Flickr Fiction Friday: Predator or Prey

The footpath is high, higher than I thought it would be. The canal traffic bobs unevenly below. I can’t help blinking my eyes, feeling dizzier by the second. Jazmyne’s Uncle Thys keeps talking.

He is taking me for a tour of “his city.” We arrived from school this evening after a long flight, dehydrated and shaky after turbulence and a rough landing. Schipol wasn’t bad; it was clean and orderly, but the streets of Amsterdam are filthy, and strange. There was a boy standing on the canal trail shooting something into his arm with a needle. We see a woman in a leather g-string, fishnet tights and garters, standing on a table in a coffee house, wearing a French maid’s apron. Jazmyne’s uncle sees me flinch, and laughs, head thrown back. He thinks everything I do is a scream. His teeth gleam when he laughs, his canines pale and sharp.

The ancient architecture looms over us, crowding out the smudged sky. Jazmyne’s uncle travels a lot, and he tells us that Amsterdam is still his favorite city in the world. The corners of his eyes crinkle when he laughs, and he laughs often at us, at me. We are walking through the red light district now, and there are women standing in the windows like that cow that stood in a shop window in Belgium. That was for art, though. Jazmyne’s uncle says this is art, too.

I ask if we will be heading home, soon, to meet Jazmyne’s mother and father. Jazmyne’s uncle says he will put us on the train, in just a little while. But I should stay up, he says, and not give in to the jet lag, and anyway, first he wants to show me a museum… Jazmyne objects, laughing. “Not that museum, Uncle T! I don’t think she can take the Sex Museum!” Jazmyne thinks her uncle is the funniest man. But I can feel his hand slipping familiarly down the curve of my neck, and already his fingertips have grazed my chest. I hunch my shoulders. He slants a sideways glance at me, and laughs silently, his pink tongue flickering briefly between his lips.

My roommate, Jazmyne, has told me all kinds of stories about her youngest uncle. He’s the greatest at practical jokes. He and his mates have had a running prank war that’s gone on for years. Jazmyne’s uncle has never been gotten, never lost his crown as King of the Pranksters. Jazmyne says the best looking, he’s got the keenest mind, not like the rest of her uncles, who are rather stodgy, and work at gray jobs in gray office cubicles somewhere downtown, who come home and do the same things day in and day out. Jazmyne is thrilled that Thys picked us up from the airport.

Jazmyne’s uncle decides he needs a break, and he insists that we pop into a nearby coffee shop. My wobbly legs are relieved at the chance to sit down for a moment, but then I realize that ‘coffee shop’ in Amsterdam doesn’t mean the same thing as it does at home. My jaw goes slack as I watch the man next to me take a deep, hungry pull at his thin cigarette. Jazmyne’s uncle is slapping his knee and roaring at the stunned expression on my face. Jazmyne takes pity and sits with me outside while her uncle finishes.

“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” she soothes, patting my arm. “You are just such an innocent. You have those smooth cheeks and big round eyes, like a little rabbit. You’re the type he just loves to corrupt.”

I smile crookedly, trying to be a good sport. I love Jazmyne, I do. She generously invited me home for the Spring holidays. So what if I don’t like every member of her family that I meet? Right? I remind myself to relax. “I’m not really an innocent,” I reassure her. When we get on the train, I flirt with the boy across the aisle from us, who speaks better English than I do, though he claims that his is poor. Jazmyne giggles and wiggles her eyebrows as he asks if he can meet us somewhere, but I say no – what’s the point of starting a long distance romance in the middle of Freshman year? Jazmyne groans. She is so disappointed in me.

Once we’re home, I’m enchanted by Jaz’s little town. Everyone is kind and eager to fill my mouth with Stroopwaffeln and creamy cheese, and everyone wants to hear my stories, as if I’m from someplace fantastic and exotic. Jazmyne’s uncle phones and wants to take us to the Heineken museum, but I roll my eyes. We did a tour of the Anheuser-Busch plant when I was in the fifth grade; that was enough with the beer for me. I ask Jazmyne what she thinks I should see.

“De Nachtwacht at the Rijksmuseum, and Zaanse Schans,” she decides, since everyone who goes to Holland must see both Rembrandt and “working windmills.” The days pass swiftly in a haze of walking tours of castles and museums, ferry rides on the canals and bus rides. Jazmyne introduces me to the many cousins in her large Dutch-Indonesian family. I’m finally starting to really have a good time when I realize that we have only one day left. How could it have all gone by so fast? Jaz tells me we’re going to have a party the last night so that we can go back to school in style. We arrive at the flat of yet another cousin, and it all seems like a great idea until Jazmyne’s uncle arrives. I’m a little surprised; I was pretty sure he’d had his fill of Northern California rabbit naïveté the first night.

“He likes you,” Jazmyne insists, as we get the music going. We all eat and dance and laugh. I notice that some are laughing louder than others; since Jazmyne’s uncle arrived, people have been ducking back into a back room and returning awhile later sweating, dancing hard, beyond energized.

I shrug. Jazmyne’s Uncle Thys may like me, but his being here gives me the creeps. I hate how I feel like prey, ears pricked, nose quivering, frozen and watchful and watched in a room full of happy people. Between bites of great Indonesian food and horrible drinks, we dance and laugh at each other’s bad moves. Jazmyne’s uncle keeps his distance, but at times, I catch him glancing my way, smiling faintly. His friends seem to be watching me too. One of them finally approaches me, and asks me to dance. Hands sweating, I move in closer. His name is Arje, and he’s know Thys since they were kids.

“Well, what’s your specialty?” Arje wants to know. His eyes are very green.

“My specialty,” I repeat. His hair flops over his eyes, and he tosses it back.

“Yeah, your specialty, at school,” he enunciates slowly, as if I’m dense.

“Oh.” I automatically exchange the word “major.” “I’m thinking of specializing in veterinary science,” I laugh nervously.

“Ah, hmm. Sounds smart.” Arje nods, and we dance apart. My face is warm. Should I have said that? Do I sound like I am showing off? He dances back into range.

“Thys tells us you’re looking to make a little extra money for school. I’ve got a sick rabbit that maybe you can diagnose. Would you care to see it?”

“You brought a rabbit here? To the party?” Thys knows I need money? What has Jaz been saying?

“Well, yeah…” the friend shrugs, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “He’s not that heavy you know. He’s in a cage in the back. Will you come and see?”

I bite the corner of my lip, indecisive, then glance over to find Jazmyne. She isn’t watching. I turn back, sigh. “Okay.”

How did I miss the expression of wolfish anticipation on his face?

Past the kitchen, past the room with the red paper over the lampshade, to the very back of the house. The music is muffled here, only the beat still vibrating the floor, but the boy still has to shout.

“It’s down here,” he tells me, and waves his arm in the direction of a wire cage at the end of the hall.

“You should really take him to see a real vet,” I say, apprehension growing. “I’m only starting.” Didn’t Thys tell him that?

“Oh, I know… just, take a look, will you?”

I bend to peer into a wire cage, scowling that would make someone bring a pet to a party this loud, this late. “But it’s emp–“ I break off with a shriek as he shoves his naked groin into my face.

A flashbulb whines and pops and my eyes are seared, my hands flailing. My scream sounds thin to my own ears.

Through a chorus of male laughter, I heard him say, “It’s my pet rabbit! See? The pockets are the ears…”

Blinded and humiliated, I shoved past Jazmyne’s uncle and his friends. In the hall, I collide with Jazmyne, her face full of apprehension. “They played you the joke?” she asks me anxiously, grasping my arms. “It is a joke, you know.”

Behind her, I can see a crowd of cousins looking at me anxiously. Is the American girl going to scream and cry? Is she going to ruin the party? Jazmyne’s worried face makes up my mind. I take a deep breath.

“It was such a little bunny” I begin, forcing wit and hauteur into my tone. “I could barely see it. Your Uncle Thys – always a joker, huh?”

The crowd laughs, their hilarity heightened by relief. “Yes,” Jazmyne says almost inaudibly, and hugs me. Her hair smells of burning flowers. I have given the right answer.

The party continues in full swing, Jazmyne’s uncle arriving to take me around the dance floor and groping my butt with a proprietary squeeze. Smiling, he hands me a glass of Heineken, which foams more than it should. I am no innocent. I take a mock sip, then maneuver toward a hapless plant on the windowsill.

Poor plant. I take pity.

My tainted brew instead goes into Thys’ glass when he doesn’t notice.

He is welcome to the rabbit hole, and all the echoing voices, fanged grinning cats, queens and hares that he can find.

I am now one of the pack, in the company of wolves.

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I’m on an ‘uncle’ theme, apparently; don’t know where all that comes from… it’s what you get when you’re trying to avoid the ‘mother’s little helper’ and lines from Morpheus, I guess. Uncles: the other strange entity in the universe… At any rate, Miss Emily Goes Bananas with her photograph Day 53 – Soma, this week’s inspiration, and cheerfully takes us all with her. This fabulous photo will hopefully be Flicktionated by the usual suspects (because guys, I really want to see where someone other than me went with this!): The Gurrier, Teaandcakes, Elimare,Chris, Aquafortis;Valshamerlyn and Mari,our newest player. Predator or Prey? Alice or the Cheshire Cat? Find the answer with the Flickr Fictioneers.