Fiction: Human Error

By James Callan

The guillotine soared with a rusted groan, mingling with the lion’s low growl. Clouds converged to swell and darken. The fault line trembled. Birds and angels stopped singing. Blood traced the ridge line of a titan’s spine. Its backbone peeled like carrots in a kitchen, links in a chain against the slow-rising slab. Paws the size of entree plates made craters on Mars, heralding the beast they carried. A wide girth emerged, muscles hard as blackwood, casting its granite shadow. The Black Gate of Mordor belched a mighty troll. A stout muzzle thicker than a midget’s thigh. A neck like the gorget worn by warrior saints. Fangs drawn—Nosferatu Mufasa. Molten eyes that simmered with unalloyed glare. Savage wisdom haloed in flames. A snarl on the face of Daryl Hall. The horse meat was half-thawed, peppered by flies. Zeus was blind to it, mesmerized by his tunnel vision for Paul, the head zookeeper, whose earbuds would save him from fear until the final second. The weight of the guillotine in my hands was sin. It was salvation. The chain chafing my palm was better than sex. The god of all gods avalanched past me, as I knew he would, seeing Paul first, whose dancing to the music was the flick of a zebra’s ear or a swish of the wildebeest’s tail. The pooper scooper would not avail Paul. The lightweight aluminum implement would provide a false sense of security. To thwart the apex predator with a pooper scooper is akin to felling the armored knight with an origami sword. I watched the beast stalk the fool in the dying grass. Dust clouds puffed with every step. This was my doing. Through Zeus, I personally threw bolts at Paul. I murdered via lion, masked as human error. I did not know Paul was in the enclosure. I could have sworn he was on the other side of the chain-link fence. To say so is easier than lifting a heavy guillotine. To kill Paul, who deserved death according to the criteria of my wounded sense of justice, which was provoked by his laughter when the chimps had thrown their feces into my eyes, is no difficult thing. It is easier than throwing rocks at chimps in the early hours of dawn, well before the gates are opened to the public. It is easier than shrieking at the macaws, who will not stop shitting on my shoulder. It is easier, by far, than sawing through the frozen haunches of goat, mincing the imported meats of majestic mares for the toothless tiger, who cannot chew for herself. To kill Paul is to lift the guillotine at the wrong time, the exact right time. So many have died by the fall of the guillotine that it seems cathartic to orchestrate death by its rising. Paul should never have sent me to weed-whack the poison oak in the African wild dogs’ enclosure. Never should he have filmed me falling into the moat when I ran from the cassowary, posting it online at my expense (2 million views!). I couldn’t wait for karma. I didn’t want to pray. But I did call upon the gods. Zeus exerted his ultimate power. Hera smelled blood and joined the feast. Paul raised his pooper scooper, which eclipsed the morning sun. His tool fell without a swing as turds descended like comets, bombarding oceans of blood among the sand. The apocalypse is beautiful. I climbed the chain-link fence and cried for help. Faintly, ironically, “Eye of the Tiger” purred from the earbuds in the grass, eventually drowned out by the sound of children crying and lions gorging on fresh meat. Don’t blame yourself. You’re only human. I embraced the hugs of sympathy. It could have happened to anyone.

 

 

 

 

 

James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa New Zealand. His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, trampset, Reckon Review, and elsewhere.