Indecisive. No, Zoo Trip. No, The Corridor.

Two hours in and no sign of an animal, not a caged one anyhow. A group of mocking birds (not to be confused with mockingbirds) had been following him for a while. Hopping from cage to cage, laughing at his misfortune.

Kieran stared through the gaps in the fence at yet more plant life. He could have stayed home. Should have stayed home. But as usual he could not make his mind up, so just went with the crowd. 

The crowd in this case was his mum and grandparents. He did not see his grandparents much, so this swayed his decision slightly. They were currently in the zoo’s restaurant resting, while consuming as much coffee and cake as humanly possible, giving Kieran a chance to look around by himself. It was not healthy for a thirteen-year-old to spend too much time with adults. And besides, someone from school might see him.

Kieran moved on to the next cage. As did his winged hecklers. He peered in. Was that a tail? Yep. A tail. Two hours, fifteen pounds and forty-three complaints about aching feet and he had seen one tail. He sighed and sat down on a bench.

He kicked at the floor. A fleet of patrolling ants came out of their hole to see what the disturbance was. Add these to the wasps and birds, and he had seen roughly three hundred animals. Not bad. 

As more ants joined the patrol, Kieran noticed a growing noise. A low hum, like a steamroller on a wooden road. Can ants make this kind of noise? He did not have to wait too long for his question to be answered. From around the corner came a stampede of panicking zoo goers.

“It escaped!” said a man at the front of the approaching crowd.

“The Somali wild ass, it’s … it’s gone … wild,” said another, as the group hurtled past.

Kieran just sat, unsure of what was going on and what to do. What was a Somali wild ass? Was it dangerous? It sounded so and the crowd seem to think it was. He stood up and faced the direction the crowd was coming from. His breath shortened and his leg muscles cramped up as he waited for the beast to turn the corner.

The crowd was now a blur. Kieran’s vision focused on the sign that marked the corner. The place where the panic started. What would the beast look like? Something terrible to cause this much panic. Mighty claws, powerful jaws, tusks or talons or so much other possible pointy bits it could be. A face full of tentacles. That one even took him by surprise and made him feel queasy in the belly area. 

A pair of hands gripping his shoulders snapped him out of his fear induced trance. The hands belonged to an elderly lady, her face pale and scared. 

“What are you waiting for? Run you fool.”

So he did. Kieran ran with the crowd at first. Until they came to a narrow gate. Logic dictates that single file would work best in this scenario, but large groups of people do not use regular logic. Stand six side by side and push whoever is in front. That is group logic.

Kieran, fearing being crushed between the stampeding stragglers and the mass of backs and bums wedged in the gate, looked for another way. It would have been easier for him if there was no other way, but there were three options. Two open walkways and a door.

The open walkways were potentially just as dangerous. After all, there was no guarantee that the monster was at the back of the crowd. Before he could decide, a middle-aged lady holding all six of her children (two of which were older than Kieran) bumped him through the door. He felt a twinge of guilt mixed with relief. The sign on the door read ‘Old Staff Only’, so on one hand he was trespassing, but on the other it would be far safer in here. And he was pushed in. He did not choose to break the rules.

Once inside, Kieran relaxed a little. There was no one in here to tell him off, and the corridor did not seem to have any doors along the side for someone to hide in. The walls were bare. Pale green with patches of dirty white. He started his walk to the other end, kicking the odd shoe box and takeaway coffee cup out of his way. He paused. His family. They were out there with the beast. He had to go back.

As he turned, he tripped on a pile of boxes. A soft voice spoke at the back of his mind. I don’t think they were there before. Nonsense. They must have been. Kieran just did not see them. He straightened himself up and dusted himself off. He reached out for the door’s handle, but it was not there. Impossible. Kieran had only walked a few paces. The door should at least be in sight. But there was only dark.

The door must be the other way. His trip had disorientated him. That was it. In his confusion, he had got turned around. When he turned to face the opposite direction, the corridor had changed. Instead of bare walls, there were now small windows on the left. Kieran approached one with both caution and confusion. Did he just not notice it before? He pressed his face against the glass. Of course, trees. But there was something else just beyond them. It looked like a large donkey with zebra legs. It was currently trying to eat its own ear while trying to get out of a water bucket. Ah. The terrible, beastly Somali wild ass. The voice better be wrong.

Fed up of trees and getting increasingly annoyed at the corridor, Kieran quickened his pace and headed to where the door must be. He had to get there soon. He had only walked a hundred paces total. Stepping over boxes of bags, bags of boxes and various broken tools, Kieran powered on. He had been going this way for twice as long as he went the other way. The door must be coming up. There were only two ways to go.

He walked barely fifty paces and stopped. Perhaps it would be better to just go back and see if a shadow or something hid the door. After all, he did not check that thoroughly. He turned. The corridor had changed once more. The rubbish strewn on the floor came up to his knees, and tree roots penetrated the walls.

Kieran pushed his way through the years of collected uselessness. Something was wrong here. He could not have missed this before. It made walking much harder for a start. The piles of rubbish thickened and walking turned to wading. Kieran could still only see a dull brown shadow ahead. Not a door in sight. He plodded on, checking the odd box as he went to help pass the time and keep away his growing panic.

He had been walking for what felt like an hour when he came across a sign. Written on the wall, in what he hoped was red paint, were the words, ‘You Should Have Read More Carefully’.

Confused and a little tired, he turned the words over in his mind. What a weird thing to write on a wall, especially in a staff area. Read what? The small but familiar voice spoke again. The door said ‘Old Stuff Only’.

“No. No. No.” Kieran screamed at the wall, “How could I be so stupid?”

Without thinking, he turned to race the other way. It should not take too long at a run. But running was well and truly out of the question. Piles of empty bottles sprouted from the now chest high bags and boxes.

Now, they weren’t here before. The voice was right. This stuff was definitely not here before. He would have noticed thousands of bottles piled to the ceiling. And that the ceiling was no longer there. Then he noticed something on the wall behind them. He scattered the bottles into the sea of useless junk. More words. Written in the same red paint. ‘There’s no way out. You might as well give up.’

Kieran closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He knew where he was. Hopefully, the warnings were not true. They should brick these places up because it is far too easy to end up in one by accident. They might be useful as bottomless cupboards, but it was not worth risking somebody’s life.

“No. I won’t give up. I am going this way and staying this way.”

And he meant it. That was the first confident decision Kieran had ever made. It did not help him much, apart from preventing the corridor filling completely, or changing into Ogres knows what craziness. Maybe if he had been more decisive earlier, he would not have ended up on this endless road to nowhere. He would not have even gone to the zoo in the first place. But that does not help him now.