Mileva Anastasiadou
Dead Boxer Has Wings
We recognize the ghost when it first appears. We can read, and we’re educated, and we already know it’s not just a dead horse. We recognize Boxer, the workhorse from the Animal Farm that worked hard for the revolution, only to be betrayed by the revolution. How sad, we say, when we first see dead Boxer in the zoo, because he looks sad, and we don’t hear his words, we only hear his tears.
He lurks behind the trees at night, we see his wounds and we feel his pain and we want to comfort him and hug him and thank him for the sacrifice and the lessons he taught us, but when we get close, he disappears, like ghosts do. We build a statue in the middle of the zoo, and every morning we sing the zoo anthem, life is too long to be spent in fear, we sing on the top of our lungs, because we’re free now, protected, safe, there is a huge fence around us that keeps the dirty hungry rodents away, and we don’t work much, because the zookeeper does all the work, he brings the food, cleans, answers all questions and trains us to be out best selves and entertain visitors.
The zoo ghost doesn’t let us sleep at night. His tears get louder and louder. We try to tell him that things have changed. He takes a look at the rats. He stares with pity. We follow his glance, then turn back to him and say, the rats aren’t visitors, the rats are rats. We think that he envies us perhaps, that he feels sad because he wasted his life working hard for the wrong cause. That’s why he cries, explains the zookeeper who doesn’t want us too concerned or worried, he wants us happy, if only for the visitors who pay for our food.
The zoo ghost looks away, his eyes travel over the fence and his ghostly body follows. Dead Boxer rises and makes a gesture, like he’s inviting us, but we can’t fly or walk through fences, not like ghosts do. We exchange awkward glances, we think he may not get the fence thing, we won’t ever cross it because outside lies danger, but he stretches his front legs, like saying, outside lies the sky. The zoo ghost lingers above our heads and his words fall hard on us, they hurt like rocks, when he says, life is too short to be spent in prison, but then the zookeeper starts singing the zoo anthem, urges us to sing along, and we join him and sing and forget.
We smile politely and play happy, but we can’t be; there is this ghost that walks among us, flies over our heads, our cages, inside our minds, haunting us, and he angers us with his persistence, because he can’t accept that we are as happy as we can be. The lion takes a step ahead and says, look, I’m wild and I’m accepted, and then the zebra talks and says, I look weird and I belong, while the monkey tries his best dance moves screaming, I follow my dreams, and we think we hear the bear say, poor rats, and the tiger mews like a cat, that she wants wings, but then the zookeeper comes. He steps in and yells, quiet, because we have a long day tomorrow, joy to devour, visitors to entertain. He promises that we all get wings in afterlife like dead Boxer has wings. Then he comes close and sits among us like he’s one of us, and sings us a soothing lullaby about how the rats once tried to take over our little heaven and how we won.
Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of We Fade With Time and Christmas People by Alien Buddha Press. Her work has been selected for the Best Microfiction anthology and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found in many journals, such as The Forge, Necessary Fiction, Passages North, and others. She's the flash fiction editor of Blood+Honey and The Argyle journals.
