Leopard of Rudraprayag
You step into a field. The splinter in your paw cuts deeper into the vulnerable flesh. Ousted from the jungles of your homeland by the search of easier prey, you venture out into the open for the first time in your short life, conspicuouslyspotted fur gleaming in the dusky light. The lowlands of Cambodia are spread out beneath you, as you gingerly pick your way down the increasingly less vegetated hill, for the sake of your foot.
Food. Hunger rips through your stomach as you survey your surroundings. Nothing. No edgy grazing herbivores. Not even any small rodents that you, with your lame leg, could have a chance at catching. Sinking down into the long grass, you contemplate your fate, with your injured paw stretched out. There is no point in trying to eat the plants around you – you are a carnivore and need the rich, fatty, iron of flesh to live. So, with the ferocious heat of the will to survive sprinting through your blood vessels, you drag yourself off the soft ground and limp off across the fields. A crop starts to grow under your feet – you sniff it, aware in its uselessness to you, but the scent of something new hits your pulsating nostrils. Something meaty.
Strength enters your muscles as you enter a limping, desperate run towards the tantalising aroma. At the edge of the fields, there is a small group of trees, bereft of leaves, coiled into strange shapes – there are little holes in the bark, full of light, and communicative sounds issue from these crevices towards your pricked up ears. You wonder if the animals that are the source of this noise are dangerous, if they would kill you for food. But you decide to stalk the tree – you have nothing to lose after all. With one powerful push of your spring-coiled legs, you leap through the hole, swatting at the creatures present. There are cries of anguish and shock from the strange, furless animals – you wonder afterwards, as you drag one of the carcasses away, how these creatures survive; they are weaponless and puny, and the bright flower-mango-sunset shade overskin that covers themis no camouflage in the wild – they are no match for a beast like you. An easy food source, you think, as you rip at the fresh meat. There must be more of them out here on the plains. Your lame leg would cause you no problem in hunting them down. You could feast.
You step into a field. Heel then toe, before the soil parts for the claw. After being away so long, denying association and memory of this place should be easy. Home is home but only if you live there. What do you call it when your experience has been the exact opposite, the antithesis of that definition?
Your eyes wade through the hibiscus to the núi that stretch upwards; indifferent to the thick humidity. Once it was preached that suffering was bred from the illusion that we are independent beings. You arch your back at the sun; baring those marks that pulled you away from everything else. They killed you for your skin. It was here that the blemishes, the spots, were wiped from the ‘New Cambodia’.
You are only extinct until you are born again. You were taught to be thankful for this eternal, relentless hope but as the left blade on your back is scoured by the right as it rises, so your new life is marked by the old.
Circling the hunting ground, you release an uneasy yet yawning laugh. It was never mentioned, never a possibility, that you would return to your killing fields. Their killing fields. And yet, the land betrays no indication of the past.
Are these the same trees? Your next leap comes naturally and you are suddenly among those same watching, coward leaves, expecting to see the screams etched on the green.
But today, all is equal, all is quiet among the growing hibiscus.
The Leopard in Cambodia
You step into the field and you can sense you’re not alone. The darkening footsteps draw nearer and nearer as you can hear behind. It's the slight snapping of a branch or a bustle of leaves that can cause a mad break out of aggressive combat. The forgiving fur on their coat gives them a sense of camouflage from devious predators that lurk on the forest floor. The air is damp and the forest floor is scattered with branches and leaves.
Trails of scent drive you to hunger. Sensing fresh flesh sends flooding craving to your mind. Outraged monkeys, blazing baboons and hurtling antelope all eye up on the menu.
The unknown lies filled with cuisine. The thought of entering there is so tempting. You just wait for the right time to strike into that indulgement of flesh. The forest floor inside the unknown is trailed with traps ready to spring you right of your paws. Then all you can do is wait for the pain and suffering of being tortured to your imitate death. Cambodians bodies sell your bones and meat for their own profit, mostly for their enjoyment and leisure. Just one step to far and that’s it your gone.
Just like I did...
Rouge Fields
You step into the field where so many lie.
Stretch out your finger tips and glance a whisper off the brittle maize stems. One cracked and broken sole, dusty and worn, falls softly in front of the other. The ground is tired and dry.
I crouch and pad the earth.
Turn your head slightly to gaze across the placid rice fields where a stalk glides its spindle legs across the surface of the pools. The broken water ripples toward the horizon. The winged silhouette flaps wearily into the open jaws of the sunset, igniting feathers and melting meat off the bone. The flesh falls - charred droppings break the silence as they splinter the surface of the water below. The joints between the bones creak as skeletal wings push the naked frame onward.
My muscles tense as I edge closer. I can smell you.
I move unseen, behind your eyes, in the tracks you made. My thick furry paws clamp their claws into your naked shoulders and tear slowly down the dirty canvas. You try to run, try for freedom, but trip over corpses of your brothers and sisters - their arms still chained to shovels and picks. Eyes closed. Blistered hands weeping.
I slink forward slowly, letting my jagged shoulders roll behind my unmoving gaze. Your eyes, fixed with fear, stare back.
Holding you down, one paw on your throat, the other on your wrist, I gnaw your left arm off at the shoulder. Your body twitches with pain. Your screams echo unheard through the rustling corn, across the broken pools, and away into the jaws of the sun...
Then the right arm.
Silence quivers now as you lie stranded on your back, more helpless than ever. I prise open your legs with my paws. My fangs tear away. My jaws thrash wildly. My spotted fur and whiskers are flecked, then drenched, in heavy beads of rouge. I push my bloody nose deeper into the dripping socket that I dug in you.
Wet
You step into the field, and the only sound is the noise of the black mud softly sucking at your paws. The air clears as you distance yourself from the forest, the steam is no longer trapped under the leafy canopy; it rises into the darkening sky. You shake off that sense of claustrophobia you always accompany with being surrounded by underbrush, roots, slimy moss and thick vines, welcoming the weak breeze that promises rain. The rain comes every night, for months on end, and its presence is both pleasant and chilling one. You love the feeling of your fur free of sludge and red dust, you can almost relax as the raindrops collect around your ears and dribble down your face.
And then, screams starting somewhere very dark explode into the fields, filled with some deep, palpable emotion. The noise never stops, save for the moments after an off-tempo thunderclap. These screams, not the lukewarm rain, are what send ice chips slipping down your spine. You’ve seen the creature in thin, damaged, skin, out here in the fields, crippled by inner torment. You seem to only just escape the physical closeness of the jungle—a mesh of greens and grays—only to be trapped in mental agony. She collapses into the wilderness, becoming apart of your home, infecting you and your surroundings.
Like one of her ghosts, you lie on damp grass, curling your long tail about your ears, but not even your body will protect you from the clamor. Whatever she is, she can’t hurt you. She’s probably never thought of you, or that you’re forced to listen to her wasted pleas echo through the empty space. She is helpless in the tall grass—weak and brittle with small brown feet and lifeless hair—you almost wish those ghosts she’s fighting with could physically respond, so that you could comprehend what she’s witnessed.
Eventually, the rain recedes back up into the sky, its soft drumming slowly pattering off. When dawn breaks, the screamed prayers are silenced. She forces some temporary bandage on her pain, silences her voice, and pretends that everything is okay. Determined, she marches back to wherever she’s from, leaving you in the open muddy field, surrounded by faint voices whispering through the grass.