I saw an Amur Leopard once. I had a short-lived janitorial gig at the Toronto Zoo when the animal was brought in. Poachers had injured it. Cruel as that was, crueler still was the realization that the remainder of his time upon this earth would be behind cold, unforgiving steel columns, being watched by the creatures which were the very cause of his incarceration. We had the beast for a month. I went to see him every day when my shift ended.
When he moved, he was the noblest living thing I had ever seen. A king cloaked in the finest regal coat of speckles and a crown of ivory incisors as deadly as they were venerable. His body was sleek and lithe, every inch rippled with muscle. The real beauty though, the true source of his power, was in his eyes. He would look into my human eyes and knew he would always have one special thing that I would never have, true freedom: to roam and answer to no one. No society, no government, no money, but only the most primal and instinctual responsibilities were his.
Sometimes I would watch the Leopard for hours. Often he wouldn’t move and watch me in the same manner. It was a little game we played. He would survey me, size me up, try and figure out my intentions. Eventually the night would come and the beast would win the game by default. I could no longer see him in his tomb of shadows but he could see me and I know he watched for me, long after I had gone.
By 1990, around the time I worked at the zoo, I often overheard the zoologists talking about how there were only one hundred Amur Leopards remaining in the wild. They were endangered then. There are even fewer now, and they are likely to become extinct.
There is an incalculable amount of mosquitoes across the globe. Human beings crush them with ease between their thumb and forefingers with almost no thought at all. We don’t have to hunt them and we don’t covet their hides. We swat at them, spray them with pesticides, lure them into clever traps by the hundreds, from which there is no escape. Still they flourish because all they need is a little blood and water. The mosquito is crude and simple, while the Amur Leopard is beautiful and complex. The mosquito will survive the leopard. Humans are like mosquitoes; we take so much blood that we balloon grotesquely until we can no longer fly or worse, we pop and make a mess of everything.
We know it too; we just choose to ignore it. The really smart ones, I mean true geniuses, are often exploited for government means, building missiles of horrifying accuracy or writing useless computer code for the sake of a faceless corporate bottom line. The physically beautiful specimens are almost exclusively exploited when their minds are supple and malleable, ultimately leaving nothing but a beautiful brittle shell of what was once something that could have been a magnificent work of art.
The criminal, the man in control of this latter type of exploitation, the person who runs sex in this country, is Arnie, and every country has a man just like him.
They brought her in, three men dragging one woman on her back, howling and flailing across the floor. They let go of her arms and legs and she got herself onto her hands and knees. She was outnumbered eight to one. Nine if you count me. I watched her transform from the young woman I knew into the animal she needed to be. Her teeth were bared, muscles taught, body poised and ready, as she backed herself slowly to the wall. She looked at me for something, anything, but I had nothing I could give her.
The men laughed and Arnie stood there looking at her. She was afraid; her breathing was shallow and the blood had gone from her face. I knew Arnie would rough her up, maybe even give her a proper beating but she would fight him all the way through it.
The men in the room were either smirking at her like hyenas or mindlessly gawking as she recoiled defensively to the wall behind her. Arnie watched with great entertainment and then finally spoke.
“You know, there’s nothing worse than a horse that won’t run the race. The horn sounds, the gates open, but the damn thing just stands there with the jockey beating its ass.”
The men all laughed at this and Arnie waved a hand and continued.
“Can’t do anything for a horse like that.”
He smiled and walked over to Danika, who had one hand braced against the back of the wall as though it was the only tangible thing in the whole world. Arnie smiled at her and put his index finger up in front of his lips.
“You see, some just won’t be ridden no matter what.” The smile he wore left his face.
“Some just can’t be broken and some, well, they just won’t be broken. That’s the problem with human beings. Some, although very few, have a will that won’t be tamed.”
He looked Danika in the eyes when he said this and I noticed a faint shiver course through her.
Arnie’s hand gently caressed Danika’s cheek. She didn’t flinch like I had expected her to. She didn’t even blink and held his gaze firmly as he taunted her. He ran the back of his hand down the nape of her neck and then held it for a moment at the base of her clavicle. He continued to drag his hand over her right breast, reminding her of every time he had hit her, beat her, raped her. Still she gave him nothing. She was the strongest woman in the world at that moment and Arnie knew it. He took his hand away.
“I want you to know that I respect that about you.”
Danika grit her teeth so fiercely, they might have been crushed into a fine powder and then spoke.
“You are very long-winded but ever so short where it counts. I wonder if it’s still rape if you can’t feel the prick?”
Her comment was a foul worm that had burrowed deep beneath his skin. No one else had noticed him falter. I did though, and he exposed his black jackal Form. It wasn’t more than a moment before he regained complete composure. He reached down and took her small right hand in his. “I really do respect it, but I can’t use it and I rather hate it.”
His grip tightened and with his right hand, he took an open straight razor from his pocket and ran it across her forearm with medical precision and opened her ulnar artery. She looked down at the gaping wound pumping life from her body. She fell to her knees and tried to hold everything in that was spilling out.
Arnie crouched down on his haunches in front of her and mocked her with a false smile.
“It’s better for you this way, trust me.”
I watched in terror. My heart loosened from my chest cavity and fell into my stomach. I did not shout any disapproval; I didn’t make a sound at all. I just stood there and watched her fall, hijacked by horror.
I was frozen for a time and then I formulated a plan, or what I decided was a plan of sorts. I took the beer bottle in my hand and emptied it on the floor at the feet of the man standing to the right of me. Then I took the bottle and broke it over the man’s head. As his legs slowly gave out beneath him, I took the jagged neck of the bottle’s remains still in my hand. I jabbed it deep into the neck of the other man standing to my left, removing the gun from the holster against his ribs when he instinctively brought his hands to his throat to try and remove the jutting glass from it.
I opened fire and killed the man standing in front of the shot meant for Arnie. Arnie dove and disappeared behind a couch for cover. I fired two more rounds at another man who had finally reacted to what was going on and was pulling his weapon free from its holster. He fell as two slugs burst his chest wide open.
I had managed to make it to Danika before I felt a bullet graze the right side of my waist and then sink into the wooden desk beside me. It was Arnie who had fired the shot. I turned and sent three more rounds in his direction that missed him and murdered the leather couch moonlighting as his savior.
I scooped Danika up into my arms and kicked open the cabin door as two more bullets zipped past my ears. I ran hard and noticed Danika’s eyes were open. She looked at me and smiled. She was still alive.
I ran harder through the hallway and then through another set of swinging doors onto the catwalk. I could hear men shouting from behind me and then I heard shots go off around me. I turned quickly and fired a wild shot that did nothing. It was luck and nothing more that got me back onto solid ground as the Dark Agnes was still docked.
There wasn’t much time to think and I knew within seconds there would be gunfire all around me if I didn’t find cover. There was an alley across from the harbour and I could see an old broken down Chevy sitting at the end of it. I made for the alley and the cover of the vehicle with no plan of action after that.
I set Danika down on the ground and sat her up. Arnie and his men hadn’t seen me go down the alley but they knew I wouldn’t be able to go far with Danika in my arms. It wouldn’t be long before they found us. I took the clip from the weapon and realized I had three rounds left.
“What’s your name?” Danika asked, her voice almost inaudible.
I stopped fiddling with the gun and looked at her. She had stopped holding her arm and looked at me, the life fading from behind her eyes. I got angry because I knew what was coming and so did she.
“Put the pressure back on your arm Danika,” I said sternly.
She smiled at me.
“Don’t, don’t do that! Put your hand back and keep pressure on it.”
She continued to disobey me and reached out with what little strength was left in her and touched my hand.
“What’s your name?”
I put the gun on the ground and put her small hand in mine. It was so cold.
“William, my name is William.”
“Nice to meet you.” She was smiling softly.
“I’m going to go now,” she said finally and her eyes closed.
“Wait!” I pleaded.
Her eyes opened a little and then all the way. Around me, three Shrikun had appeared, anxiously awaiting her death.
“No! You won’t have her! Not this one, I won’t allow it.” “And they won’t. Look.”
It was Maneki. I caught a flash of Danika’s white lynx Form for the first time. I looked for the Shrikun but they were gone. I looked back for Maneki and the damned tabby was gone as well.
Danika tried to smile at me but couldn’t. I had only seconds. I leaned in and spoke into her ear so I knew she could hear me. When I was done, the left side of her mouth curled up a little in a final effort to make a smile and then she left like she said she was going to.
Three slugs thudded into the old metal of the Chevy and brought me back to reality. Another shattered the back windshield. I peeked around the side of the car and five men, including Arnie, were at the end of the alley waiting to see if I would respond. I fired another wild shot so they knew I still had a few rounds left.
I looked away from the action towards the other end of the alley as another round of shots fired my way. I stared at the huge chain link fence in front of me. It would probably take me about seven seconds to climb and clear the fence and get a few feet under me to be out of decent range from their shots. That seemed like a long time but what choice did I have. Despite our somewhat deserted location, I knew Arnie couldn’t risk attracting the cops with this ongoing fire. After all, this was not America and these things are not exactly commonplace. The fence was my only real option. I had two rounds left and decided it was best to try and make them count. I stood up and aimed at the men and fired both rounds. I dropped one man with one shot and the other missed Arnie only slightly.
The men returned fire and a bullet shattered the driver’s side window. Glass sprayed chaotically and shards bit into my left side. I had managed to lower the odds slightly by killing another man but had paid for it in the process.
I looked back at the fence. It was now or never. I sprung to my feet and jumped onto it and began to climb. I heard Arnie yell and the men fired at will. I couldn’t stop now. They knew I had nothing left in the chamber of my weapon. I made it to the top of the fence and there were sharp intertwined pieces of metal that cut across my chest and thigh. I fell from the top about ten feet and landed painfully on my left side and partly on my back. I ignored the pain, got to my feet and ran with everything I had left. Bullets streaked by me but none hit their mark. I kept running and did not look back, not even to take one last glance at Danika. I just ran.
Had I looked back though, I might had seen a glowing white lynx kneeling steadfastly, its soft blue eyes watching my flight with earnest, and what looked like a smile across its jowls as each bullet failed to meet its mark. I would have seen the death of my first white. I would have seen what hope looked like. I didn’t though. I just kept running.