Chapter Text
The teacher took a headcount. He couldn’t help but measure up this one to Miss Beard.
His former teacher had pretty blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. His stomach clenched uncomfortably, eye. This new one had red fiery curly hair.
Miss Beard wore dresses and heels. This one wore open-toed sandals and colorful skirts that dragged against her ankles.
Miss Beard had one eye after Randy. This one still had two.
Mom held his hand tightly in her sweaty palm as she dragged Randy behind the others. She volunteered to chaperone again. Mom was scared he’d have another fit.
“I need to keep you safe, honey,” she’d say.
Randy thought she really meant, ‘to keep everyone else safe.’ He glanced at the alligator enclosure briefly as they passed. The animals too. He was dangerous to them all. Even the big ones with teeth.
Their guide took them around the little zoo, the other teacher joined in, but he was so tired of walking and looking. He tried to be grateful for both of his eyes, he really did, but all he could see was blood. His mom babbled about the animals, her pale orange lips were saying a bunch of nothing. Randy was tired of tripping over his feet when his mother’s strides got too wide.
He ate his lunch with his mother at a far away picnic table. Nobody wanted to sit with him. The other kids traded snacks from their brown lunch bags. He ate the apple sauce he didn’t like, and the sandwich that made his stomach hurt.
He felt like one of her little designer handbags. Only not as pretty.
The last stop was the giraffe enclosure. The biggest one. Their necks reached up so high he could see them from the very back. His classmates all rushed forward, sticking their heads right up against the cold bars. Even his mother got excited. She went too fast, strode too far, and he hit the concrete with a loud smack, scraping both his knees.
He looked down at the blood and rolled skin, like it was one of those peelable cheese sticks. His mother gasped and picked him up, comforting him even though he wasn’t crying. She rubbed his back, cooing and rocking him.
“Oh honey, be careful!” She carried him to an isolated corner and set him down. “Now you stay here, okay? Do you understand? Do not move.”
Randy nodded. It stung, but it was fine. He didn’t want help. He really just wanted to go home. His mother rushed off to fetch someone, or maybe a first aid kit.
The giraffes were slow-moving, lazy, and reaching with their long necks to grab bunches of leaves from the tree. A mother giraffe leant down to nudge her baby. The long purple tongue caressed its little head. He looked away.
There was someone in the enclosure. A man, clouded in the only patch of shadow. His head was down, a cap pulled low over his eyes. He carried a large shovel and a bucket. Randy watched him for a while. He was inside the enclosure with the giraffes, slow-moving and lazy, almost like he was one of them.
Then, the man’s head lifted, and his eyes scanned the crowd of children before falling on him. His grip tightened on the shovel and bucket as his eyes flicked over to the loud, squealing group of kids, and then to him, alone.
The man disappeared around the corner. Randy sighed and turned, leaning against the bars. Maybe the first kid to ever look away from the enclosures.
“You lost, kid?”
Randy backed away from the bars. He turned and looked up. It was the man who moved like a giraffe. He shouldn’t get too close. He didn’t want anything bad to happen.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the giraffe-man said gruffly and backed up. His tone was a bit rough and animal-like. Nothing like the soothing cadence of Miss Beard and the other teacher.
“I’m not scared,” Randy replied with an even tone of voice in an attempt to match his. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
The man tilted his head curiously, like maybe he was speaking another language. Then his eyes caught the blood staining the scrapes on his legs.
“Looks like you’re the one that’s hurt.” He jutted his chin to the mess. The human giraffe’s eyes turned hard and steely for a moment.
Randy looked down at himself. It was okay if it was him. Not this stranger though. Not anyone.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Randy replied. “Do you work here, sir?”
The man snorted. “What gave it away?”
“You’re inside with the giraffes,” he pointed out.
“Maybe I’m a giraffe.”
Randy cracked a small smile. He thought so too. This man was funny.
“Wait there, kid.” The man came outside after a moment, and was carrying a little white case with a red cross on it. “Even though I’m just the shit-scooper, I still gotta take first aid classes to work here. Ain’t that bullshit?”
Randy didn’t know whether it was or not. He leaned against the gate once more, stuffing his tiny fists in his pockets, so he wouldn’t get any ideas to be bad.
“I won’t touch you if you don’t want help,” the man said. Randy could see a little bit of worry in his eyes, like how Randy looked when he was afraid to hurt someone. “I can go get someone else.”
Randy shook his head. He’d rather the man bandage his knees than his mother or his teacher, who might find him troublesome. At least this was sort-of his job. Even if he thought it was bullcrap. “It’s okay.”
The man kneeled down in front of him and put on some medical gloves. Up close, he smelled like trees, dirt, and smoke. Randy found it soothing. Unlike the sharp perfume his mom wore. The one that made his head hurt.
The man’s eyes darted up to look at him briefly, then back down. He was crouched so low to the ground, purposefully making himself smaller than he was. “Lift your knee up,” he wiped the area with a cleansing wipe, then sprayed some antibiotic on the wound. Randy didn’t flinch or cry or move. He balanced on one leg, and then the other.
“Superheroes or princesses?”
Randy peeked at the options of bandaids. There was spiderman, or Cinderella. He always thought the cat, Lucifer he was called, was funny, so he pointed at the princess.
He thought the man might scold him for it, a girly choice, but he didn’t comment. He covered his knee in the princess bandaid, and repeated the same on the other side. When he was done, he slipped the gloves off and closed the case. “Sorry, don’t got any candy for you.”
Randy shrugged.
“You bored of the giraffes?”
As if finally noticing them, he looked at the towering creatures. With the man beside him, he felt a little less of a danger. The man seemed like he would stop him if he did. He was responsible and strong, trained in first aid.
“I like them,” he said quietly.
“Yeah?” The worker looked up too.
“Mhm.”
They watched in companionable silence from behind the gates for a moment. “Come on, kid. I’ll show you something.”
Randy looked at the 38th bar, where his mom told him to wait. She was only doing that so he wouldn’t get into trouble, but if someone was watching him, like this employee who was trained in lots of bullcrap, he would be fine. He followed the man to a locked gate.
“By the way, after this, if anyone tells you to follow them somewhere–I don’t care who it is–you get the hell out of dodge, hear me?”
“Dodge?” Randy asked.
“It means run away. Back to your mommy…or whoever the fuck.”
“Okay,” he shrugged.
The man led him behind the gate, through a concrete hallway, and then through a tall doorway. They emerged into the enclosure. He was inside. He was a giraffe too now.
“I won’t hurt them?” He wondered, as he stood there. The man lifted an eyebrow.
“You’re tiny, what the hell d’ya think you’re gonna do?”
Randy didn’t know. Miss Beard seemed as tall as a giraffe once too, but he hurt her.
“Here.” Before he could react, the man reached down and hauled him up high. He squeaked as the man settled him on his shoulders.
“Wait!”
The man ignored him and walked closer to one of the female giraffes. The one with the baby. Even sitting on the man’s shoulders, he was so small. He was powerless. But he knew what happened when he felt that way. “Please, I don’t want it to get hurt!”
The giraffe noticed his protesting yells. It sniffed his hair, his jacket, and then a powerful tongue stuck out and licked him across the face. He gasped in surprise and laughed. The tongue was so powerful it nearly pushed him off the man’s shoulders, but the strong hands merely held tighter to his legs, right over the princess bandaids. He could hear the man laughing from below him too. He watched as the giraffe turned away and walked off, its glorious large, heavy body was beautiful. It wasn't lazy at all, he thought. Just big and powerful.
“That one’s name is Carter. She weighs 2,000 pounds. You can’t hurt her even if you tried.”
“I can’t?” he questioned. The eraser seemed harmless at first. He used his own tongue to lick inside his mouth, feeling how weak it seemed in comparison to the giraffe’s. Maybe the man, the one who knew the giraffes best, was right.
He looked down, just as the man looked up. From up close he could read the name tag on his shirt. Benson.
“Nope. You’re harmless, kid.”
Harmless?
A terrified shriek carried over the entire zoo. His heart dropped as he recognized it. His mother was pointing at him in the enclosure and causing a panic. She was clutching a handful of bandaids in her hand.
“Well, looks like mommy found you. Now, what’d I tell you about strangers?”
“Get the hell out of dodge,” he said almost proudly, though he did hesitate a bit on that one word.
Benson swooped him down back to his feet and steered him by the head back the way they came. “Then ‘git.”
Benson walked him back to the gate and let him out. He gave a great big, charming smile to his mom. “I didn’t mean to cause a panic. The kid was hurt and I was trying to cheer him up.”
His mom was fretting over him now, completely ignoring Benson. She took out a wet wipe from her purse and wiped his face off where the giraffe’s slobber dried. Randy never took his eyes off of the dark gaze that watched them. That look was different from the animals inside. Where they all radiated a sense of calmness and peace, Benson didn’t. He was like a predator living with the prey. He was watching a mother fret over her baby, unaware of the danger watching her. Unaware of the danger watching him back.
“Let’s go Randy.” She took his hand and he stumbled off after her.
____
Whenever Randy became afraid of himself, he’d think of the strength of the giraffes. His nightmares got worse, but sometimes, he’d have nice dreams of the time he sat on the zookeeper’s shoulders in the giraffe enclosure. Carter licked his face. The sun shone down on them both as he laughed at his powerlessness.
He was 9 years old now, but still couldn’t fit in. His 8 year old peers all knew what he did. They said he was a killer. That Miss Beard didn’t go on leave, but was actually dead. He tuned them out, but asked his mom if that was true after she came home from work.
“It’s been two years, Randy,” she’d say with a sigh. And he’d stop asking or saying her name. Instead, he thought hard about it. That and the nice zookeeper named Benson.
The vice principal, Mr. Sheppard, took him aside one day and asked him to follow him somewhere to talk about Miss Beard. He really wanted to go, just to see if she was really dead or not but he remembered Benson’s words clearly.
Get the hell out of dodge. That’s what Benson said. So Randy ran away.
He realized he trusted the man who worked at the zoo a lot more than anybody else. Even his own mother.
It was the first time anybody had ever seen him. Was the zookeeper also afraid of hurting people? Is that why he knew the giraffes couldn’t be hurt? Or did he know what it felt like to be hurt? Maybe both.
When he was 14, his mother signed him up to be a chaperone for his sister’s second grade zoo trip. He was excited. He wanted to see the giraffes again. He wanted to know if the man was still there.
____
Benson finished his smoke break. The zoo was going to close next year. He’d have to find another job. He had to admit, he grew to like the company of animals. It was a hell of a lot better than the company of humans. Animals had more humanity, ironically.
Another second grade class was touring the area. A pain in the ass. He hated working on those days. High-pitched squealing of happy children, untraumatized by the world. At least this would be the last one.
He climbed the ranks over the years. At least as much as an uneducated dropout could climb. He wasn’t patient enough to give tours, but he was responsible enough to feed the animals, monitor their health, and keep their enclosures clean. He was officially promoted to handler last month. A bunch of good that’d do him. He was tempted to just cover himself in pig’s blood and dangle over the alligators, like an even more fucked up version of Carrie.
He was transporting a few of their monkeys into crates to be shipped off to their new home at fuckknowswhere. He made sure the little guys were calm, then locked them up, strode back to the gate, and headed to check on the giraffes.
The second graders were making a fuss. He ignored them dutifully and picked up the clipboard hanging on the inside of the gate. He checked off a few things, then went to hang it back up when out of his peripheral vision, he saw someone staring. He looked over, thinking it was another one of those girls who asked for his number last week. No, it was a teenage boy this time. He turned away. Probably just some pathetic motherfucker who got roped into chaperoning.
Benson held the infrared, steadily taking the temperatures of each giraffe. These guys were going to need to update their vaccines before transport to the new zoo. Carter had died months ago from an illness that his supervisor caught too late. Even though Benson insisted she wasn’t well. Maybe that’s why he was given the bastard’s job. Now he was making sure none of the others would get the same illness.
Carter’s baby was all grown up. At least a part of her still lived on in some way. As he watched them from the shade, he noticed the same teenager watching him. What the hell was his problem? He was holding a little girl’s hand and half-heartedly listening as she pointed at the giant beasts above. Something about the gaze on him was familiar. It was rare that anybody ever looked at him, rather than the giraffes. Except…
He did the mental math. Surely, that couldn’t be…
The kid smiled hesitantly and his hand gripped that same bar his mom left him at 6 years ago. He made his way over. This time, the kid didn’t step back.
“Hi,” the teenager said, his face a little pink from the heat. “It’s um—I don’t know if you remember me—”
Benson crossed his arms. This kid. The same one he put on his shoulders. The same one Carter licked. His overprotective mom had called him Randy like it was a cuss word. “Randy: prefers princess bandaids,” he greeted.
The boy blushed for real this time, the tips of his ears grew red. “You remember that…”
“Couldn’t forget it.” He finally gave a polite nod. “Good to see you.”
The boy brightened. “You too! I didn’t know if you’d be here.”
A chorus of squealing children broke out at one of the friendly giraffes that leant down to look at them.
The conversation lagged then. “Uh, this your…” Benson motioned to the little girl that was pulling wildly at the kid’s hand.
“My sister, Hailey.”
Hailey ignored them both in favor of jumping up and attempting to reach the giraffes.
“Hailey and Randy, huh?” Benson asked, leaning against the bars. The teen’s fingers tensed, almost flinching away. “Your mom’s a creative one.”
Randy shrugged, embarrassed. “And you’re…?” He gripped tighter to the bar, in a nervous sort of way.
“Benson.”
“Right. Benson,” Randy said his name almost reverently. It seemed almost practiced, like he said it often. “Um, I was looking for Carter,” Randy said. His eyes looked up at the bright blue sky in search of that spotted head.
“She died a few months ago.” He probably could’ve led up to that better, but oh well. His people skills could use some work.
“Oh…” Randy’s eyes grew wide and misty. “It’s just…I was um…”
Hailey pulled away from his hand and ran to her classmates to join them. He was about to go after her. “Let her be,” Benson said.
Randy and Benson watched Hailey jump up and down with her classmates, fitting in perfectly.
“Yeah. Uh. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Randy rubbed his eyes. “I was really hoping to see her.”
“You’re good,” Benson comforted. “I’ve got lots of pictures of her. If you want them.”
“Yes!” The kid fumbled forward, then backed up, then stepped forward again. Benson wondered if he was that awkward at his age. Nah, no way.
“One second.” Benson reached over and tore off a corner of the time sheet to write down his email. He slid it through the bars toward the delicate, shaking hands.
Randy smiled. “Thank you, Benson.”
“Don’t mention it. At least Carter’s baby is still here. Though not exactly a baby anymore, is he?”
They turned to look at the large male that blocked out the sun. Randy smiled wistfully. “He looks just like Carter.”
“Yup, got the spots, the neck, n’ everything,” Benson said a little sarcastically. He liked teasing the boy. It was nice seeing a teenager that wasn’t completely full of angst and attitude for once.
“Four legs too. That’s rare,” Randy played along. They laughed quietly together.
Benson reached his arm through the bars and patted the kid’s shoulder. “Well, I gotta get back to work. See you around Randy.”
“Bye Benson,” he said quietly.
Benson gave him a nod and went back inside. He had the insane urge to go back in time and relive that memory. The terrified boy, who relaxed at Carter’s gentle albeit forceful greeting. The only child who was not afraid of something so strong, but rather relieved. Strange. Scared to hurt anyone, but with the softness of princess bandaids on his own wounds. He was curious about what kind of person he was growing up to be.