. Yes, it could not be denied, for the thing now smelled him and began to rouse itself as such into some unique version of a wakeful state. He could only watch in frozen horror, with his camping gear now long forgotten upon his back, as the hairy mass began to rise. He felt certain that it did arise only for the purpose of investigating the new scent which had stumbled into its domain.

  The odor of the thing could not be denied any more than the sheer ugliness of its form. For as it rose and uncurled from the heap in which it had lain (perhaps for years?) and the limbs extended one after the other, the air was filled will a stretch of which the degree of foulness was as yet unmatched by Dan’s olfactory.

  The thing at last arose fully and displayed its true shape. It was some hair covered bipedal ape-like creature whose head appeared to be missing. Yes, it could not be denied, as the thing stepped toward the edge of the cage wall beyond which Dan stood transfixed: it was a walking ape without a perceptible cranial appendage.

  When it reached the cage wall they stood facing one another (if the thing did in fact possess a face) and it neither grabbed the bars nor attempted to reach for him.

  Dan’s fear did not subside, but he did gather himself enough to step backward slightly into the path at the base of the pine trees which had so randomly provided him access to this peculiar location.

  This new vantage point displayed a new perspective and he now saw that the limbs of the surrounding trees grew to within apparent arm’s length of the beast at all sides of the old cage. The plant life was perhaps picked at by the horrid mass of hair with appendages, reasoned Dan, until it occurred to him that perhaps the trees were instead somehow naturally repelled by the stench of the thing.

  The creature stood there looking upon Dan (if a creature with no visible head or face can in fact look), and a new sensation began within his being. It was a new form of tranquility, somehow intermingled with new desire. It was the strong urge for friendship with this abominable thing in that resided within the cage. Or perhaps put more accurately, it was an allure that pulled upon him, urging him to acquiesce to a subliminal request that somehow originated from its being.

  The desire pulled quite strongly. Yes, and full of benevolence Dan now felt certain, and so he began to extend a hand toward the thing behind the bars. The creature remained upright, moving only to push its chest closer toward the bars until it rested against them and then squished somewhat through. This patch upon the upper torso of the thing began to moisten and glisten, emitting some sort of nectar that removed all memories of the other, abhorrent odor, and beckoned Dan closer still. His nostrils and mind became filled with the wonderful new scent of this thing, elated even, as he took another step toward the bars.

  “I simply must befriend this lonely creature,” he thought, and as his arm was nearly within reach of the beast, a bird flew suddenly from the thicket, its trajectory apparently predetermined as it literally crashed into the oozing chest of the thing.

  The hairy beast then snapped into motion and clutched the bars in ecstasy, its chest churning and writhing like a wave filled ocean as the bird now seemingly aware of its fatal mistake shrieked and cawed. The death cries of the poor bird were for naught, as it remained momentarily stuck like a fly upon paper before the oozing flesh waves enveloped it fully, and it disappeared into the cavity within the beast’s torso.

r />   This was the horror that Dan witnessed, made all the more vile due to the certainty that he had been inches away from a similar fate. He cowered backward into the safety of the trail beneath the ancient confers, all the while staring at the awfulness standing heedlessly in the cage.

  No further answers presented themselves; not the origin of the creature or how it had become permanently entrapped in the peculiar welded structure. Nor the age of the thing, or the people that had found this to be the final solution to the problem the beast had presented. And so, without any answers to these questions apparently forthcoming, Dan retreated hastily in his state of confusion back from whence he had come. Darkness was almost total when at last he found his way back to the thick wall of brush that allowed him to emerge once again onto the path of frequent use.

  The knot had returned to his belly with certainty. It was however, a form of tension quite unlike that which he had initially succeeded in leaving behind. This tension would not soon depart. Not during the first weeks as he tried to forget the thing within the cage in silence, and then thereafter as he attempted to release himself of the burden by relaying the story to others.

  Of those that he confided in, he knew that most of them did not believe. They thought him the victim of mental illness or hallucination. He understood this fact fully well. But also Dan wondered if one of these others had perhaps told the tale to an acquaintance second-hand. If so, perhaps these unknown people had become curious enough to walk beyond the thick wall of brush to the north of town, while keeping the arc of the setting sun roughly aligned with their left shoulder… If so they too may have discovered the peculiar open space beyond the old pine trees and felt an empathetic yearning for friendship, perhaps never to be heard from again….

  THE END

 

 

  Chris Robertson, The Thing in the Cage

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