Fat Bear Week Day 2 had strong contestants all around.
I voted for Divot (Bear 854), who unfortunately didn't make it into the next round. Divot's such a gorgeous bear, I was captivated and sobered by the story explore.org decided to share about her neck being caught/injured by a wire trap snare. National Parks are a great approach to conservation, but we all need to remember that animals don't know when these parks start or end, and be sure our conservation practices aren't just contained to the parks.
The second bear I voted for during Wednesday's voting, and my personal favorite for champion of 2022. Bear 747 is just massive, the website says he is one of the largest brown bears on Earth and is estimated to be around 1400 lbs (636 kg). I'm betting this bear is one I'll draw again this week...
Fat Bear Week is here - the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
This week I'm hoping to do some quick and easy sketches of all the bears I vote for. Some may show up multiple times. At least I hope so!
The first bear for Wednesday's match up was the sweet and clever bear 164. Visit https://explore.org/meet-the-bears to read about the contenders this year!
@beatrice-mcalister’s bard, Eldridge. He’s an earth genasi, an adept boomerang fighter, and he tries his best. Even if it did take him almost an entire fight to climb up a rubble heap.
I’m playing d&d for the first time and right now I have One True Love and it’s my half-orc barbarian/druid multi-class character. She’s bad at knitting and likes to smack enemies with her quarterstaff.
This horror short is inspired by the beautiful instrumental piece by Joep Beving (listen here:Â https://open.spotify.com/track/0GcVVA1fv7PRB5lswrFPx9?si=6ee0816bdfd64725)
If you’d like to see art that goes with the piece, go here: https://quails-egg.tumblr.com/post/667328532187332608/that-night-while-i-lie-in-bed-i-hear-the-noiseÂ
2,548 words
“Remember to cover the zoetrope when you’ve used it. Especially after dark,” reads the letter from my grandfather, his handwriting all spindly and uneven. “Or better yet: don’t use the zoetrope at all.” This last part is underlined fiercely, the pencil having been pressed so hard to the paper that it made an impression.
My grandfather lived a sparse and dust-covered life, so when they read the Will there wasn’t much left besides the house, an attic of bric-a-brac, a closet of faded pictures and moth-eaten clothes, and the zoetrope.Â
All of this was left to me, there weren’t any other children or grandchildren to leave it to after all. Just me and my mother, who paled when I asked if she’d like to move into the house instead or if she wanted the zoetrope. It was in the attic with the rest, covered in a deep purple satin fabric worn thin and faded with sun bleach and age.Â
I read the letter to my mother over a video call, in the cold and quiet evening in the kitchen. She shakes her head and covers her mouth with white knuckles. “I wish you would sell that place, Hosea.”Â
I sigh, feeling pulled thin by the beginning of the same conversation we’d been having for weeks now. “Mom, I would never be able to afford a house. Even after selling this one.”Â
It is a ramshackle house, in need of repair after repair which gets added to my growing list of things to do and buy and fix and paint. But it’s a house I own, and one that at least is familiar and has some moldy nostalgia hidden in some of the kitchen drawers from when my grandmother was alive and the house was actually homey.Â
“Just… be safe.”Â
I promise my mother I will and tell her I love her and then I’m alone and my curiosity lingers. I head up to the attic, clutching a beer that sat untouched during the conversation, the condensation now dripping off the bottom of the can.Â
I’d never seen a zoetrope before. When I read it in the Will I had paused, drawing out my phone and quickly typing “zoetrope?” into the search engine. The one my grandfather had is large standing five feet tall - I barely have to bend to peer in. Its metal cylinder, dulled with age, is squat and wide and it stands on top of a wooden stand. The stand is ornate like it belongs with a fancy sort of floor lamp. In the cylinder are slits cut into it, spaced out evenly and each about as wide as an eye and as long as a finger.Â
I bend to look into one of these slits, one hand holding my beer and the other reaching for the wooden handle, stained a rich and deep brown. I turn it and the zoetrope begins to move.
When I see the scene inside my brow furrows at its strangeness.Â
Inside the drum is a scene set in the rain, painted with muted colors on a long strip of paper that spans the inner side of the drum.
The rain falls, heavy underneath the dark clouds spun at the top of the paper. In the rain, creatures are caught in a chase. A bird flapping its wings above a rabbit or a hare which bounds forwards in great leaps. At first I think it’s cute, a little woodland rainy scene of a bird and a rabbit in the grass, trees in the background and a daisy here and there.
But then as the zoetrope turns I see a third creature appear, as if out of nowhere. It's dark and skeletal, running after the rabbit on four spindle legs and long fingers. There’s a mane around its neck and for a moment I think it’s a lion, but no. The shape is all wrong, I’m not entirely sure what it is and the longer I look, the harder it is to see.
I shake my head and step back, a strange feeling falling over me. I can understand now why my mother didn’t want the zoetrope.Â
My beer is still almost full when I shut the door to the attic behind me, and when I pour it down the drain I find myself glancing over my shoulder into the rooms behind me.
***
I head to the attic with a box of things from my old apartment, not sure where to put the items other than storage for the time being. When I cross the threshold, shoving the squeaky door open (mental note to fix the hinges… mental note to pick up WD-40 at the store), and my feet hesitate. The zoetrope sits uncovered, how I left it last evening, the satin crumbled on the ground in a way that feels irreverent to me. I put the box down, sliding it across the floor to thump against the wall. Then I bend to retrieve the satin, a small chill running up my spine as I think about the note from my grandfather.Â
“Especially after dark…”
I shake out the satin with a scoff, sending dust motes flying, and then pull back to toss it over the zoetrope when I pause. The cylinder has slowly begun to move, I think at first it was sent moving by the wind from the satin as I shook it out but that’s absurd - the satin is light, the air from it was easy, and the zoetrope’s cylinder is a heavy metal, glinting copper in the early afternoon.Â
This initial thought is refuted even further as the cylinder picks up speed, increasing it’s turn. I reach for the handle to stop it, but the handle isn’t turning - stuck in my place like my feet feel like they are to the floor. I grip it, a sick pit in my stomach growing. I can’t help but bend down, peering between the slits into the drum to see what might be going on inside.
The picture is the same as it has been: that rabbit being chased by the monstrous thing I can’t look at for too long, the bird flying just under the clouds of rain. But then, as it goes, the clouds above the bird start to part. The rain dissipates and in the sky is a moon, just a sliver of a planet but still a moon.
Outside a crash of thunder causes me to jump, yelling as I clutch tighter at the satin I didn’t even realize I still had in my hands. Rain, sudden and wrong, is thrown by the wind against the window of the attic. It sounds sharp and I feel sweat pool in my palms as I rush from the room, I can hear the zoetrope still turning behind me as I close the door. The satin is still clutched in my hands, but I can’t bring myself to go back up for some reason.
The rain lasts all day. I make a cup of tea and try to calm my nerves by sitting in the kitchen and reading. But my mind wanders, I keep looking out across the unkempt yard now wet and muddy, and I try not to think about the satin covering folded and placed on the counter.
I don’t sleep well and I walk into the kitchen sluggishly the next morning. The coffee pot gurgles and I lean against the counter, not hungry and mostly just staring into my bowl of cereal. There are a few unanswered texts from my mom on the screen of my phone, I’m not sure how to answer “how was your day?” or “rain came out of nowhere… strange.”Â
Scratching at the window brings me out of my thoughts.Â
There’s a bird, simple and black but when the light catches it just right it has a rainbow sheen. The colors remind me of gasoline spilled in puddles.Â
It’s a starling and it’s trying to get inside. I set my bowl on the counter and draw closer. It backs away and up and I peer out to see it when suddenly it slams against the window and I flinch back.Â
I rush outside and circle around, but there is nothing on the ground except for a feather. I pick it up and run my thumb over it, a sense of unease growing. I look up at the attic window then go inside.Â
When I peer into the zoetrope, the bird is gone. There is just the moon looking down on the rabbit and the monster, which I note has closed the gap between it and the rabbit. It’s so close, it simply has to reach out and catch it. But still it begins the chase when I turn the handle, as if the running is the part it enjoys.
As I watch, though, the rabbit stumbles and falls. It doesn’t get up and I can’t bear to watch so I cover the zoetrope with the satin and when I leave the attic, I lock the door behind me.
That night while I lie in bed, I hear the noise in the hall.
The keening, staccato whine is high-pitched and something in my neck tenses as I hear it make its way closer down the hall. I turn on the lamp beside my bed, trembling as I throw my legs over the side. Two quick thumps echo outside the room, like something stomping, and then the cries start again.Â
It’s cold in my room, I sleep with the window cracked and the temperature has dropped significantly more than I’d expected since I went to bed a few hours earlier. I shiver as I cross to the door and look out into the hall.Â
It’s dark, the light from my lamp throwing an elongated square of light from the doorway. The cries are closer now, I can hear the soft footsteps of the creature coming ever closer. It sounds small. It sounds scared. I’ve never heard an animal call like this before.
Fear burns in my stomach, cold and sickly. I can’t bring myself to step out of the room, but I can’t bring myself to close the door either. So I stand frozen instead, one hand steadying myself on the door jam.
A rabbit drags itself down the hall, approaching the light on the floor. As it passes through the light I see its soft brown fur and that it's too long and too large, not a rabbit but instead a hare. A hare that’s not quite moving like a hare should. It's crying, short and quick sounds that almost sound like bird calls. It stops in the middle of the square of light and looks at me, its eyes dark and dull. It stomps its foot on the ground, so quick that I almost miss the movement of the hind leg, and then it continues its way down the hall.Â
I slam the door to the bedroom and then quickly cross to slam and lock the window, I leave the light on when I climb back under the covers.Â
***
I look in the mirror. The dark under my eyes have the quality of bruises, I look like a night creature with a day job - all tiredness and sharp, sleepy edges.Â
The hare’s gone now, I felt more than heard the abrupt stop to the crying in the halls. I’m glad for it, but there’s that old fear around the corners. The hare was not the last thing in the zoetrope and now the three of the four have come and gone. I am finding myself wary of corners and sequestering in my bedroom before the sunsets, scared to be caught in the halls in the dark. Each day I’ve checked the zoetrope, ensuring that the figure - lean and distorted and monstrous - is still inside.Â
So as the sun is setting, I walk upstairs to the attic. The zoetrope is there, it always is, and the last rays of sun slant through the dirty window. The satin makes its soft sound as I pull it off and with a deep breath I bend to look.
The zoetrope goes around and around, the monster inside. It is hunched and is running, like it’s pursuing its prey even though the rabbit and the starling are nowhere to be seen. This all is familiar to me, the sound of the satin, the dust motes in the sun, the thing running forever. But then something changes and familiarity falls from me like a safe second skin. The thing stops and stands still. The zoetrope makes it’s rotations and as it does the head shifts unnaturally, slowly, awfully to look out of the zoetrope towards me. It’s eyes look out from the zoetrope, bright specks of light in its dark and lean body. And then around, around, around and it’s gone. The zoetrope is empty. The rain, the starling, the prey and the pursuer are gone and I’m alone in the cold attic.Â
Down the stairs, out somewhere in this musty house that’s come to be my own, I hear the scraping and the thumping of something large. I rush to the door and shut it, quietly as I can though I know the thing knows where I am. Of course it does.
I run my hands through my hair, I feel heavy and weighed down by this. The same thought that I think every night becomes louder: why was I given this? How horrible to give such danger to someone you’re supposed to love. I think of my mother and look around at the attic desperately. A baseball bat sits propped against a wall and I walk towards it, gripping the handle with a sweaty hand.Â
The scraping is louder now, uneven and coming up the stairs. The thing will be here soon, free from the forever circle it had run in the zoetrope.Â
I look at the zoetrope in the fading light. And even now I feel complexely towards it, something so harmful yet given to me. Was it a curse? A gift? I don’t know.
My grandfather knew what was inside, but he didn’t destroy it. Instead, he took care of it and he kept it safe. He wanted me to have it, and I felt maybe he cared about me to leave me something so ancient. Maybe there was a reason I received it.Â
I think of my mother growing up in this house, of her trembling when I told her I had been given it. I wonder if maybe one time, long ago, she had used the zoetrope too.
I hang my head for a moment, listening and feeling, then I raise the bat and swing. With a thunderous crash it smashes into the zoetrope which tumbles over, pieces breaking. It hits the floor and I raise the bat again. Perhaps this should not have been given to me, but now it is mine - it’s mine to destroy. I hit it again.Â
I will not have it in my house.Â
The zoetrope crumbles, it’s in pieces and my chest heaves. I drop the bat and back up to lean against the wall, the attic now dark.
