My Brightest Enemy
The ice caves seemed to go on forever. I stood at the edge of the snowy cliff, careful not to slip into the dark abyss below me. I grew restless as my team stood by taking their notes. I grabbed a mound of snow, patted it down into a firm snowball aimed for one of the massive icicles - that must have been the length of a skyscraper. I wound back my arm and threw my snowball as hard as I could, fully expecting it to either miss or, if it did hit it, expect nothing to happen at all.
To my surprise, I did hit it. To my even greater surprise, it started to rumble and shake. My team looked over at me, but we all snapped our heads back to the icicle ice cave when we heard the deafening roar. Out from behind the icicle emerged the biggest gorilla I had ever seen. He must have been about 20 feet tall, with fangs as big as my forearm. But the most bizarre thing about him was the color of his fur - it was a bright neon green.
He sniffed the air and looked directly at us. One of the members of the team screamed,
“He’s taking in our scent! We have to leave!”.
With all the terror I felt, I somehow managed adoration when I witnessed the gorilla meticulously swinging from icicle to icicle. Dragged away by my team, we started running knowing the gorilla had hit the ground when we felt a small earthquake a few moments later.
We were no longer in the icy cliffs, but in an opera house. The team separated - hoping to distract the gorilla, but it had caught our scent and wasn’t stopping until it found us and (likely) murder us all. Running through the crowd of well-dressed onlookers, I had hoped they would slow this beast down. But glancing back, I saw him sweep out groups of people like they were nothing but in the way. His stare locked in on me.
I could feel myself sweating through my gear and started to shed it off - throwing it in different directions hoping to confuse him. No such luck. People screamed in chaos all around me. I may have also been screaming. I occasionally caught glimpses of someone on my team, probably looking like I did - terrified and trying to rationalize what to do next.
I managed to find myself near a spa, and thought,
“Mud. I can cover myself in mud and hopefully mask my scent.”
I was about to go Schwarzenegger on this predator. I ran in and found myself face-to-face with Jennifer Aniston. Recalling that she was just on a mission in the Congo, I explained my dire circumstances to her. She smiled at me and said,
“Girl, I got you.”
She reached into her leather coach bag and pulled out a spray bottle.
“This will neutralize your scent.”
She sprayed it all over me. Relief seeped in, and I felt tension leave through every single cell of my body. I ran back to the opera house and saw a commotion on the balcony. I tensed when I saw a flash of neon green, but then looking closer, saw the gorilla was handcuffed.
“We got him guys!”, yelled a police officer.
Looking up, I saw a man’s head - he was in costume. Was I running from a crazed man this entire time? Or was the neon green gorilla still out there?