The lights were cued, and the newbie reporter’s warm, honey eyes were fixed to the camera for seconds, until they saw the folding of the elliptical, charcoaled, robusta coffee leaves – two – and wavered, subtly, but enough for a pre-live broadcast to be captured by thousands. Millions.

‘Cut!’ The director, a naturally frenzied bull of a man in a constant period of musth, hissed a frustrated sigh through his slender-snout, pressing stop on his three-chip video camera, swaying impatiently.

 ‘W-what’s the problem?’ His absent, green eyes provoked. ‘You’re nervous? Is that it, hm?’ The shadow of a raised chin flickered against the diffusion screen.

You mustn’t stare at it. That’s the rule.

The reporter swung their leg intermittently, ‘I’m just feeling a little guilt—’ Ferociously, the director cut them off. The shadow appeared to grow in size, looking down on him.

His hands flapped around. ‘Look. We don’t have time for conscience.’ He gestured to his crew, migrating toward his camera. ‘Let’s roll from the top!’

An infrasound rumbled the ground, though no one seemed to notice, save for the reporter.

Deeply inhaling, the nervous reporter shut their eyes, staring autonomously into the camera’s lens upon reopening them. ‘We are out here today in yet another trending basin; fair ballots of tug-o-blue-ropes, with their long and stringy trunks–I, er, I mean cases!’ The reporter grimaced.

‘CUT!’ The director bellowed. An uneasy silhouette touched its temporal gland, just as the reporter scratched the side of their head.

From a bystander’s peripheral, it hovered unwaveringly.

Pretend it isn’t even in the room.

As the director stampeded toward the apprehensive reporter, whose sensitivity was likened with pacinian corpuscle receptors, a seismic wave shook the floor from his opposite direction. Only the reporter stumbled back on their cushioned heels, a subunguligrade. 

Far from normalisation, that thing over there… Yet, not endangered. Not critically enough to grant its voice…

Not poached. Ivory was the next word on the script. Exploited. How could they not look? It was like the station did it purposely…

Aggressively, the director rattled the script in the reporter’s face. ‘If only your ears were BIG!’

Pretend. 

‘Just read. Your. LINES! That’s all we ask!’ He shoved the script into the reporter’s trembling grip.

Act.

The shadow bush-bashed against the film flags, the moment akin to head tosses through Irvingia gabonensis, instead of eating them.

Pointing his webbed claw at the reporter’s widened eyes, the director snarled, ‘You signed a waiver,’ as he slid away.

Put on a good performance until the act makes it disappear.

‘No one asked or forced you to do this. Remember that,’ the once frenzied energy in his voice became lethargic: The most recent hunting expedition had been achieved. And he was full. 

‘It was your choice…’

That’s the only way.

‘Now, cue your lines! From the top!’ As the reporter lifted their muscular hydrostat, a blinding trumpet electrified the entire concrete forest set…

***

The crocodile snapped, but the elephant spread its ears, directly gazing into its oppressor’s.

Written by Marisa Paulson, London