Not Like You (The Simian Forest Saga: Vol. I)

The Beast [Prologue]

Ten yards.

It sat ten yards away from her, hairy shoulders hunched and motionless.

Krissa crouched in the ferns and moss, partially camouflaged by the surrounding greenery, her heart up in her nose and her eyes as wide as saucers. Fear was a heavy stone in her belly as she stared directly at the beast, trying to understand how exactly she had managed to get herself into this mess. Her breaths whistled in and out of her larynx, entire body alert and cramped up, ready to take flight if necessary.

It didn't seem real, this didn't feel right. Her home here at the oasis had always been peacefully routine, even despite the looming threat of the ape colony. She had been at work when the apes had taken San Francisco, storming the Golden Gate Bridge and outsmarting dozens of well-educated and qualified officers. She recalled how scared she had been as her manager had locked down the store, afraid that the apes might try and break in and maul all those inside. Instead, their end of the neighbourhood hadn't even been remotely scathed by their rampage.

Krissa remembered how the electricity had failed, how the riots had began. She remembered her mother, she remembered how she had never believed those rumours about how they brandished guns or how they had thoughtlessly slaughtered anyone in their wake. Krissa had wanted to believe that too, but once people began to turn on one another, she was unsure of whether she could even trust her own kind. Now, after all this scrounging, all this scavenging, she felt as if it had been all for not.

This can't be it, she found herself thinking, yet her trembling hands across her bow and artillery betrayed her. The ravenette felt vulnerable, and with her father six feet under, she had nobody to help her back out of this predicament she had fallen into. Since the colony had established this as their home, the young woman and her father -- after years of living in peace alone -- had managed to lay low and go undetected. Now, though, as she looked at this massive great ape, his coat black as night, she felt as if she were looking the devil himself in the eye.

His entire body was made of sheer muscle, long arms designed for swinging and climbing doubling as sledge-hammers when in need of a deadly weapon. Several scars littered his frame, which Krissa debated internally upon whether they were man-made or had inflicted from one of his own kind. All in all, she did not wish to find out. Quills pierced delicately through flesh, piercing both his helix and snout; in one of his leathery hands he held a long javelin-like spear, a few strips of hide wound tightly around the middle of its shaft. What really took the cake was his gaze, their pigment only comparable to two pits of cognac. Krissa found that she had chills, not only from the rain drizzling down from the dreary canvas of cream and rose above, but from how incredibly intelligent his fiery set appeared.

It wasn't just his eyes either-- it was his posture, his overall timbre. He did not look like just some regular chimpanzee, sitting on his perch upon a fallen cypress. He did not flinch, he did not move. Krissa swallowed deep within her parched throat and she shifted, her calves burning from the effort of holding all of her weight up. The ape took note and moved just the same, head tilting up slightly. A near-silence grunt stirred within his lips. Dangerous. Smart, but dangerous.

Krissa's mind was at war. Should she treat him like a bear and avoid eye-contact while backing away slowly? That was redundant, seeing as the moment she looked away, she would panic. Running was also out of the question. The chimp could easily catch, pin and skin her like a hare in a matter of moments. Her hair stood on end. She felt like a deer in the headlights, and that was probably all she appeared to be. She had to wonder... were they all as human-like as she had heard in whisperings? It had been perhaps eras before she took her next shallow breath.

Would he draw and quarter her, right then and there, if she stood up and tried to leave? Krissa hunkered down further, making sure to keep her attention upon the simian at all times. Slowly, the young woman pulled her bow up over her head and set her arrow in her teeth. Then, with the grace of a prowling wildcat, she slowly side-stepped backwards, backing up in the cool mud and feeling it squelch beneath her splayed fingers. "I'm'a'jus' gonna go home now, big fella," she whispered softly under her breath through clenched teeth. "You jus' .... shtay where you'h'are..."

As Krissa managed to back away, she safely removed the arrow and clasped it within her palm. A smile tucked at her lips, even as he seemed to grow aggressive. His eyes widened eerily and his teeth began to show, chuffing like an angry horse and sniffing in her direction. "That's good," she piped a bit louder this time. "See? I'm not hurting anyo--"

The chimpanzee rose bipedal and let out a bark, tilting his spear down in her direction. Her entire face dropped and she staggered back, falling right on her behind and scrambling backwards. Regaining her bearings, she shot up to her feet and began to race away on trembling legs. Her heart pounded painfully, blood rushing in her ears as the ravenette blindly charged forward, desperate to get away. Brush broke overhead. "No... no..." she breathed.

Shooting a look up over her shoulder, the young woman grew even more alarmed as she caught sight of the blur of ink swinging after her through the canopy. Her cranium swivelled and she just managed to lay eyes on the tree she was barrelling towards, much to her dismay. Krissa staggered out of the way and then stumbled, evidently tripping over a clump of coarse shrubs. Krissa landed with an ungraceful grunt and tumbled, beginning to skid down a rather steep hill, brush crackling beneath her every impact. Finally, she came to a stop at the base of the plateau and tried to catch her breath, splayed out like an exhausted starfish. 

Starfish cannot run, her conscience insisted breathlessly. The world careened around her as she tried to focus, body aching from the initial shock of both adrenaline and the fall itself. It wasn't until she heard yet another disturbance as the primate drew closer, only to hover just over her head, looking down from what felt like thirty-five feet in the air. He stared, silhouetted against the sky, and she gasped, legs turning to rubber once again. Krissa bit her cheek. She held her breath for a second time, and waited.

She waited until her eyes hurt, burning from exposure. The staring contest resumed and she heard him sway in the branches, leaves showering down over her head. 

After what felt like hours, her body completely spent from remaining tense for too long, the chimpanzee seemed to lose interest. He moved along. She deflated and fell back into the leaf-litter around her. 

She was merely a nice game of chase for him, it seemed.

This truly was a planet of apes.