hungry eyes

He was my world, my life, my caretaker and my diciplinarian. Every thing I learned he taught me, everything I did was with the purpose of pleasing him or getting more attention from him. The food treats were only a reward because they came from his hands, he was my mate and every time he groomed me I felt it was a act of love.

It was from him that I learned to speak, to understand his signs and to preform the repeditive learning exercises that took up so much of our time together. I had a large vocabulary once grown, of course I did not know that it was expansive for my kind as I thought I was of the same kind he was. My large black hands with thick leathery skin were different from his, I used to hold his hands in mine patting and stroking his soft skin wishing that I was as pretty as he was, or that he was as coarse and hairy as I. I felt so grateful for his affection and wished that there was less of a disparity between us.

    It was just the two of us for the most part for many years. Occasionally he would have a visitor or two over, but they did not interest me and once he saw that I was avoiding them, and not making eye contact he would kennel me in the bedroom when they came over so I would not have to deal with them. Then when I was in my 15th year and fully a mature adult I percieved a threat to my happy home life.

  He came home late for several nights in sucession with a strange odor about him. It was a flowery scent that burned my nostrils. It smelled of chemicals and was concentrated around his neck and wrists. I did not like the scent, but I had to explore it, to try to find out what he had gotten himself into. He laughed and thought it was hysterical that I was so concerned.

  Later that week I smelled other smells on him- fishy, rank and fetid. Worse yet the smell was concentrated in his most intimate areas... areas that I was not allowed acess to. This was a female scent! There was another female there underneath his coverings and against his secret skin. I felt enraged and betrayed, some other female had invaded what was mine! He was upset by my agitation he made me kennel up and he gave me some of the medication he sometimes gave me when we went to the vets. It made me sleepy and made everything seem distant to me, even my own fears.

 He got on the tellephone and talked to someone at length, I could hear her voice from across the room it was high pitched and sounded like it came through a long tube. She was the one I was sure of it. The one who was stealing my mate right out from under me.

He brought her home with him the next night. I heard her in the hallway giggle when he came into the door. He talked to me soothingly and called me over to the coutch where he stroked me and groomed me for a while before he called to her to come in. She entered hesitantly. She was small, and she had a strong odor of flowers around her chemical flowers not the natural kind. I supressed my rage until it was just a slight vibration of my frame. My skin quivvered under his hand and my nostrils flared but I made myself emit a soft whoot of gentle welcome and nervousness rather than the screetch of anger that I truely felt.

  He restrained me while she approached, I held very still so as to not allarm them both. I would end this affair of theirs, once and for all.

  She spoke in her high squeeky voice I think she ment it to be soothing but I found it grating on every nerve.  My mate was signing the word friend over and over again. I returned the sign and held my hand out to the female she edged closer and allowed her hand to slip into mine, I was patient, waiting untill she was within reach before I pulled her hand and lept out of his arms and lept onto her face my teeth sinking into her flesh my hands ripping and pounding away at her body. I felt his hands on me, wrenching me pulling me away from my enemy. He eventually suceeded in lifting me, and carrying me into the bedroom where he slammed me into the  kennel and latched the door. He ran out, I heard screaming, banging and the front door slammed, his car drove away and the house grew scilent. I licked the blood off of my fur while the light dimmed out the window. I spent the night worrying that he would not return to me, that now that he escaped with her he would keep running and I would never see him again.

 The next morning some strangers entered through the front door, they took pictures in the living room, I could see the flash of the camera. They came back into the bedroom and took more pictures of me in my cage. I held my hand out to them through the bars, I was scared of them but at least they could set me free so I could find him. I would follow and get him to come back. To leave the weak woman behind and stay with me. The way he was ment to.

   They diddnt let me out however, they brought in a dolly and lifted the whole cage, I screamed in fear as it tilted, one of them was loading a dart pole, this was a object I was unfamiliar with, I soon learned that its pointed tip brought a uneasy painful sleep that I could not pull myself out of.

I woke up in some strange facility that smelled like cleaning chemicals, there were sounds of strange animals, unfamiliar noises like howls and screetches. There were people here too, strange people who looked in on me with cold angry eyes. I was there for days,  before he came. I was so gratefull so overjoyed to see him. But the look on his face crushed me. He was angry, I had never seen him so angry. I Signed I love you, he shook his head and turned away. A man in a white coat came then, I saw another dart pole, the man talked to him before he left. His voice was toneless, dead to me. He walked out leaving me in the cage, in the room with the man in the white coat with the dart pole. I had been sentenced to death.

 I was born in the jungles, taken as infant by men who sold me into slavery to be shipped to the man who raised me... the man I loved... the man who left me to die. If he did not love me back, why did he not allow me to stay with my mother (who had been killed so that they could capture me)?


  If he had not raised me to be in love with him, I would not have become jelous of his other female. He raised me in seclusion, to love only him. What chance had I of ever being a normal ape when I had no representative of my kind, and he did not want to treat me as a woman, a equal. There was nothing left for me but the dart and death.