The hunters stat with great big smiles on top of the fallen body of the mother giraffe, its long neck had been unnaturally twisted back and around so that her face was clearly visible for the camera. One of them, the woman, was holding onto the horns like the controls on a video game. The man had his foot on top of the head of the calf, he stuck his tongue out in mimicry of the long muscular organ that he'd cut from the mouth of his prize and was dangling from his raised right arm. They laughed and were having fun under the big blue sky.
Ironically, that scene of carefree abandonment represented one of the last sightings of a giraffe in the wilderness or anywhere in the world for that matter. Not long after the filming, the Giraffa Mammalia Influenza, a mutant strain of influenza A virus designated subtype HAN2, that would become simply known as Giraffe Flu, spread across the world wiping out anything that looked remotely like a giraffe.
For many years, ages or aeons actually, people lived in a world without giraffe and the strange creature with its elegant long neck and awkward drinking style faded from living memory. Until that is, Freda von Raiden, decided to bring the surprisingly non-mythical creature back from the dead.
At first, people marvelled at the steam billowing creature, standing back with mouths wide-open in profound bewilderment. It stood over five meters tall and had the same characteristics of the long-extinct animal. The only notable difference was the whirring noise it made as its gears and gyros activated its long legs into motion. Nobody could remember what sounds a living giraffe made from its high up head, so Ms von Raiden had giving it a classical horse whinny followed by a train toot to let off steam pressure and the crowd's gasps extended even wider in overwhelming awe as the exotic sound issued forth (horses and trains at this time were also extinct). The wonderful mechanical beast was called Zarafa.
Zarafa travelled the world for many years in much the same way its ancient namesake did along the roads of ancient Europe. The steam-powered, mechanical wonder drew masses of people everywhere it went, until, on one tragic day, an infamous experimental anthropological archaeologist named Sergeant Kay who specialised in the lost tribal practice of hunting, shot poor Zarafa with an elephant gun. A derivation from the emotional and ethical shallows of humanity, the act was carried out with such venom, that it was a travesty that it would be considered scientific research and therefore completely legal--the shot blew the mechanical giraffe's head right off its mechanical giraffe body.
So came the end of Zarafa, the steam-powered giraffe and the second extinction for such a shape.
fin.
(464 words)
<◕.◕> First published here Oct 6, 2018
YOU ARE READING
FLASHed
Short StoryDon't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds ... this is just a few of my flash stories. Each write around 1000 words from a range of science fiction, fantasy and horror genres (22 SF, 2 F, 1 H).
