SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter One: Escape
Somewhere in a zoo in Australia, 1956
’Micklang appeared to be an ordinary red squirrel that lived in a large, very well protected zoo in Sydney. But the squirrel was not ordinary on the inside.
Unlike other squirrels, Micklang had emotions that got him out of trouble in the zoo. Fear was the first emotion he had discovered, when he had almost been killed by a piece of shattered glass thrown at him from strange beings called people. Sadness was another, and disgust was the third, which he used heaps, especially when it came to being fed. He hated the strange round things the ‘zoo-keepers’ gave to him for food.
It was strange. While all the other enclosures of the zoo had animals being taken care of in a proper and caring way, the squirrel enclosure within which he lived was always badly kept, hardly watched over and quite often had no visitors either, aside from sometimes annoying kids that insisted on pestering poor Micklang and the other squirrels that were in the same enclosure. Sometimes, if he was very lucky and smart, Micklang could be quick enough to steal food from these kids to have for himself, by swimming across the pond that separated the squirrels from the humans. Although he lived with the other squirrels, and had done so for four years, he was very much a loner and desperate for escape. This was what made him different from the other squirrels. That and the odd white tip to his tail that he, to that day, hadn’t worked out where it came from. He knew he had lived for ten years, and today he was going to try to escape for the final time; no matter what.
“Attention all visitors, the zoo will be closing in five minutes, please make your way to the exit as soon as possible.” A static voice boomed through over-head speakers.
People of all ages zigzagged through the zoo, trying to find the fastest way out.
Micklang watched them from his small, sad excuse of a tree stump and sighed sadly.
‘Today’s the day, alright. I can’t take anymore of this.’ He thought to himself.
A young, inexperienced zoo-keeper named Emily came in and poured water into Micklang’s bowl, feeling bored the whole time. She had left the door open by mistake and Micklang marvelled at this chance. He crept down silently from the ‘stump’ and landed behind the zoo-keeper. Then he slipped past the woman silently as the squirrel’s food bowl was being filled.
He dashed out the door in one swift leap from the ground and swept down the path.
“This is it! Don’t give up! Keep going. They haven’t seen you yet.” He encouraged himself.
Unfortunately he was spotted by the female zoo-keeper, who immediately got up and ran after the squirrel, making sure to close the door as she left the enclosure. Micklang had a good head-start however, as she had to collect a net from the zoo car.
Micklang, in the meantime, zoomed down the path, over the bridge, past some more enclosures and leapt up onto the fence, intending to get as far away as quickly as he could.
Reaching the top of the fence, Micklang accidentally touched an electric wire without knowing it. Although any other creature touching electric wire may have either died or gotten badly hurt, he felt a strange sensation course through him and, even though he didn’t realize it, his fur and tail had changed from the electricity and he now had grey and black fur and a zigzagged tail that looked like a lightning strike. It had hurt quite a bit and startled him, but Micklang didn’t want to stay to find out what it was that caused the strange feeling flowing through him, so he climbed down the other side of the fence and ran along the nice, soft grass. He turned around to stare at the size of the zoo and was surprised to see Emily the Zoo-keeper heading his way, running for the fence with net in hand. Micklang turned and dashed for the forest without a second thought, just a moment later hearing a gate open and close behind him. He ran into the shrubs and bushes of the forest, but soon Emily the zoo-keeper had caught up with him and managed to corner Micklang at the trunk of a thick tree. Micklang went to climb up it, but Emily managed to stop him by blocking his climb with the stick end of her catching net. Micklang fell to the ground, safe, but couldn’t go back up the tree. He dashed to the right just as Emily closed the net around him but missed him, and he tripped from the action into a hole he thought was a rabbit hole. Micklang caught hold of a root that was firmly in the side of the hole, and Emily tried to bring him back out using a special hook gadget she had bought with her. It was here that something peculiar and otherworldly happened within the hole. A cloudy purple mist appeared underneath Micklang, a mist that got thicker and started to forcefully pull Micklang down, and he struggled to hold on to the root. Even Emily, who had just missed her chance to grab the squirrel, could feel the pull of the strange mist. She had more strength to get away from it, and managed to get back to the zoo, worried about what to say to her boss. Micklang, however, could not pull himself out of the hole, and eventually he had no choice but to let go as he fell into the mist and lost all sense of vision. That was the last thing he remembered before waking up on a river next to a lake.