WORKING LATE

Trough was working late again.

The word work was actually stretching the truth. Trough was a bean-counter who was feathering his own nest again at the expense of others. 

For some reason his avarice came to a peak on Friday nights when everyone else, his underlings, had left the office.

He'd opened his accountancy firm during the fattened years when money grew on the trees of the city. Trough Deeply and Co. Deeply, his old partner was long gone. Died under suspicious circumstances when things got rough with Trough's new friends in the underworld. Now it was just Trough and Co. And his nose was well and truly in it!

Trough's latest nefarious scheme involved the local city zoo. For years he had been cooking the books and creaming off the top. It was a very prestigious zoo and attracted a great deal of sponsorship and grants, which the zookeepers worked tirelessly to win.

Trough had creamed off the top since the very beginning and the zoo was starting to run out of cash. The staff just couldn't understand what was going on. Animal feed had to be rationed and some prize specimens sold off to other zoos. It didn't make sense and they had sent the Chairman of the Board, a rather weak individual, to confront Trough several times as he was responsible for the accounts. Somehow he always managed to dodge the bullet, explaining the shortcomings away in a swirl of financial gobbledegook, which the befuddled Chair seemed to all-too-readily accept.

It was a tough world and overheads were getting higher was the line Trough sold and he had got good at spinning this tale. It was if he was coated in teflon. The zoo was falling to bits and the animals were starving but none of it stuck to him. He was enjoying the finest wine and thick juicy steaks in top restaurants. He just couldn't believe his luck and got greedier and greedier as time went on.

But there were murmurs in the zoo, among the staff and in the pens. Murmurs that were getting louder. He had had to step in to quell the muttering and had come up with something that would razzledazzle everyone and they'd forget about his pilfering.

Tonight he was throwing a big fundraiser in the zoo's Board Room, an event with enough pazzaz to woo the city's elite into opening their wallets and placate those nosey malcontents among the staff. It was a win win and Trough was set to make a killing. He was really quite pleased with himself especially as, apart from a few phone calls to prospective donors, he had hardly lifted a finger to make this jamboree happen.

After having the idea and soliciting some clients, Trough had handed the legwork over to the facile Chairman and his irksome zookeepers, who annoyingly had added an idea of their own to the proceedings at the last minute. The fundraiser would also be in fancy dress and the official invites went out asking attendees to dress up.

Trough had received an invite as a matter of course. He didn't bother looking. His secretary had opened it up and he knew she would have organised something for him to wear. Besides, the fundraiser was his idea anyway. The zookeepers were just lackeys. It was juicy T-bones and Bolinger for him as soon as he spirited away the bulging coffers and piles of cheques at the end of the night. Yep, it was going to be his grand overture and he'd begun to plan his retirement after this score. He would cross the border and be gone by morning living the high life he so richly deserved. Yes, la dolca vita would be Trough's at last!

He busied himself with the final preparations for his midnight flit. Passport, ID card, a huge sports bag of cash, gun, bullets, clothes and toiletries.

"Those stinking animals, why the hell should they have it cozy when it should be me living it up. Serves 'em right for being fucking stupid" argued Trough to himself as he stuffed some fifty notes into his back-pocket, "and as for those dumb keepers and that pathetic Chair. They deserve to be shafted and I'm happeeeeeee to oblige!"

Just one last thing to do. Find the damn invite to check the start time. He didn't want to be late and miss out of some serious money. Oh and that damn costume his dozy secretary had hopefully left him somewhere. He scoured his desk, looked underneath it but couldn't see anything.

"The docile bitch, where the fuck has she left it!" he roared.

As he turned round he saw a long bag hung on the coat stand and a large envelope.

"Ah!"

There it was. By the door. He opened the invite to check. He only had ten minutes! He'd better get his skates on. "So what kind of fancy dress have those imbeciles come up with?" he chuntered.

THE WILD ANIMAL BALL. 

PLEASE COME DRESSED AS YOUR FAVOURITE ZOO ANIMAL!

DRINKS AND NIBBLES 7PM

"Not bad!" he agreed and ripped open his costume bag.

"A bear! A fucking bear!" he bellowed but then saw the irony of it. Yes, he was a bear. A predator among pointless pigeons. He pulled on the suit and looked through the eye slits at the office around him. He smiled, growled and left for the zoo across the street.

Trough had expected to see a whole string of Bentleys and Daimlers lining the road but there weren't any. Maybe they were parked in the public car park at the rear. Yep, that must be it. The hapless fools on the staff had actually done something right for once. A bit of pampering for the town's elite would pay dividends later when they had to get their cheque books out and that meant more money for him!

It was 6.45pm. The zoo was already closed for the day but the side staff-entrance was still open. Trough was met by someone in the yard dressed as a chimpanzee and assumed it to be the Chairman of the Board. Chairman Chimp. Yes! It fitted perfectly, a gormless ape if ever there was one and Trough would fleece him and his lackeys good and proper tonight. He'd be on easy street before they could say where's the bananas!

"Good evening Trough. Welcome to the Wild Animals Ball. I see you have come suitably attired. A very dapper Grizzly I must say. You will find that your clients have arrived and are waiting for you. Help yourself to nibbles as you walk in. You know nibbles don't you! ha ha. We've organised some light entertainment. Enjoy," chortled the Chair chimp with a rueful smile under his ape mask.

Trough-Bear avoided the stairs and made his way into the lift. He'd worked hard all day and was feeling the strain of cooking the books so damn well. For some reason the lift stank of piss, strong piss at that, pooling in the corners and speckled with thick silver hairs. How disgusting and what a way to greet his illustrious clientele! 

"Those cretinous zookeepers were meant to be looking after them, not showering them with fucking urine!" he fumed.

He reached the third corridor were the Zoo Board Room was and left the lift, only to be greeted by a huge pile of steaming shit on the threadbare carpet.

"What the fuck is going on?" roared Trough, "Those dirty bastards! How am I meant to raise money when I'm surrounded by idiots!"

He found a brush and shovel in the cleaning cupboard and swept up the shit and deposited it in the staff kitchen swing-bin. He removed his bear mitts and washed his hands. Drying up, he could have sworn he had heard growling coming from the Board Room. It must have been the hand dryer whirring in his ears.

He strode down the corridor and nearly tripped over a rack of tranquiliser guns stood near the doorway. 

"Jeeesus Christ! What in God's name are those bastard tranq guns doing here! Those fucking idiots, they'll scare off the money!"

Raging, he opened the door to the main room and was about to tear a strip off the first member of staff he found when he stopped short and just stood staring at the space before him. 

The main lights were off except for the emergency ceiling lights, which cast a murky jaundiced glow over the room. Squinting in his bear mask he thought he could make out movement in the far corners.

"Hello!" he shouted.

"Hello!" he tried again, this time louder.

He thought he heard a dull snarl in the amber gloom when suddenly he was shoved forward and the door behind him slammed shut and locked.

"What the fuc.....!" he blurted as he toppled over a table of what felt like raw meat and thick liquid and went sprawling with it across the peeling wooden floor.

As he was trying to kneel up in his bear suit, now plastered with sticky meat and something iron sweet, the main switches were thrown and the room filled with blinding light. Trough squeezed his eyes together, then slowly opened them as he adjusted to the brightness.

He was kneeling in a pool of thick red blood and his suit was smothered in raw minced steak and offal. It was dripping off him in scarlet globs and Trough retched like a full pig.

It was about then that he heard the two sounds. At first they merged into each other, a muffled noise, but after a second or two he could hear them distinctly; deep growling and loud laughing.

The noise was coming from the far corner he'd noticed as he walked in but now he could see what was growling . 

Gathered around a long table of huge chewed cow bones was a rabble of figures, who appeared to be dressed as animals like him. Several with wolf outfits, a couple of hyenas, a tiger figure and like him, someone dressed as a large grizzly bear. They were standing, scratching, snarling, lunging and pushing the bones off the table. Fights broke out and teeth gnashed like real animals.

They were hugely convincing dressed in their suits and Trough was immensely impressed with this fundraising gimmick that the usually moronic zookeepers had pulled off.

It was genius! His clients would love it!

But it was the marabou stork that landed near him which shook his belief in what he was seeing. No-one could be dressed as a stork let alone fly across the room! Just what on God's earth was happening here?

If Trough needed any more proof that all was not what it seemed then it was the wolf that broke from the pack that did it.

Having pissed all over a bookcase, the colossal silver and grey wolf was glaring at him, its gummed fangs bared like a vampire, its nostrils flared wide open. It snarled viciously and its lips trembled with hate for the blood-soaked bear-man on its knees.

Trough gasped in horror.  In shock he realised that this was a real wolf heading his way. What the fuck was happening? His mind reeled to make sense of things. This was meant to be his meal-ticket, the fundraiser to his retirement. Where the fuck where his clients? What the hell was a timber wolf doing here?

He didn't have time to answer, as the wolf, clearly emaciated and starving, loped slowly towards its quarry, saliva dribbling from its lethal jaws.

Trough screamed and tried to stand in the crimson slick, only to fall face down in the gore. As he turned his head he saw where the laughing was coming from. In the next room, which had walls of thick glass for demonstrations, stood that buffoon of a Chairman, now without his chimp outfit, the dumb-ass zookeepers and most startling of all, all his clients!

"What the ....!" he shrieked.

The company were assembled safely behind the glass and clear;y having a good time. Everyone had glass of champagne in their hand and some deftly-made sandwich or caviar vol-au-vent in the other. They were having a party for God's sake railed Trough. They were having a party and clearly watching him through the glass!

He turned to look at the wolf and then back to the laughing throng now pressed up against the windowed wall clearly egging the wolf on!

"You bastards! I'll get you for this! You'll see if I don't!" he howled.

The huge creature leapt into the air and landed upon Trough like a ton weight. It smacked him back down to the bloody floor and knocked the wind out of him. His bear mask flew off and the wolf straddled his suited body with its four massive paws. The wild animal had Trough pinned down and slowly lowered its drooling open jaws towards his trembling face.

Trough let out a blood-curdling scream, which rang around the entire room, agitating the gang of beasts gnawing on the bones.

The scream also sent the watching assembly of clients and staff into a frenzy of excitement. They quaffed more champagne and gnashed voraciously on cooked chicken legs, smearing the fat in arcs across the plate glass wall and yelling for blood!

"C'mon, wolfy, eat the greedy fucker! Serves him right! He's been stiffing us all for years so eat hiiiiiim!" roared the donors spilling slimy caviar onto their chins.

As if on cue, the wolf let out a heinous snarl and took Trough's neck entirely in its mouth. Trough continued screaming but stopped abruptly as the brute's long teeth bit deeply into his throat. Hot red bubbling blood pulsed out and the wolf lapped at the red fountain showering its face.

Readying for the killing bite, the wolf was suddenly thrown across the room as a gigantic male tiger rammed into it at full force. The wolf revived and snarled but the Tiger's ear-splitting roar sent it whimpering with its tail hung low.

The tiger placed a giant paw on Trough's chest, its talons piercing the fur outfit and penetrating his flabbed flesh. The ailing accountant winced in agony as he tried to stem the pulse of blood from his neck. The tiger licked his bloodied face but was halted by a booming snarl erupting from a famished bear closing in at speed. 

It swiped the tiger hard and sent it sprawling along the blood like a skater. The tiger bellowed with fury and faced the grizzly now towering over it. The two titans set to in a blaze of fur and claw with the rest of the animals looking on with nervous respect.

Trough, half dazed from blood loss, sensed his chance, rolled onto his side and managed to kneel and then stand up. He staggered towards the windowed wall, where the cheering party yowled with laughter, as he swirled his bloody paws across the glass like a deranged window cleaner. 

"He-help me! hel-help me!" he begged his old clients, red froth bubbling from his mouth.

This gurgling appeal sparked a whole new wave of drinking and jostling, which reached an even louder pitch of horseplay and howling. The drumstick-chewing mob hurled themselves at the glass, threw themselves at each other and tipped bubbly over one another's heads. The yells of ectasy crescendoed when Trough was pinned against the window by a hideous pair of hyenas, gnarled and thinned, ravenous with desire for injured juiced flesh like his,

Each bit firmly into Trough and tore at his sides, the flimsy outfit offering no protection from their unearthly jaws as they gutted him standing before his audience like a practised execution. 

As Trough collapsed onto his own hot innards the watching horde screamed with rapture and two of the loudest men began to tear off the two female keepers' clothes. The two drunken men roared with lust as the keepers' breasts sagged out of their ripped vests and on a surging tide of arousal wrestled off their suits and flung themselves onto the shocked women.

Sensing an orgy in the making the rest of the cavorting red-faced male clients turned on their female counterparts, grabbing at their tops with fumbling paws. Some clients joined the first two now straddling the screaming zookeepers.

The male keepers, initially entertained, were now quaking with a rising bore of anger as they looked on while their helpless female colleagues were being molested by a pack of fat quivering tycoons.

"Stop!" they roared with no apparent effect. The snarling donors continued to grab and thrust at the figures beneath them on the wooden floor.

Trough, who now more than regretted working late that night, felt his life finally ebb away with all his plans in the snouts of hyenas. 

The last thing he saw through the greased plate glass was unusually of a harpoon impaling itself in the thick skull of one of his clientele.

THRUMP!

The sound of the shaft plunging into the solid head of the wide-eyed male brought proceedings on both sides of the glass to a momentary standstill.

The eerie pause was only broken when the leggy and utterly repellent marabou stork flew across the Board Room, hitting the window glass angrily, landing next to Trough, now entirely dead and still. The hideous bird crammed its hairless face deep inside the accountant's corpse, rummaging for prized sweetmeats and organs. It slid out its head slicked with gore and gulping down a huge hunk of liver stared up at the spellbound herd.

As the marabou's beak snapped shut it was the clarion call for the donors and keepers to resume their drink-fueled fray. 

While the wild animals of the zoo gathered to take turns feeding on Trough's ample body parts, the human fracas took an even deadlier note as the naked clients ran screeching towards the keepers brandishing whatever implements they could find: barbecue forks, chicken shears, cheese wires, carving knives and steak hammers. The keepers met them with harpoons, dart guns, chains and snare sticks. 

It was carnage behind the screen as the savages howled their vitriol at each other. Outrage upon outrage was enacted upon the baying cast. Blood welled and splattered on the glass, flesh bounced off the walls and extremities settled in shining gouts of fresh blood. Bellies were slit, fat buttered, muscles penetrated and sinews scissored.

By the end of the night nothing behind the glass was left alive and a sickening mash of guts and limbs steamed in the silent light of the demonstration room. 

The animals of the zoo, sated by Trough's truffled plenty, stared through the glass sensing somehow that things had changed forever.

They turned and headed for the dark stairwell leading to the bottom door. From here they streamed into the late night and their new-found freedom from the zoo. They were still hungry.

Working late, the owner of a nearby abattoir looked up from his slab.

He was sure he'd heard howling in his yard!