Meeting Goliath

In the parlor, a zoo had detonated.

Henry stood with mouth agape. A stuffed Kodiak reared ever-frozen with a similar (if more menacing) countenance. As Henry breathed, its nipple fogged. He fostered no envy of this creature’s luck. It had been escorted to a premature demise, and that much the monster knew. What it knew not, and Henry knew too well, was its scenario of indefinite hibernation.

For even at two-and-a-half staggering meters, the bear was nearly invisible in a sea of horns and feathers and eyes and fur. An eagle’s wing yawned across the Kodiak’s tussled midsection, and a boar’s tusk ran from underneath its armpit, jutting like a stabbing crutch. An alligator’s tail curled laboriously atop its feet. A zebra’s hindquarters obscured its right leg entirely.

Lord Beltergash’s parlor, Henry had been informed, featured some of the finest art in Britain, yet he saw no wall, let alone oil on canvas. From floor to ceiling and blanketing the lot, the bodies of beasts hung in a lifeless scream, yet Henry could see no single creature in its entirety. Each was compressed against a cluster of neighboring specimens, hopelessly intertwined, forced into the parlor’s space with such obsessive precision as to honor a macabre continuum of the recently deceased animal kingdom.

He couldn’t fathom the number of species in the modest space. A hundred, maybe several – for surely an army of beetles posed in orchard of pins behind the pelican. Henry shuddered, stumbling backwards over what was apparently – no, sure enough – an ashtray of hollowed elephant foot. His awkward reach for balance planted two fingers deep in wildebeest nostril.

He struggled to block the prying eyes and thrashing talons to address his host. “Lord Beltergash, your collection …”

A rhinoceros had just moved, surely.

“My collection,” Beltergash acknowledged, dodging a hoof.

“I, I knew not of your …" Henry cringed, "... appreciation of hunting.”

“Hunting? I find hunting disgusting!” he spat, “I’ve dedicated my life to keeping these WRETCHED trophies of MURDER out of public possession!”