Were it any other Gondii, they would have laid dormant and slept at the wheel instead of piloting such an immense vehicle as this. Were it any other Gondii, there would be no story to tell. But this wasn’t a Todd or Tom or Tobias – this was Peter Gondii.

  “Shouldn’t be long now,” said Peter, convincing himself more than anything.

  But there was no textbook for humans. There was no failsafe or second plan. Humans were just an encumbrance; nothing had ever been written about them for no-one had ever made it out alive.

  And at first it seemed that, against all odds, The Human was in fact becoming swayed by bouts of irrationality. It wasn’t anything bold or startling, but there was a tiny shift in indecision and compulsiveness that hadn’t been before. Were this a rat, already that beautiful and agile vehicle would be nose to the ground, enamoured by the scent of a feline’s ammoniac piss. This whole endeavour would be done in a matter of days – give or take a day or a couple of weeks.

  But The Human was neither sleek nor agile. Worse still was that this human in particular, had vices which saw its waking desires and impulses as some kind of a moral or spiritual test – a consequence and side effect of its cognition.

  “Dear Jesus,” said The Human. “Today I had an impure thought. I know you know what it was so I don’t have to say it out loud, but I’m really sorry if I caused you any offense. I didn’t mean it, and I think the devil must have slipped it in there, but I promise I’ll never have an impure thought again. P.S, thanks for the super awesome feedback on my abstract. Love you, Jesus. Bye.”

  This was why very few Gondii had ever escaped a human. What was worse was the information that The Human consumed non-stop, day and night. It ate words and ideas, and swallowed graphs and statistics as if it were consciously and intellectually famished – as if it hadn’t read a word in weeks. This was not what Peter had heard about humans. They performed utilitarian functions, yes, but the outcome of each of those functions, like all mammals, was sexually driven. This is what should have made The Human at least partially manoeuvrable.

  But no, not this human.

  What terrible luck for Peter that The Human spent its days and nights entrenched in postgraduate study; while in its breaks between logic and reason, when it should have been drinking and horny, it prayed brazenly to its God and played the triangle in a church band.

  This would not be easy.

  The Pilot

  After months, Peter had started to lose hope. Urge after urge was taken by The Human as some ethical athletics of the mind, and it resisted every damn temptation that Peter could swing at it.

  “This damn human is immune to sex,” he said to himself. You need to stop focusing on its damn dysfunctions. Think clearly. Think strategy.”

  He was clearly flustered. Though he wasn’t going to give up, by the look of him alone, he wouldn’t be blamed if he did. He had given his all – tried every trick in the book. But this damn human was a sexual disgrace.

  “Work backwards,” he said in a moment of clarity. “Start at the cat and work back.”

  The one thing The Human did a lot was drive. He drove morning, noon, and night; sometimes in the hours when only wild beasts and serpents were stalking and slithering about. Driving, though, was the one place where The Human let its guard slip. Infected by tiredness and exhaustion, and propelled by obligation and servitude, it continued to drive, in spite of the risks it presented.

  This was the chink in The Human’s armour.

  “The cat will eat a bird,” said Peter. “But what type of bird will eat a human?”

  It was bad enough trying to imagine a kitten savaging its owner, let alone a parakeet. There had to be some kind of loophole; something that no other Gondii would expect.

  And it was driving down a desert highway that it clicked. The Human had been working through the night. It had taught a dozen classes that day and worked on just as many papers and experiments. More than ever it was singing to its God; something it only did when it was weak.

  “Sing to Jesus, sing out loud! When you’re alone, or in a crowd. Jesus is fun, Jesus is great! When you go to bed early or you stay up late! Jesus is always by my side. Every single second of my life. With Jesus I will always pass the test. Jesus is awesome, he’s the best!”

  And for some reason, inspired by its song, The Human felt an urge to press its foot on the accelerator. As it did, the engine roared, and so too did its faith in its God. It sang its song, over and over again. And each time, it did so with more unrestrained and impassioned voice.

  By the time it lost control of the car, its voice was louder than the screaming engine. And it was just as loud as the sound of twisting metal and breaking glass. It was just as loud, if not more so, than the sound of twisting limbs and breaking bones.

  Then there was silence. The Human’s car lay in a crumpled heap in a pile of scrub by the side of the road, while The Human lay in a crumpled heap a hundred meters away. But unfortunately for The Human, if at all it mattered, this was not a well-travelled road; hence the deafening silence.

  “All we do is wait,” said Peter.

  So far the game was playing out exactly as he had imagined. It was a hot day and The Human was maybe an hour or two from death. The time was ticking; not just for it, but for Peter too. But life evolved out of risk and there was nothing that Peter wouldn’t do for family – for family was everything.

  And it didn’t take long for a buzzard up in the sky to smell the carrion and carnage that lay on the ground below. It slowly circled the sky above, and made its way down to the fresh and bloodied feast.

  “I’m proud of ya,” said Peter to himself. “You bloody did it. Now we just fly that bird west and find us some feral cats and we’re home free.”

  He had done it – or so it seemed.

  The Epiphany

  “Somebody up there is looking out for you, lad.”

  It was The Human’s advisor.

  “If that drone hadn’t been circling about, you would have been coyote meat. I hate to say it, but it’s a miracle you’re with us. You should count yourself lucky.”

  It said this even though The Human was bandaged from head to foot.

  “I come bearing good news. Your research is being published. Congratulations. I guess now it’s time to decide what you do now your doctorate has concluded. Have you given it any thought?”

  The Human was bruised and broken; covered in cuts and abrasions, and stitched together in a hundred places. It could, though, still whisper to its own content.

  “Africa,” said The Human, smiling as if it had seen a puppy in a bow tie.

  “Africa? With your complexion? You only go to the beach after seven. And you want to travel to Africa?”

  “Live in Africa,” said The Human. “I know it sounds… risky.”

  “Crazy is a better word. You can have your pick of any of the best teaching hospitals in this country to pass your knowledge onto future generations, and instead you choose Africa?”

  “I spoke to Jesus,” it said.

  “Oh you did?” said The Advisor, checking The Human’s chart to see if it was lucid, or at the whim of a cocktail of opiates and sedatives. “And what did Jesus say?”

  “He told me I have to go to Africa – it’s my mission.”

  The End

  It hadn’t been easy for Peter. His whole life had been a constant measure of suffering and heartache. Were his circumstances even slightly less intolerable, he might have been a god by now. But ingenuity was not the seed of supple fruit. It had to be dug out of the Earth - from beneath the desiccated roots of sick and diseased plants. It lay somewhere in the bedrock of disgust and dismay.

  Rarely had a Gondii ever dug so low.

  It was, ironically, with the aid of human science that Peter was able to conjure enough influence in The Human’s mind to project all of its sexual desires away from hookers and hand jobs, to one of pious heroism. And though it went against every lick of advice, The Human indulged in this self-adulating desire.

  Within a week of leaving the hospital, they were in Kenya.

  None of this had been planned, but that didn’t mean that Peter didn’t deserve any kind of acclaim. Life had handed him lemons and he had, in turn, told life where to shove it.

  “Hi, welcome to our village,” said a human. “So very grateful to have you here.”

  The Human lapped up the attention and applause. It conversed for hours and had a thousand questions, but none of them were as significant as one question it asked on its third week in the village.

  “What is that?” it said, its attention being reined by Peter like some stubborn donkey or untrained horse.

  “That is a lioness,” said a young human.

  Peter pulled on a dozen cables and yanked on a half dozen more. He kicked and he screamed, and he gave it everything he had. It was now or never.

  “Come on, you son of a bitch,” he screamed.

  The Human stared out into the distance at the savage beast lying beneath a skeletal tree, looking famished and worn out by the unrelenting heat. Any other human would have run in any other direction except for the direction that The Human was running.

  “Are you crazy, mister,” shouted the young human.

  Crazy was not the word, or maybe it was, but it wasn’t how The Human would describe it. As he ran across the dusty ground, all he could think of was the kitty cat he had left behind - how he missed her cuddles and their afternoon play; how he missed her scratches and adorable little bites; how he missed the world he had left behind.

  The lioness watched The Human running towards it and for the life of her, she couldn’t understand it. Were she a human, it would be like watching spaghetti jump onto a plate and wind itself around a set of utensils.

  “Family is everything,” said Peter, digging his heels in.

  And were he in the belly of a rat, it would not have taken anywhere near as long. But were he in the belly of a rat, he would have had nowhere near as interesting a story to tell his sons.

  And in less than an hour, The Human was devoured whole. Peter – not by chance, but by hard work and an unforgiving will – had somehow managed the impossible and gone from a human to the intestines of a cat.

  He celebrated by giving birth to a thousand sons, and as he sat by the pile of oocysts, he told them his tale a thousand times over. And he cared for each son as if it were his only son, just as he cared for them all.

  And as they entered the world on a mound of faeces, Peter Gondii finally took a moment to really reflect on what he had done. And in the end, though he would die without ever knowing, he wondered if his father would have been proud of him.

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  The Terror{blist}

  The Anarchist

  Happy People Live Here

  The Time Traveler’s Wife

  Ineffable

  London When it Rains

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