Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

I stand up. Before I can move, he is on me, shoving me to the ground. Gravel cuts my elbows. He’s stealing the advantage just like he stole everything I cared about. I grab his knees, but he kicks loose. I’m no match for Charlie’s weight and strength.

He stands over me, then melts into the dark.

Duchess is coming. She’s overcome doubt about what it means to have two humans in the lion habitat at night.

Charlie nears the moat. His form flickers across the beam of a streetlight. The moat is twenty feet deep and twenty feet wide with ten-foot fences close to each side.

Duchess’s pads swish toward me. She’s hungry... three days hungry. She smells the blood on my elbows.

If I look a little to one side at her in the dark, I can see her. Her eyes glow. Her yellow hide catches the light from the streetlamps and gives it back as a patch not quite black. The patch gets bigger. My snit thickens in my mouth. My breath whistles high in my nose. I lift my hands to ward her off. The odor of her hangs in the air. Then she passes me... is beyond me.

She has a genetic pattern to chase a thing that moves.

Then it happens. Maybe when he finds the escape gate is jammed... Maybe when he smells her. Maybe when he hears the swish of her pads. Maybe when she hits him. Charlie screams. The scream breaks off clean like the snap of an icicle.

I don’t need to see this scene on a TV screen.

When a cat is hungry she looks around at all the animals in the herd. Some stare back at her and say, You can’t catch me. The lion thinks, Which one can I catch? A baby thing, or one that limps, or one that runs — that’s what she can catch.

The first to run is the nervy animal that uses its energy fast.

When a lioness catches prey, she bats it down like a kid does a Ping-Pong ball. The front paws hug it like she loves it. She nuzzles its neck for a choke hold. Her bare feet fold up and rip down. Duchess’s dewclaws are like cotton-bale hooks. But after she breaks Charlie’s neck, Duchess doesn’t know what to do with him. She drags him around the habitat, coughing and moaning.

I get the cage key out of my pocket, slip out the attendants’ door, lock it, and pick up a fresh bottle of beer from my half of the carton. I drink half of it and pour the other half on my shirt. I reach up by the door and throw the emergency alarm switch that will ring in the headquarters building. The night watchman will see the light blink on the cat-house diagram on the map of the zoo and come running.

I limp into the dimly lit grounds yelling Help! I’m gonna sound drunk, but not too drunk, when I tell how Charlie wanted to play with Duchess like we did with Leo.

I’ll have to stop them from shooting her, of course. But I’m sure that when I open her cage and call she’ll come to the cripple man who brings the meat.

The Big Empty by Judith Post

She’d moved into the run-down house surrounded by flat, open fields to die. Not because she’d seen a doctor, not because she was ill or had a genetic disorder. Simply because she was so empty. There was nothing left.

To her, the miles and miles of wintry farmland symbolized her state of mind. Miles and miles of nothing. Her friends called it burnout, but she called it living death. So she’d left the city and her steady job, her circle of friends, and the pain of Rob’s leaving her, and she’d come here. To a place where she was surprised if she saw two pickups pass her house on the same day! To where nightfall meant darkness, with no streetlights or distant glow from the city. To a solitude so lonely even a radio blaring couldn’t penetrate the silence. And at first, she’d wallowed in it. Licking her wounds. Picking up the pieces. Sorting things out. But then she’d grown bored. Burn-out or broken heart, neither was fatal, and waiting for death wasn’t everything she’d thought it would be. Finally she tired of it altogether and drove into town to look for work.

It had been easy getting a job. Miss Timmons had been the Honors English teacher for too many generations of local families, until now, in her senility, it was finally time to retire her to a nursing home and find a quick replacement. Caryn would be doing what she did best: teaching. And this time it would be different. Kids bussed to a consolidated high school from good, righteous farm families would inspire her, bring back the old feelings of accomplishment and pride in a job well done. Only city kids were rude and unmotivated, joined gangs and scribbled graffiti — traits inherent to cement jungles and low incomes. This time she’d remember why she’d wanted to be a teacher to begin with.

“I don’t get you,” Betsy McCormick complained during third period English Lit. “I mean, I can’t wait to get out of here, away from this hick town, and see what life is like in a city. But you... you chose to come here. What gives? You’re decent-looking. You seem normal. What’s the matter with you anyway?”