Matobo the Croc Killer

The text starts as a union organizer encounters things that go SPLAT while in a library. The overall narrative is a sports story and the motivation behind the major plot events is: because of guilt.

Lionel the union organizer was expanding. He'd been sitting there, right, reading USA Today or People magazine or something, checking out the pics of Jessica Simpson, when his belt began to cut into his belly. His cheeks began to puff out, and his shoes to feel tight. Huffing, he pushed away from the desk, thinking: gas? But everything was swelling. Reaching down he undid his belt, and rose to his feet, panic hitting him hard. What in Sam Hill?

Around him other people were beginning to puff up too, puff up real bad, looking mighty unsighty. Like they each and every one of them had an air tube stuck in their mouths, the kind you get at gas stations to fill up your tires, and each were being piped up full of air. People's eyes were bulging, necks swelling, hands expanding like kitchen gloves filled with water.

"What in Sam Hill!" said Lionel. He staggered towards the Librarian's counter, but she wasn't in sight. Outside, through the plate glass entrance doors, he could see a large group of gorillas all laughing and shrieking and slapping each other on the back. Lionel blinked, felt the buttons on his shirt begin to pop off.

"What in Sam Hill!" he roared, outraged. Damned apes, out there laughing while he was on the verge of going pop. There must have been some thirty of them out there, a few large old silver backs, a horde of smaller males, and one or two chimp looking ones rolling around on their backs, smacking their feet together in monkey claps.

Lionel turned to the other people who were rolling around on the floor, or mewling to each other. "Apes," he said, and tried to point. He had significantly reduced flexibility by this point. "Outside, laughing. Apes."

Nobody listened. Close by, an elderly man who had expanded too quickly, his parchment wrinkly skin distending, went SPLAT. Red stuff went everywhere, viscera and bones bouncing off shelving. "Sam Hill!" cried Lionel, back away, "Sam Hill!"

The hooting and hollerin' from outside grew louder, and he turned to see two of the gorillas high five each other while a third drew a mark in chalk on the sidewalk. Behind him he heard another SPLAT, but he didn't turn. The gorillas were falling over with the sheer violence of their hilarity.

But sadness crept into Lionel's heart. He'd been to the zoo as a kid, and had seen the monkey house, visited the maccacs, but nothing had hit him as hard as the gorilla cage. There had been one gorilla in there, a threadbare guy called Matobo the Croc Killer, with photographs of him as a young tough, all puffed up with muscles tearing a crocodile in two. Looking at Matobo, Lionel had felt like a connection had but for a moment been forged between the two of them. Matobo's eyes were deep and soft like cups of chocolate puddin'. He'd stared deep into those twin wells of sadness, and shook his head. Was his name really Matobo? Had he ever really killed a Croc? Even if he had, had he even wanted to?

Lionel lowered his head, or tried. His neck was enveloped in flesh. He felt like he couldn't breath. The gorillas were shrieking and covering their faces with their feet. But Lionel didn't mind. Didn't resent them. He thought of Matobo, and lowered his head.

Behind him somebody went SPLAT.

And then again.