The Gorilla Artist
By Teddy Girouard
I don’t trust the gorilla at the zoo. Since birth he’s been observed by this gorilla researcher and gets special treatment. He has books and paints, he knows sign language, and I don’t trust it. He’s not much of a reader but he paints like he’s running out of time. The local news did a story on him. “The Great Gorilla Artist” they called him. His name is Adrian. He started out just painting handprints and squiggles, but he’s gotten very good, on a technical level. The shading, the realism, the symbolism, it’s frighteningly good. Too good for a gorilla. He’s entirely self-taught and now he’s painting the world from his point of view. Then the zoo sells these paintings for a mint. They used to just be knick-knacks you could buy at the gift shop, but now private collectors are coming just to buy work of the Gorilla Artist. Zoo management is thinking about making a whole new building as a gallery for his work.
The thing about the zoo is that it’s really the only place to go in town, so whenever I go on a date or need to blow off steam, I head over there to either show my date all the cute little animals and tell her she’s cuter, or walk around and clear my head. And every time I go there’s that damn gorilla, right by the front gate, painting something or other. The other day something caught my eye though.
I took my latest girl, Lea, and of course she wanted to see the famous gorilla. Out-of-towners always want to see him, they don’t believe it. We looked down and, like everyone, she waved and shouted for his attention. He looked up at her, but his eyes grew wider when he saw me. He stopped painting and grabbed a completed work from his stack, and it was a painting of me. It was unmistakably me. I had these sunken in cheekbones and these dead eyes, but it was me. Right behind me in the painting was Adrian, rendered as a golden god, holding the big rock from his enclosure… ready to strike. He stood like a statue, staring into my eyes a look that could kill, holding his painting up to the sky for all to see. I told Lea he was threatening me but she said I was overreacting, that it didn’t look like me in the slightest. But I knew. At first we had words but then we started shouting at each other over this painting, right at the entrance of the zoo. I’m not seeing her anymore.
A few days later, the gorilla researcher was replenishing his art supplies and took his latest paintings for study, and she found the threatening one he did of me fascinating. It ended up not just on the local news but made national news, as, quote, “an animal’s piece of art symbolizing the creature’s unique relationship to the humans keeping it in captivity”. But that’s not true. It was a threat, directed at me. Adrian, the Gorilla Artist, is going to bash my skull in with a giant rock. He wants to kill me. I tried to phone the zoo, I even sent the researcher a picture, and they laughed off my concerns. But I wasn’t laughing. Today, things came to a head.
With all the fervor about that threatening painting, Adrian was supposed to be making a television appearance with the researcher, but when they opened his dressing room door for the taping of the program he was gone. We were put on lockdown. Everyone was to stay indoors, gorilla on the loose! Do not approach, but if you have any idea where he is going, call the hotline. I know where he’s going. He’s coming to get me. I just know he is. I went out and bought myself a revolver I’m so sure. Now I’m sitting, facing the door. Waiting. Every rustling leaf, every crack of lightning and crash of thunder could be his hideous fist bursting down my door. The gun shakes in my hands, it’s heavy. He is going to burst through the door and bring down his fists through my skull. He is going to kill me.
I am going to die tonight, yet I stand resolute. I cock the gun. Whether I use it on him or myself is the question.
