The Night I Escaped From The Zoo : 1 / 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

It’s not every night that you escape from being put in a zoo, but this was no ordinary night. Not by any means. In fact, “not being put in the zoo” was only the beginning of my night.

Generally speaking, my life was going pretty well up to that point: I was a freshman at State with a football scholarship, the full ride. Sports commentators were already calling me “an up-and-coming talent” -- on national TV!

And, best of all… there was Mayda. She wasn’t just my girlfriend, she was the one. She didn’t know it yet, but I was going to marry her. We were perfect together. Or at least *I* thought so.

I know I shouldn’t blame Mayda for what happened that night, but -- well, honestly, I *do* blame her. If she wasn’t so pig-headed, if she didn’t always have to have her own way, if she ever cared about what *I* wanted, everything would have gone differently!

Tonight was a special night: our six-month anniversary. My plan for the perfect evening was (1) a nice steak dinner at The Ultimate Steakhouse, followed by (2) a romantic walk along the Riverway, and then (3) back to my place for some long, hot recreational sex. I’m in great shape. I’m a running back, so I’m strong, fast, and agile. Mayda plays soccer -- I think she said she’s a center midfielder, but she runs all over the field. She has a body to die for. She’s tall, has the hint of a six-pack, a pair of impressively round, firm breasts, a smooth, cute ass, and long shapely legs. When she’s on the field, she wears her dark brown hair in a long ponytail that almost reaches her waist. I love to watch her hair bounce as she flies after the soccer ball. Soccer itself, though... I don’t understand the game at all. I had to say “center midfielder” to myself over and over for weeks before I could remember the words. Nearly every time the referee blows the whistle, I have no idea why. The only way I can watch a game is if Mayda’s playing. She’s a knockout, and nobody moves the way she does. She can run for 90 minutes plus, and still have energy. So… needless to say (but I want to say it), the sex was very good.

If we’d stuck to my plan for the evening, we’d still be together. I’d be the man, she’d be the woman, and we’d go on to spend the rest of our lives together. Instead, everything turned inside out and upside down.

The first snag, though, I should have foreseen: Mayda was never, ever ready for a date. I don’t know why I thought tonight would be different. She was punctual for everything else in her life, but dates? Always at least a half hour late. Minimum. This time it was forty-five minutes before we left her apartment, and we ended up arriving at the steakhouse an hour later than I planned. As usual, while she dried her hair and chose her clothes and put on makeup, I wandered around her apartment like a moron. What else could I do? She periodically assured me that she was “ready” or “almost ready” or “only had to put on her shoes,” but (as usual) none of that was true. I’ve learned to not take what she says seriously, and to never ask for an estimated time of departure. There is nothing I can do to speed her up, and experience has taught me that asking or prodding actually slows her down. We’ve had two really fierce arguments about how long she takes to be ready, so I avoid the topic as if it were a bomb. There was no way to know how much time she’d need. The only signal that had any meaning was when she’d walk to her door.

When at last, she emerged from her bedroom, hanging her left earring on her ear, I was fiddling with a glass turkey. She had this figurine on her kitchen counter: a turkey, made of orange glass. It was about the size of a football.

“Oh, do you like that?” she asked. “It’s super cute, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It weighs a ton. What’s it for?”

“It’s decoration!” she said with a laugh. “For Thanksgiving, obviously.”

“Thanksgiving is what… six months away?”

“I saw it and I couldn’t resist it.”

I hit the second snag right there, but I didn’t know it at the time. It suddenly struck me that this was the first time Mayda had ever bought something for her apartment that wasn’t 100% functional. She called the turkey decoration! Nothing else in the apartment was decorative. Her place was about as personal as a hotel room.

Of course, I was overthinking it. I was making a big something out of a little nothing. I took the purchase of the glass turkey as a fundamental change, when it was nothing but a whim. I took it to be the first indication she had started nesting: settling in and making a home. The thought buoyed me up, and gave me even more hope for our life together.

Mayda grabbed her bag and headed for the door. When she opened it, a current of air fluttered the curtain of the window behind me. She’d left her window open! “Hey!” I called to her, “Do you want me to close that window?”

“Naw,” she replied. “I have to change the air. It seems kind of musty in here.”

I gave a couple of sniffs and told her that the air seemed fine to me.

“Why do you care?” she asked, smiling. “Just leave it.”

“Somebody could climb in that window,” I told her. “It’s not safe.”

She scoffed and left the apartment. I followed her out the door into the hallway. Before she shut the door she started digging in her bag. “I made a spare key. I need to hide it in the hall someplace.”

“That’s not safe, either!” I told her. “Can’t you just call your super if you forget your key?”

Without answering me, she took a paperclip from her bag, unbent it to an S-shape, hooked the key to one end, and hung the paperclip behind a light fixture next to her door. “See? Now it’s hidden. The paperclip is a little handle so I can get it out.” To demonstrate, she used her fingernail to lift the key from its hiding place. Then she put it back again, smiling triumphantly.

“It isn’t safe,” I repeated. “Anyone could take that key and let themself in.”

She scoffed again, and walked to the exit stairwell.

I don’t know whether this is the third snag, or still the first, but -- because Mayda had taken so long to get ready, we couldn’t get a table at The Ultimate. They don’t take reservations, which I guess doesn’t matter because we wouldn’t have made it anyway, but if we’d arrived at 7, as I planned, we could have gotten a nice table by the window. Instead, now that it was 8 o’clock, there was already a waiting list. They told me they could seat us in an hour, if we wanted to wait.

I managed to hide my irritation and annoyance, but Mayda wasn’t disappointed at all. In fact, she was happy about it: “We can try Ebbidles!” she exclaimed. “It’s right across the street! I’ve wanted to go there forever! And look! They have plenty of tables!” So that’s where we went.

It turned out to be a vegan restaurant, so goodbye to the steak I was expecting.

“You don’t need to eat so much meat,” she told me.

“I’m a football player,” I told her. “I need those dense, yet tender, units of protein and fat.”

“Tom Brady is a vegan, you know,” Mayda told me. “And look at him!”

“I don’t want to look at him,” I told her. “I can’t stand that guy.”

After a meal of what seemed like hay and nettles, washed down with beet juice flavored with dirt, I suggested the (romantic) walk by the river. As if she hadn’t heard, Mayda said, “You know what I’d love to do now? You know what would be REALLY great? We could drive out to the desert! There’s this spot I know where we can look at the night sky. It’s really clear tonight, and once we get away from the city lights, the sky will be full of stars.” She smiled at me. “We’ll be far from civilization. We can spread out a blanket and have some fun... out in nature, under the moon and stars..”

That wasn’t the fourth snag, but it was well on the way to it. I don’t like nature, but I do like fun, so I went along with her idea. “How long will it take to get there?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Forty minutes, tops.” Actually, that didn’t sound bad. It would give us time to talk.

"Fine," I agreed. "My pickup's just a couple blocks from here."

Once we left town, and the lights and buildings were disappearing behind us, I opened my mouth to speak, but Mayda started talking first. “I’m glad we can do this,” she said. “Tonight’s a special night, and I want to celebrate with you.”

“Yes, I know it’s a special night,” I replied with a smile.

“You know?” she asked, in a surprised voice. “How could you possibly know? Did my mother tell you?”

“Your mother? What does your mother have to do with it? It’s our anniversary!” Did Mayda really not remember?

“Anniversary?” She was genuinely puzzled.

“Six-month anniversary of when we started seeing each other!”

“Ohhh! Right. Is that today?”

Obviously, she hadn’t remembered.

A little irritated, I asked, “If it’s not our anniversary that makes tonight special, what is it?”

“Okay,” she said. Her face was shining with excitement. “I was going to tell you later, after we made love, but I guess I can tell you now. I might EXPLODE if I don’t tell you. I’m going to play for Barcelona!”

“Barcelona, Spain?”

“Yes!”

“Barcelona, Spain,” I repeated.

“Do you know another Barcelona?”

“Playing soccer?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to get on a European team for a while now, and what I’ve done so far at State was enough to impress a couple of teams to invite me. Can you believe that?”

I hardly knew what to think. I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t find any words, except to ask when she’d go.

“I’m leaving at the end of the month! Isn’t it exciting?”

“You’re dropping out?”

“I’m leaving college, yes. But college was never my dream. It was just a place to play soccer. Now I can play for real, professionally. So fuck college! I’m going to Spain! I’m going to see Europe!”

My jaw dropped. I pulled over to the side of the road and turned the car off. “But what about us?” I demanded.

“What about us?” she asked. “It’s not like we’re getting married or anything. I mean, I like you -- I like you a lot -- but I *never* led you to think I wanted anything more. We’ve only been seeing each other for a couple of months--”

“SIX months!”

“Okay, six months. Honestly, though, I thought you’d be happy for me. If an NFL team wanted you, I’d be happy for you.”

“It’s not the same!” I shouted.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re supposed to be together. We belong together!”

She withdrew to the far side of her seat and gave me a wary look. In a quiet, careful tone, as if walking on eggshells, she said, “Ross, we don’t belong together. I’m sorry. We don’t. I want change, adventure, uncertainty, change -- okay, I said ‘change’ already -- but any way, I’m pretty sure you want exactly the opposite. You want solid, stable--” She stopped herself, but I knew the next word was going to be stuck.

“Is soccer really that important to you?” I demanded.

“No, honestly, it’s not,” she said. “I love soccer, but mostly it’s a way out. Like right now: it’s taking me to Spain! Ross, I need to get away from here. I need a bigger life.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “College is just for soccer, and soccer is just to get away from here? So what is Barcelona?”

“Barcelona is Barcelona. It’s far away and exotic. It’s the doorway to a different kind of life.”

“Are you planning on coming back?”

“I don’t know. I have to see where life takes me. This is the first time I can take a big, bold step, so I’m taking it. I would kick myself forever after if I let a chance like this slip by.”

We argued back and forth. Well, really, *I* argued. She was calm, and she tried to calm me down. She pointed out that she’d never misled me, or made me any promises. “Every time you talked about the future, I always pressed on the brakes. Haven’t I?”

At last, I played my clever, psychological card. I challenged her: “Okay. Then tell me this: What about that glass turkey? Are you taking that to Barcelona with you?”

She looked at me like I was completely crazy. “No, of course not. I’m going to leave it at my parents’ house. Why?”

“I think you bought that glass turkey because you’re nesting!”

Her eyes popped wide open in disbelief. After that, both of us really went at it, hammer and tongs. We revisited our entire history -- which, as it turned out, was a history of misunderstandings. Apparently our relationship was “built” (if I can use that word) on a series of events that meant one thing to me, and something entirely different to her. Over and over, it seems, I saw glowing significance in things that she found nice, but unremarkable.

I have no idea how long it took for us to get to the end of all that, but eventually we both ran out of things to say. After six months of seeing each other, we finally arrived at a moment when -- for the first and only time -- we really understood each other. In the awkward silence that followed, I reached for the ignition, to turn my car back on. There was nothing else to do but bring her home. But my hand never touched the key. In that instant, while my hand was still rising, an intense bright-white spotlight hit the car. I put my hands up to shield my eyes. “What the hell?”

“Where’s it coming from?” Mayda asked. “I don’t hear a helicopter.”

“Me neither,” I said, and everything went black.

 

---

 

I awoke in a dimly lit room. There was a nebulous glow above me. If there was a ceiling beyond, it was too far off to see. The glow grew lighter by slow degrees. I was naked, and lying on a slab of smooth slate. I turned my head to the left. I could see the wall, but it was distant, and the room empty. I turned my head to the right and saw Mayda lying naked on a slab, like me. There was a gap of about six feet between us. Her eyes were closed. I tried to sit up, but the only part of me that moved was my head and neck.

“Mayda,” I called. “Mayda! Can you hear me?” Her eyes opened, and she quickly looked around her.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Why can’t I move?”

“Okay,” I said. “Put it all together -- the light, losing consciousness, waking like this -- I know it sounds crazy, but I think we were abducted by aliens.”

“Huh,” Mayda replied. “For real?” She sounded more interested than afraid. As she scanned the room, I looked her over. I’d seen her naked plenty of times, but never from this angle. She looked spectacular. I had a view of her entire left profile, from her long, sculpted legs, to the soft curve of her ass resting on the table, up her flat stomach to her round, perfect breasts. And of course her face was beautiful as well. “I can only move my head,” I told her.

“Yeah, me too,” she replied, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was still looking around the room. “Do you think they’ve done the anal probe yet?” she joked. “I’d hate to have missed it.”

“How can you joke at a time like this?” I asked her. “We’ve got to find a way out of here!”

“Don’t panic,” she replied. “They aren’t going to hurt us; we’re not cows.” Then she laughed! “Maybe they’ll draw crop circles in our hair.” She giggled at her own joke.

The aliens entered at that point. One of them came and stood between us, so that he (I presume he was a he) could look into our faces. He resembled Mr Toad from the old David Petersen illustrations for The Wind in the Willows, except that our Mr Toad was wearing full body armor. Four of his cohort remained by the door.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” he said.

“Why did you knock us out?” I demanded. Mr Toad seemed taken aback by the question.

“We needed to examine you,” he replied, as if the answer were obvious. “We had to make sure you were in good health, without any physical anomalies.”

“Why did you need to know that?”

Again, he seemed surprised by the question. He answered in the tone of an adult explaining something simple to a slow child. “We’re going to take you to one of our planets. We have a lovely environment set up where you can live. I’m sure you’ll like it. We already have many human specimens-- Oh, that reminds me!”

He reached out his hand, and one of the other aliens gave him a small box that resembled a garage-door opener. He pointed it at Mayda and pressed the button. Nothing happened. Then he pointed it at me and pressed the same button.

I gasped. My back lurched. My penis hardened into a fierce erection. It was so hard it almost hurt. A wave of perspiration bathed my entire body, and my heart began to pound. I felt so sexually stimulated, I thought I’d explode in a nuclear orgasm. I heard myself groaning. I tensed all over. I writhed and twisted, my body arched so it rested only on my heels and the back of my head. God, I was so close… another moment and-- Then, before I ejaculated into the air, Mr Toad let go of the button. I went limp instantly. My body relaxed so abruptly, it landed with a loud slap! against the table. “Sweet Jesus!” I gasped, when I was able to speak. “Why did you do that?” I wanted to ask Why did you stop? but it would have been too embarrassing. I was still trembling and breathing unevenly and my voice was shaky.

Mayda’s eyes were saucers, but her lips showed a half-smile of amusement and interest.

Mr Toad held up the garage-door opener as if it were one of the seven wonders. With a touch of pride he explained, “This amazing device enables us to distinguish human males from human females.”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “You can’t just tell by looking?”

“Obviously not!” He sounded indignant. Mayda giggled.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to go to your planet. I don’t want to live in your environment with your other specimens. Especially if it smells anything like this spaceship. I just want to get the hell out of here. Now.”

Mr Toad appeared shocked and confused. He was at a loss for words, as if my attitude was utterly unexpected and beyond comprehension.

“I’ll go,” Mayda said. I shot her a look. She held the look, and gazing straight into my eyes, she repeated it: “I’ll go to your planet. I’d love to go. I’m ready now.”

Mr Toad looked back and forth several times between the two of us.

“Let him stay here,” Mayda said. “Take me with you. I want to go.”

“Don’t do this because you’re angry with me,” I told her.

“I’m not angry with you. This isn’t about you. I want to go to their planet.”

“Don’t sacrifice yourself for me,” I said. “If it has to be one of us, I’ll go.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “It’s not a sacrifice! I’m going. I don’t care what you do, but I’m going. Here is the chance to see another planet; to see more of the universe! I can’t believe you don’t WANT to go.”

“Of course I don’t want to go! This is my home! This is your home, too!”

She shook her head.

“Hmm,” Mr Toad mused. “We have a conundrum. The reason we’ve come all this way is that recently we were embarrassed to discover that all of the human specimens we’ve collected so far are female. Of course, we had no way to tell, but there we are. We were specifically tasked, first, with developing this device -- so that we can tell the difference -- and second, to bring home a number of male specimens. With that in mind, we’d have no compunction in leaving you behind.” He addressed that to Mayda. To me, he said, “You, as we’ve determined, are a male of the species, so we must take you with us. It’s not as though we have a choice in the matter.”

“Of course you have a choice in the matter! There’s a whole planet full of men here! Pick somebody else! Take out an ad on Craigslist, for Christ sake! I DON’T WANT TO GO!”

Now, the next thing Mayda said was the last snag. This one was the atomic bomb of snags. It would be hard to find a bigger snag than this. It was the last thing I ever heard Mayda say. I’m sure she was joking -- I’m pretty sure she was joking -- but there are some places and times that you should NEVER make a joke.

What she said was, “Too bad you can’t just, like, swap our brains, you know? That would be a win-win-win, right?” And again, she laughed! I glared at her. She smiled. Laughing, she stuck out her tongue at me. She was only teasing, I’m sure.

Then everything went black.

The next thing I knew, I was standing, naked, with Mayda’s breasts hanging off my chest. I looked down at myself and was shocked to discover that I *was* Mayda! I mean, I was me, Ross, but in Mayda’s body. They’d actually done the damn brain swap!

“What did you do to me?” I shouted in Mayda’s voice.

Mr Toad sighed in exasperation. “You are never happy, are you. You’ve done nothing but complain the entire time you’ve been here! I’m glad that we’re leaving you behind. What did we do? Obviously, we’ve done the body swap, exactly as you suggested. Your companion now has the male body, and you have the female one. He will go; you will stay.” He hesitated for a moment, and speaking to himself said, “Better be sure, though, before we let you go.” He picked up the garage-door opener from a table nearby and aimed it at me. I braced myself, and he pushed the button. This time, nothing happened. Visibly relieved, Mr Toad said, “Good, good. It’s important to be sure.”

“But -- but -- I don’t want her body!” I told him.

“What difference does it make?” he asked. “You look the same as before! It’s a well known fact that humans can’t tell each other apart.”

“Of course we can tell!” I shouted. “Believe me, we can tell!”

“I find that difficult to believe,” he replied. “Now: we’re going to leave you in the exact same spot where we picked you up. I’m sure you’ll find a way to complain about that, but we’re done trying to accommodate your every whim. Ready?”

“No, no!” I told him. “Not yet! I need my clothes... and my personal belongings.”

He huffed impatiently, as if I were an unreasonable child, but he left the room and returned a moment later carrying a tray, which he set in front of me. “Pick up whatever you need,” he instructed. “We will send you down in five seconds.”

“But these aren’t MY clothes!” I protested. “I mean these are mine, Ross’ clothes, but I need Mayda’s things!” I grabbed my flannel shirt and lifted it to see if any of Mayda’s things were underneath. They weren’t.

“You’re not making any sense. They are all the same,” Mr Toad replied in a weary voice. “Two seconds.”

“No, they aren’t the same at all!”

“Goodbye, you tiresome creature,” said Mr Toad, and in a moment I found myself in Mayda’s body, standing alone in a spotlight on the side of a country road, stark naked, clutching the flannel shirt I was wearing when I was Ross.

“You couldn’t even leave my truck?” I shouted, and the spotlight went out.