Story Excerpt
Tiger Tiger
by Savio Pham
Sitting up, he peered over at the woman next to him. She looked disheveled (as did he) in the clothes she’d been wearing for the past two days, rumpled and dirt-stained, her once-pretty hair in need of a wash, even those once perfectly manicured nails of hers were rimed with crusty mud. Though she was sound asleep in their big bed for what he imagined would be for a few hours more under the influence of powerful sleeping agents, he whispered, “I’m gonna step outside for some air. Sherry? I’ll be right back, okay?” He waited, hoped she might stir awake to hear his message, but she gurgled and whimpered and then began to snore.
He climbed down the stairs, drifting like smoke into the quiet of the bottom floor. It was a large house that once prompted his own mother to harass them, claiming so much space with no children in sight was wasteful. “And I’m positive your brother would love to be an uncle some day,” she added. “I’m sure it would make him very happy. We both know he could use a little joy in his life,” she said.
But thankfully, no such day came when they could call themselves parents. How could they think of kids when their work—their dreams—occupied so much of their time?
Through the tall windows he could see, by the light of the setting sun, ample trees beyond the white picket fence that had at one time contained their pedigreed Doberman before Sherry admitted he was too much to handle. He pushed out the French doors and crossed the expansive green yard, stopping at the fence and looking out towards the trees where, under the shade of the lush overhanging branches, he could see the mound of dirt, undisturbed since they had buried the body there. He clamped his hands around the tops of the pickets as his breath shuddered against the diminishing heat. A cool breeze brushed his cheeks, and he raised his eyes once again to the dirt mound and glimpsed some movement. He stared and waited and was about to push out the gate to address the prowler when he saw a deer—they were often passing through—ambling towards him, looking awesomely majestic with its ornate and widely splayed antlers.
“Scared me,” he said and let out a few puffs of laughter that felt, to his surprise, after everything that had happened, good, as if the tides were finally turning and their lives would soon return to the way it was. And in an offering of peace and love, as if to prove to the world and himself he was still quite capable of such ideology, he reached his hand towards the other side of the fence, when there came a flash of something massive and roaring and brown, but not really brown, as he’d come to learn. It only seemed brown because of the way the orange coat and the black stripes got muddied in the rapid speed at which it moved. Then, after a fluttering of his eyelids, he saw the deer was gone, as if it had never been.
Despite knowing better, he carefully spied over the fence and set his gaze on what was a full-grown six-hundred-pound tiger lying on its belly with its jaws around the buck’s neck, its muzzle already pulsing red with a radioactive brightness, even in the dimming light of the summer evening. He shuffled back a few feet, turned, and charged back into the house.
Breathless, he stopped just inside the door, bent low with his hands on his knees. A thought struck him then, and he rushed to his computer, trying to locate news of a missing tiger from some nearby zoo and was both relieved and disappointed to find no word of such a thing having happened. He sat there, thinking no reports did not necessarily disqualify that a tiger had escaped a zoo, or some science lab for that matter: those responsible for the tiger’s calamitous release might not want to cause a panic or be blamed by the public, so they would rather keep it low key for now.
Or:
It hadn’t yet made the news because the handlers weren’t yet aware they were even missing any animals.
He grabbed his phone, looked behind him, listened for her presence in the house, and figuring she was still asleep and far enough away, made the call.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I’d like to report, uh . . .”
He paused to sound out the words in his head. I’d like to report uh . . . uh . . . a tiger?
He thought a different approach might be in order.
“Have there been any reports in the area of escaped zoo animals?” he asked and wondered if there was even a zoo in the state of Connecticut. The jungles of India, Russia, China, Nepal . . . they roamed freely, surely. But not in the bucolic suburbs of New England, last he checked, unless there was a breakout.
“What’s your emergency, sir?”
“Well, I was just outside and beyond the fence I saw—”
No, you didn’t. You couldn’t have.
“—nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. I think I’m mistaken.”
“Is there an emergency, sir?”
His mouth going taut, he took big nostril-passed breaths, as if he were revving up his internal engine until he could release the handbrake and take off.
And then after a huge intake of air, he described, with hardly any break between the words, what he had just witnessed.
“I’m sorry,” said the operator, “did you say a deer was mauled by a tiger?”
“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t see it all that well at first, but then it settled into feeding on the poor deer and I saw it. The stripes and everything. A tiger. Thing was huge.”
“Sir, have you taken any drugs recently?”
Earlier he’d taken one or two of Sherry’s tranquilizers, had been taking them occasionally these past couple days, especially when his scalp stung and an anxiety attack felt imminent.
“Not really, no.”
“Where did you see this tiger?”
He could hear the slight exasperation in the female operator’s voice and closed his eyes against the rising humiliation.
“In my backyard. Beyond our fence. Deer come through all the time, and this one strapping specimen was tackled right in front of me.”
He did not like when his mind was wired a certain way and he spoke in that highfalutin way of saying things like “strapping specimen.”
“Anyway,” he said, cringing against his inanity, “I can go back and try to take a picture of it.”
“No, sir. Don’t do that. Stay inside.”
So she believes me?
“I’ll stay right here. Can you send someone over?”
Again he closed his eyes but this time with a sense of relief, a freeing sensation that sent him floating through space. That was when he felt a nudge against his fingers, and opening his eyes again, slightly startled, he saw the phone itself hovering through the air as if by magic.
But not exactly.
Sherry placed the phone to her ear and said, “I’m sorry. There’s been a mistake. My husband isn’t well. Sorry for wasting your time.”
She hit the end-call button and sat down on the ottoman, her hands clasped around the phone and hanging between her legs.
“It’s not like you think, Sherr,” he said with a mawkish smile. “I saw something very strange happen in the backyard, and it’d be wrong of me not to report it.”
“You’d really want police here right now?”
“No, of course not. But in this case we don’t have a choice.”
“I heard you say something about a tiger.”
“Exactly. And yes, you’re gonna think I’m losing it, but that’s what I saw.”
“I’m not understanding. Where did you see this tiger?”
“In the back. Behind the fence. It might still be out there.”
“Are you hearing yourself?”
He thought she might be on the brink of tears.
“Let’s just keep our eyes on the news. I think they’re gonna report on a runaway tiger soon enough. Maybe it’s a whole zoo of animals.”
In the half-light of a lamp, the shine of her eyes looked like white quivering dots. And soon he could feel the ramping sorrow of his throbbing heart. How could he do this to her? Worry her like this, after everything? The tears on her face had grown so abundant so quickly and so quietly that it was as if they sprouted all at once from the pores of her face.
“What happened is gonna take some getting used to,” she said, sniffling. “I understood that immediately and sensed something like this was gonna happen. But you have to understand: There can’t possibly be a tiger out there.”
“I didn’t imagine it.”
“Of course you did. Think about it. A tiger. You think you saw a tiger.”
“I know, I know. But that’s just a crazy coincidence.”
She walked away and returned with her bottle of tranquilizers and a glass of water.
“No, I don’t want it. I can’t have my guard down when there’s a tiger lurking outside.”
The tears on her face had suddenly subsided, and an unflinching sternness slid on like a mask.
“Harper,” she said through gritting teeth, “SIT . . . DOWN. You’re gonna break if you don’t relax.”
As if only invigorated by her words, he ran off into the kitchen and returned with a large chef’s knife.
“What’s that for?”
“Protection. These windows aren’t gonna stop it from breaking in if it wanted. You know the strength of those things!”
“How about a benzo?”
“No, definitely not. Those get me weird anyway.”
“Harper, seriously, you need some—”
“Shhh! It’s him!” With his free hand, he covered her mouth and motioned with his chin at one of the windows. The sound had been like the spray of water from a garden hose against a sheet of glass. “That’s his breath on the window. It’s not gonna hold if we don’t do something.”
He let her go, laid the knife down and in the course of the next ten minutes proceeded to push furniture up against the windows in several first-floor rooms that faced out into where the creature was currently roaming in the enclosed backyard.
Once he was done, panting and sweating, he recalled that he had a wife, one who looked to be quite worried about him just moments earlier, and he had a feeling what he had just completed would only add to her concern. He looked around for her, expecting to find her somewhere, sobbing. Instead, he found her coming at him with a beverage.
“You don’t want the tranquilizers, fine. Have a drink to ease your nerves. Just a few sips. We’re protected now, yes? So you can relax, right? Go on, drink.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet.”
“Drink up,” she said, helping tip the glass that he now held. “Good?”
“Yeah. Where’s the knife?”
“Just leave it. Have some more.”
After he nearly finished it, huffing from the deep burning Scotch, she took the glass and led him to the couch.
“Sit.”
“Yeah, I guess I can sit.”
“I’ll keep watch, so you can rest.”
“So you do believe me, then.”
“If you think there’s a tiger out there, I should take that seriously.”
“Good . . . very good.”
“Those are dangerous animals after all.”
“Oh, yes. Very . . . very . . . dangerous. . .”
His head dipped, and soon he fell asleep.