Rotten Little Animals

by Kevin Shamel

  One important person, an old friend that he’d run across on Facebook and who was an executive for a Big Time Movie Studio, agreed to view the movie.

  Cage went with his dad to Hollywood after his father explained that the animals were mobilizing against their house, and that they had to go undercover and on the run or gain enough power that they were untouchable. He told Cage that they would let the truth be known to all of the world, that the animal conspiracy would be exposed and eradicated. He said being a movie star and hero of humanity was way better than hiding from every animal alive. Cage couldn’t disagree.

  The boy reluctantly agreed to meet with the Big Time Movie Studio people.

  Cage’s mom stayed behind to pack up the house. She worked on that for about two days. On the third day, she found herself sitting in the corner eating a box of stale cereal with kippered snacks mixed in. She was naked, the floor was covered in pee, and there was a notebook at her side with the word, UKIRAH, scrawled on it.

  A squirrel at the window scratched threateningly at the glass. Cage’s mother remembered something about mice flowing out of the bathtub faucet, skittering across the floor, crawling up her legs, nipping at her and chanting something that ended in, Chop! Chop! Chop! She remembered stomping and running. She remembered the phone being dead. She remembered screaming—taking pills and screaming.

  She called some movers and went online to find the best mental institution in Hollywood. She took some more pills. She went to the spa toting a shotgun and daring any fucking animal to come the fuck on and get some as she made her way from house to car and car to spa.

  Cage and his father were oblivious to his mother’s tribulations. They were having adventures of their own.

  When they arrived in the offices of the Big Time Movie Studio, the movie executive kept them waiting until he was forty-five minutes late for their meeting. He told them that because he was so late, they didn’t really have time for much of a meeting, but that he’d view the opening of the film and listen to as much of the synopsis as possible. He said there was an important person due to arrive soon, and so could they please just show the movie.

  Cage’s dad, all flustered and pissed-off, but smart enough to not punch the important person in his important nose, started the movie.

  A few minutes into the film, the executive paged his secretary and told her to clear his afternoon. Then he made some phone calls to some even more important people who came and viewed the film. The Big Time Movie Studio executive executives realized it was something that the world had never seen. For them that meant more power and money.

  The execs wondered how the father and son team made the animals act so perfectly and what sort of animation had been used to make their mouths move so realistically when they spoke. They wanted to know the budget, and couldn’t believe that a father and son team with virtually no money had produced the film.

  So Cage’s dad told them the true story.

  They did not believe the true story until Cage had a breakdown in the movie executive’s big conference room with lots of important people—screaming about how every animal was out to get him, and how he and his father had massacred all those innocent animals and that the birds were watching him—and Cage’s father showed them the unedited footage of the actual abduction and subsequent plotting of the animals.

  Even still, the movie executives didn’t believe most of the story, but realized that something had happened during the film’s creation to make Cage afraid of animals to a terrifying degree, and if they were going to get the kid to act in a sequel, they were going to have to do something about his zoophobia.

  One older, wizened exec said, “Come on, zombie-cats?”

  Deals were struck. Contracts were signed. Smiles were smiled. Cage’s dad got on the phone and bought a big house.

  It was decided that Cage would be sent to an uninhabited island in the Pacific to meet with a master of child-psychiatry, animal husbandry and making boys into men. They even paid to have all the crabs burned off the beach and enclosed the island with the largest net ever stitched.

  The boy would stay until cured of his fear. Then he’d return to Hollywood to film the sequel.

  A Boy Named Cage took the human world by storm. Box office records were broken. Action figures appeared in fast food meals for kids. Everyone wanted to be kidnapped by animals and turned into a pig. The soundtrack went platinum. Little girls swooned. PETA protested.

  Cage became a movie star.

  But he didn’t know about his immense, intense, extreme, obscene, worldwide fame for five months. He spent the time of the movie’s release and subsequent fame on an island with Arrrgh, the Wizard of Wisdom—as the animal-loving, man-making shrink liked to call himself. Among other things.

  Cage knew nothing of the world outside the island during that time. Not even that his father had been run down and killed by a carload of chickens. It happened one Monday morning a week after the movie was released to the human public, when Cage’s dad crossed the street from the sporting goods store to the bar.

  On the island, Cage was embraced, examined and emboldened by the mysterious Arrrgh—a man who hates microbes, microbrews and microwaves but not micro-bikinis. Cage learned how to smoke. He learned how to swear even better than before. He learned how to tell what a man’s been eating by the smell of the sweat from his ass crack. He never learned why that is important.

  Cage was flown to the island by helicopter and dropped through the cargo chute—a net-tube that led from a hole at the top of the island’s giant surrounding net to the beach near Arrrgh’s villa. Only one bird ever found its way into the cargo chute, and it was subsequently crushed by a delivery of pornographic magazines, seventy pounds of tanning lotion, a Real Doll and six-dozen jumbo cans of pork and beans.

  The boy tumbled through the ninety-foot cargo chute. Arrrgh waited for him on the beach.

  “Get up,” said the psychiatrist/husbandrist/islander. He held out his manly manicured hand. “My name is Arrrgh—Sexiest Man Alive.”

  Cage let the man help him up. He looked around at the beach, villa and cliffside jungle.

  “Eat this,” said Arrrgh. He handed the boy a mushy green blob the size of a ping-pong ball.

  Cage took the squishy thing. “What is it?”

  “It’s an ayahuasca-soaked peyote button. Eat it.”

  Cage ate it.

  “So I hear you’re afraid of animals,” Arrrgh mentioned, guiding the boy to his villa.

  Cage nodded at the wild-eyed, chest-haired, silver-thonged middle-aged man. He looked past Arrrgh to the beach. He saw snakes of water surfing across the waves.

  “They said there aren’t animals here,” Cage whispered. He watched giant snakes threading themselves through the breaking ocean.

  “There aren’t.”

  “What about those snakes?” Cage pointed at the ocean. The sky lost its blue, and Cage could see its skin, way up there at the edge of the stars. It was heavy and smelled like lemons. His footsteps on the sand echoed. The snakes began to laugh.

  Cage puked on his feet.

  Arrrgh smiled and took the boy by the shoulder. “Oh, there are snakes in everything. You’ll see. Want some pork and beans?”

  Arrrgh hosed the boy off outside the villa, and they made their way to the kitchen.

  Cage tried to eat pork and beans, but he thought about the pork, and the beans kept slipping out from between his lips. He mostly spit pork and beans.

  Arrrgh watched him spit his food for a while and then said, “All right. Here, swallow this,” he produced a small red nut and handed it to the boy.

  “What is it?” Cage asked.

  “It’s an LSD/psilocybin/salvia-injected coffee bean. Swallow it.”

  Cage swallowed it.

  Arrrgh stood. “Now just sit here until I come get you.” He disappeared through a door.

  Cage sat and tried to think. Beans began yelling up to him, and he shushed them, knowing there was something really importa
nt he was about to remember or discover. The bowl of beans began shrieking about snakes, and Cage looked down to see a writhing bowl of tiny snakes.

  “Holy shit!” he yelled.

  Arrrgh reappeared. He grabbed Cage by his t-shirt and dragged him out of the kitchen. “It’s time for the puppet show!” he exclaimed.

  The psychiatrist/puppeteer/pork and bean aficionado deposited Cage into the too-soft cushions of a floral-print loveseat.

  Arrrgh stood in front of a puppet stage. “Now, Cage,” he said, “I’m going to do a little puppet show for you. There are animal puppets in this show. I want you to remember that they are only puppets. They’re puppets, Cage. Puppets. Cage. These animals are puppets. That’s why they can talk. Okay, Cage? Puppets.”

  “Okay! Fucking puppets!”

  Arrrgh stared at Cage for two minutes. “Oh. Yes. Not real animals. There are no animals on this island. Only fish.”

  “Fish don’t talk?”

  “Animals don’t talk.” Arrrgh ducked under the curtain.

  Soon two puppets appeared onstage—a blue whale and a flying squirrel.

  Arrrgh mumbled, “Oh,” and the squirrel disappeared. Cage heard the sound of the play button on a cassette player being depressed, though being a thirteen-year-old in modern times he did not recognize it as such.

  The flying squirrel shot back into view as tinny ska music began playing from under the puppet stage.

  Cage started to really hallucinate.

  Arrrgh wiggled his whaley hand and said in a deep stupid voice, “Oh, I’m a big whale. I’m bigger than anything. I could totally eat you. But I’m not going to because I’m nice. All animals are nice.”

  But the whale puppet was going to eat Cage.

  It grew bigger and bigger with each dopey word that came from its out-of-synch mouth. Soon it ate the puppet stage, a lamp and a beanbag and loomed above Cage.

  The boy screamed and tried to jump over the back of the couch.

  “Wait,” said the big dumb whale voice, “I’m nice. All animals are nice.”

  The whale swallowed Cage.

  Its mouth was black and felty. It was a rough ride down to the belly of the big puppet whale. Cage sensed someone sliding down beside him. He found a hand and held onto it. He screamed beside who he could only assume was Arrrgh.

  Finally Cage and his companion tumbled into the whale’s stomach.

  “What happened?” asked Cage.

  “Hold on.”

  Cage heard Arrrgh rustling around with something. Soon a flashlight shone around the vast felt belly.

  “Wow,” said the boy. He followed the beam from the light. It faded into darkness, never touching upon a surface.

  There was no sloshing stomach acid in the whale’s belly. There was felt. Black felt. Cage sat on it.

  Arrrgh played the light around. Only the wall where they were dumped out and the parts where they stood were visible.

  The boy asked, “So do we just walk out? I mean, there’s probably just a big hole at the end of the whale puppet. We’re not moving.”

  “Oh, we’re moving. We’re always moving.”

  “I think we should walk.”

  Arrrgh handed the flashlight to Cage. “Hold this.”

  Cage took the flashlight and shone it toward where he thought the end of the puppet must be. He heard Arrrgh rummaging around again.

  When he shone the light on Arrrgh, Cage found he was holding up two puppets.

  “Still have Cody, the flying squirrel. And this is his buddy—Tripp.” He wiggled a bulldog puppet. “Ruff!”

  “What?” Cage shone the light on the man’s face.

  Arrrgh squinted and ducked. He shook the bulldog puppet. “Rere, rake rhis,” he said.

  Cage said, “Dogs don’t really talk like that.” He took what the puppet-dog held in its mouth.

  Cody pushed a lighter at Cage.

  The boy held up a cigarette. “What’s this?”

  Arrrgh said, “It’s marijuana, valerian, catnip, ergot, hemlock, blue orchid, black poppy and tobacco. Smoke it.”

  “I’ve never smoked.” Cage looked at the cigarette. He dropped the lighter.

  “Oh, give me that!” Arrrgh snatched the flashlight from the boy and searched for the lighter. When he found it, he shook the puppets off his hands, nestled the flashlight between his shoulder and cheek, took the joint from the kid and lit it.

  The shrink took a hit and handed the doobie to Cage. “Just suck it in and hold it.” He bent and retrieved the puppets.

  Cage took the joint, sucked and coughed out a huge cloud. The beam of the flashlight was suddenly white with smoke.

  Arrrgh exhaled. “Hit it again.”

  The boy toked.

  After a few hits, he coughed less. He said, “What about the ash?”

  Arrrgh held out an ashtray.

  Cage ashed and took another hit. The blackness in the whale’s stomach began to lighten toward gray. Arrrgh put the ashtray down beside Cage.

  Suddenly the boy asked, “Hey, where do you keep getting all this stuff?”

  The man replied, “I, uh, brought it with me.”

  “In your pockets?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re only wearing a bikini bottom.”

  “Yes. Take another hit.”

  He did.

  Arrrgh sat beside the boy, resting his puppeted hands on his knees. “Cage, animals can’t really talk. Only puppet animals can. I’m going to help you to see that. I’m going to show you that whatever you thought you experienced was a form of hysteria. It was most likely brought about by your true abductors whom I’m sure did all sorts of sexually deviant things with you and animals, which of course we’ll speak about in great detail. For now, I want you to concentrate on the fact that all animals are good, except microbes but they hardly count as animals being so nasty and small and creepy and ugly and stupid. All animals are good. We’ll talk about that more. You’ll be here with me for a while. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about animals being good and nice and not talking. Smoke that.”

  Cage heard whale song through cotton and Arrrgh’s words above the muted music like the shamanistic truths of a dried up hermit in a desert cave. He began to believe.

  The bulldog and flying squirrel started to dance.

  The whale’s belly grew brighter and brighter.

  Cage took a hit and looked toward the end of the whale puppet. A light shone there. It became larger.

  Cage said, “The whale is going to poop us out.”

  The flying squirrel puppet said, “Hell yes, it is. That’s what whales do when they accidentally eat you. Because whales are nice. All animals are nice.”

  Tripp joined his friend, “Rup. Re’ll roop rus right rout.”

  “What?”

  “I said, all animals are nice.”

  The whale puppet pooped them out. They were dumped back into Arrrgh’s living room. The whale puppet lay on an ottoman.

  “Sorry,” it said in its dumb whale voice.

  “It’s okay,” said Cage, “you’re just a puppet.”

  Electric snakes curled in the air beside Arrrgh. He said, “And now I make you a man.”

  After a feast of fish tacos, pork and beans, fish pizza, barbeque chips, fish loaf, pita, goat cheese, fish lasagna and shots of tequila, Arrrgh got straight to work making Cage into a man.

  He handed him a tall drink.

  “What’s this?” Cage asked.

  “Vodka, ether, absinthe, birch-bark beer, diesel, corn syrup, LSD and coffee. Drink it.”

  Cage drank it.

  Months passed.

  Cage didn’t know that months were passing. The mancoction that Arrrgh fed the boy tipped him over the edge of reality. Time bent comfortably to his perception.

  The psychiatrist/mixologist/misogynist kept the boy in a dreamy, timeless state. Arrrgh fed Cage coconut jelly and nettle butter. He kept him hydrated. He molded his little boy mind into something more suitable for a man.
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br />   Through Arrrgh’s patented reprogramming process, Cage not only became a man, but he became a man afraid of no animal. This, in the end, is ridiculous.

  There are animals out there that you should be afraid of, even if they’ve got nothing so personally against you such as you having murdered a couple hundred of their fellow film-loving animals—not to mention movie stars, news crews, artists, writers, and the greatest production team in all of animal history, even if that production team was a bunch of outlaws who kidnapped you and tortured you and made a movie about it which is what made them so fucking great in the first place.

  So even if every animal in the world doesn’t hate you and want you dead, you should be afraid of animals like bad-ass monster sharks, alligators with swords, rabid snakes, crack-bears and poisonous anythings.

  Arrrgh made an animal-loving man out of Cage. With all the hallucinogenic drugs the shrink pumped into the kid while he hypnotized him to believe that all animals are cute little things that need to be pet or cuddled or kissed, Arrrgh was quite successful in helping the boy to forget the truth of what had happened to him.

  Cage soon found it a crazy idea that animals could talk. He laughed out loud—as opposed to laughing in silence—when Arrrgh talked about Aslan, Wilbur, Mr. Ed or Scooby.

  Eventually the man-maker/animal-lover/germaphobe allowed Cage to come down off his big weird drug trip. Arrrgh let his programming take hold while Cage spent a week in a beach bungalow with the shrink’s newest Real Doll and a few cans of pork and beans.

  After a ceremony under the New Moon involving two-man slam-dancing to their own beat-boxing, cutting the net surrounding the island and singing inviting songs for dolphins, crabs, octopi and iguanas but not for urchins or sharks because they’d come anyway, Arrrgh declared Cage cured. He gave him a certificate of manhood, a slap on the ass and saw him off the next morning as the boy sailed away on the Studio’s yacht.