The Day They Left

Chapter 2: MENTAL CAGE

Night fall crept upon us as we made our way through the thick, rusty cages. The cold winds grappled at our throats; its been a while since we've left the zoo. The thought of sleeping hungry stayed in my mind for most of the night until I heard small growls coming from nowhere.

"Was that my stomach?" I seemingly thought to myself.

"Hey, hey you." a small voice swayed.

With just one eye open, I slowly turned my body to see where the voice was coming from. As I began to drift my vision to a dark area of the cage I noticed something bright outside of it. Two, little, bright dots reflecting the moonlight was there.

"A lion?" I tiredly asked.

"No, it's me. A cheetah." he exclaimed.

"What do you want?" I responded.

"I need your help, I found a way out of this place." he returned.

At first I ignored his claims and brushed it off. My body carefully leaned away from the cage as my eyes shifted to a blur. I could feel my consciousness slipping away from me like a cotton in a tidal wave.
I was crashing.

"Psst! Psssst! Hey!" the same voice cried again.

As I opened one eye, I looked to my left to see the cheetah by my cage. A small smile creeped on his face; our eyes fixed upon each other. For a moment, nothing but silence could be heard in the zoo. Not a single word was said for almost a minute. Before I turned over the cheetah pounced on the cage with eagerness shaking it.

"Don't you find it odd that I could speak to you?" the cheetah asked.

I never really thought about it, usually I only spoke to a number of animals. It wasn't until after I taught them the movements of speech that we communicated. This cheetah was able to do the same on his own.

"I'm very observant." he wagged his tail back and forth.

"You've been watching me, how did you learn it so quickly?" I pondered out loud.

He began to walk away from the top of the cage in a calm demeanor. With one swoop, he gained access to the front of my cage with joy. His paws running sharply through the metal barricades.

"All my life, and I assume everyone here, has lived their lives in this pothole." his tail signed.

I thought about his idiotic remarks as ignorance, and left his statement alone. He walked closer to the cage his smile sliding into a grin.

"We have the whole world to us now, but we still choose to be in cages." he said knowingly.

How was he able to know this? I never spoke about my findings on this, and treated it as a theory rather than a conclusion. Maybe his intuition was stronger than others. Now that I look back the cheetah made a valid point. We couldn't stay here forever. The thought quickly faded as I began to drill him with questions.

"So you want us to go out where?"

"There's a pl―"

"No." I said, quickly cut him off.

"There's no way we can leave. We'll end up like that last thing that creeped in here." I spoke convincingly.

"Look, just here me out." he pleaded.

Before we exchanged any further words I declined as fast as I turned myself back to sleep. I could feel an energy of disappointment in the air. The night grew colder as the hour hand ticked. Night swiftly became day as a beam of light flashed across my dark, unkempt fur. I was a bit shaken by the cheetah and his words. A couple years ago I realized what was happening before us, or rather what was happening to us. The humans carefully devised a plan to destroy us on Earth. I learned of this a few years back. I thought there was a chance I could somehow save all of us here at the zoo.
But I failed.