The gates are opened with a deafening sound - rusted iron collapsing against itself: engines that lack lubrication and a doorman that lacks patience.
Nick is kicked ahead by one of the officers behind him. His frown is seen from behind, he thinks, and walks ahead. Mammals - all predators - are chained to him in line through heavy steel. They all have ball and chains attached to their ankles. An otter, the first of the line, is laughing sterically, completely nuts; the madness is such his collar still keeps its green light, despite the agitation.
Part of Nick - not a small one - wishes he had already reached that level of insanity.
The walk to the inner part of the Zoo doesn't mark Nick at all. He is aware that he is staying, and will have all the time in the world to memorize those boring brick walls and stones in the floor. The insides strike him, through, with it's colorless features: gray, gray and gray. Not a single droplet of yellow or orange or any other color.
The zoo is separated in floors. The first floor is some kind of "reception": nursery, visitors and red tape offices all take place there. Nick and the other new inmates are examined, had their collars checked, and then were greeted with the most motivational 'welcome to hell' quote some stupid officer sang to them.
The midsection floors would be for usual and non-violent (of sorts) inmates: those to cheated collars, protested, stole, yelled at some ridiculous pray that sued them for no reason would end up there. Those who overused drugs or somehow were selling them would be there too - unfeeling mammals, who had no light in their eyes and smelled terribly of detergent and yasmin.
The higher floors are the maximum security: violent psycho killers, protesters who overdid their display of insatisfaction with the government, dudes who managed to cheat collars for good and will soon die of unexplained causes. Nick doesn't know much about that place. He knows that it's hopeless, but every time he is assigned to clean the corridors and bathrooms of that stinking piece of hell he looks for the red fur and brilliant eyes of a long-gone taylor.
Nick, at first, takes everything as a personal joke only he can understand - fuck that he can't get up from the bed during the night and run around to pace his nocturnal habits. Fuck that he can't go to the bathroom when he feels like it. Fuck that the food is awful awful awful and tastes like if a pig bathed in it. Fuck the fact that he doesn't see the sky, doesn't listen to records, doesn't breathe, doesn't sleep, doesn't eat …
The first days pass Nick as if they were trucks and he was hitchhiking: he is kicked out of bed too soon, forced to eat, forced to work, forced to clean, forced to answer all kinds of ridiculous questions to a doctor of some sorts, forced to bath, forced to undress and display all his belongings (they aren't much, Nick has no idea of how one could actually hide anything threatening for the officers or other inmates with such narrowed possibilities) so he can be inspected, forced to stand in a line in front of the cell for counting, forced to lay down to sleep again.
In these days, Nick's emptiness is such his collar doesn't even reaches yellow light - a rare situation, considering Nick's usual outbursts of emotions. He thinks he has truly became the ideal predator: locked up, emotionless and automatic, such as a robot.
He is aware, somehow, that the world is still turning outside those rusted gates: people randomly call him from the outside, and those are the most exhausting of all things. Honey, mostly, is the one to call him. She talks and talks and talks, and expects replies and answers, and has this vivid, vivid way of saying things that is mostly ridiculous. She can't even leave her own house, she is locked like Nick, destroyed like Nick, damaged like Nick, and yet she has all the energy to call and…
He tells her to not call him again. He tells her to forget about him, he's gonna die in this place anyway. Honey ignores that and keeps calling, keeps draining Nick's energy reserves and he can't keep himself from answering her every single time.
Halfway his second month, a mammal shows up in his cell - he's a cougar, as chained as Nick is, and holds something in his paws. His fur is ruffled, missing in some points of his shoulders and head and accompanied to distinct scars. He speaks. Nick doesn't pay attention - doesn't demonstrate any, instead, he stares at the holes and imperfections in the wall next to his bed, and pretends to not listen as the predator speaks.
"Mr. Wilde, I'm sure you've heard about it before, but you have no idea of the change you made for me and my daughter" says the mammal. His voice and mannerisms are such that if you would ignore all those follicles missing, he could be considered educated and polished. Nick inhales, slowly "since she was first collared, she had all types of… situations. She has ADHD, you see, the only way to avoid constant shocks would be constant medication, and it completely set her off. She would stare at the nothing, completely vegetable for days straight."
The cougar inhales deeply, almost wiping. Nick can't give himself the privilege of accepting those words, so instead he leans his head in the cold wall and closes his eyes. He is aware that all the eyes of his cellmates are in him - most pretend that they are simply bored with the commotion, but some let looks of admiration and respect occupy their muzzles. Nick decides to ignore it all.
"We took her to Wild Times." the cougar says, after recomposing himself "It was hard. We had to wait until the drugs left her system entirely. She was so happy, you have no idea. You made a beautiful thing, I hope you are aware."
The silence fills the cell and Nick uses all his remaining strength to not look at the mammal in the eye and tell him it could have been your daughter. Your wife. They could be dead, and it would have been my fault as well.
"I'm sorry" says the cougar, his voice lacks the previous emotion - nostalgic melancholy - and is replaced with comprehension and sympathy: both things that Nick doesn't deserve. Part of him wants to believe that the cougar understands his fake lack of empathy, his guilty, but other part doesn't even care. After a few more moments of silence and the alarm of the curfew pounds, the other predator finally leaves Nick's cell for his own, but not before placing the sheet of paper that he brought in Nick's bed.
After what seems like eternity, Nick reaches through the dark after the ends of his mattress, looking for the sheet of paper.
Even through the nights are badly illuminated by a pulsing yellow light in the other side of the corridor, Nick wouldn't be able to distinguish its content if it wasn't for his night vision - the whole thing is colored as if a liquidizer had a pencil. But he does, and he recognizes Wild Times and its lights, and its attractions, and even Finnick dressed as a sheep being chased by a baby cougar in a dress.
His grip in the the paper crumples it, destroys it. The fox feels like ripping it to pieces, ripping everything and everyone into pieces. It feels like if everything's exploding, as if the broken pieces of his mind are collapsing against each other and flicking sparks from the collision.
Nick was aware that the previously steady, boring beat of his heart was now hammering against his lungs and ribcage, as if the organ was tired of all the shit Nick put it through and decided to quit, smashing against its walls so it could finally break free.
He is not prepared for the landslide of emotions or the electric current that enters his body through the neck, rocks his brain inside his skull and burns, burns, burns as if he wasn't already in hell. Somewhere in between zaps he falls from the bed, collapses with the cold floor. As if he wasn't already having a hard time trying to breathe, the air was knocked out of his lungs with the fall. This stops the zaps, for the time being, and Nick stares at the dirty ceiling in a numb, suffocating haze.
Nick struggles for air in the floor, not quite trying, but because his body is biologically set for surviving. He yelps as his lungs fight for air and is half-aware of the commotion of his previously asleep cellmates - they hit the bars of the cell constantly, providing the metallic sounds that are ringing against his ears and hitting his head as baseball bats.
After a few more seconds of struggle - it felt as if an elephant decided that Nick's chest was a nice seat - he is finally able to breathe. The air hits his his lungs, and he is drowning backwards.
His body is still tingling and trembling when the next electric wave starts.
This time, not only is he burning in the surface, but it also is like if a metallic ball entered his body through his neck and decided to make a pinball machine out of it. He looks at the ceiling before his eyes avert to the insides of his head, and considers that if him, Nicholas P. Wilde, was to be zapped to death this dark room, right now, he couldn't give a fuck.
His cellmates knock the hell out of their cell bars, waking up the whole floor. They are euphoric, erratic, some are being lightly zapped as they scream, yell, growl, roar. Most of them don't really care about the inmate being zapped to death in the floor, but he's an icon - for himself and for association. He's Nick Wilde, son of John the Honest, and these two generations of the same family did more for predators than all the prisoners of this wing combined.
So with a little effort of Nick's cellmates, the whole floor joins them.
Eventually, the officers decide that it isn't a very good idea to let one of their inmates be electrocuted to death in the middle of the night, as the whole 3rd floor makes a massive attempt of prison riot. Quickly all their collars are handing out eletro-shocks, shutting the floor up for no sound besides the electric buzz instantly. Officers open up the cell as it happens, then they take Nick's collar off and drag him out.
Nick is so groggy of the zaps that he can barely walk or concentrate in anything besides the metallic taste in his mouth. Two officers are forced to take him through his arms if they want to change his whereabouts, so they drag him violently through the corridors, stairs and finally the undergrounds of the prison.
It's too late when Nick finally regains enough consciousness to understand that he is going to be locked up in the solitary . He's desperate, as if he had really reverted to his "savage ways", and he kicks, fights, as much as he can, as much as mammally possible, making sure that his little collar-less time is going to be worth it.
All the efforts are useless. The officers immobilize the inmate in the floor and put his collar on again, just to throw him aggressively in the room that he will habitate for only God knows how long.
At first, the cold concrete floor Nick is thrown at feels inviting: his insides are burning like if he had a fever, and any external cold source was welcome. He lays in the ground, eyes closed, listen to the door as it is slammed and inhales slowly, pretending momentarily that he's not currently in a mental breakdown.
After a few minutes - enough for Nick's body warmth heaten the floor underneath him - Nick perceives his whereabouts, hardly.
The first thing that strikes him is the smell - filthy, disgusting, acid. It burns through his sensitive nostrils like wildfire, spreading numbness and agony all the way to his brain. As far as Nick is aware, somebody might have died in that place (right after suffering a diarrhea).
Next is the sound - a distinct buzz of electricity that hums in the distance, followed by the unsteady beat of something against the wall.
He finally gets up. His bones might as well have become plastic, bending where they should stand. The excruciating taste of metal lingers in Nick's mouth, and when he opens his eyes to perceive the room, the fluorescent light above his head nearly blinds him.
It's a square - is the first thing Nick can sense. Part of him wants to crack a joke to the walls, laugh sterically like a madfox and see the nonexistent sunshine in the situation. He could touch the dirty walls and laugh at the dirty sink disposed to him - it probably hasn't drinking water - and laugh at the stone provided for sleeping, and laugh at the blinding fluorescent light above his eyes.
Would his father approve a massive, sterical, insane laugh in the depths of the solitary? Would he rather Nick to stay sane and hate this world with massive anger instead?
He locks up his still fucked up emotions and his contradictory doubts. Nick is not wise, but he is smart enough to know that if he is trying to sort out the mess that is his head, the solitary is the last place to have an internal monologue about oneself feelings.
The insides are a mirror of Nick's mental situation: gray, filthy, stained and not quite making sense. One could listen to pathetic whimpers in the distance.
Nick inhaled - through his mouth, he's not quite sure if it was better than through his nose - and tries to tame the demons inside himself. He walks slowly towards the concrete, mattresses furniture in the counter of the room, lays down with his torso towards the ceiling and stares at the emptiness.
In the solitary, the perception of time is abstract. The closest thing to a clock is the beating Nick can hear in the distance - it happens with mechanical precision at each 5 seconds, as if a pendulum were right next to a wall.
Nick paces himself walking around the run like a madfox - he must somehow tire himself out, otherwise the sleep will come and go out of him making his head and biological clock go nuts.
The first time meals are handed to him through the hatch in the metallic door, it is slam so violently that the tray's contents are knocked out of it and wasted in the dirty floor. Nick protests, slamming his paws against the door and yelling at the irresponsibility of the officers, but his only awards are muffled laughs outside the room and a quick zap in his neck.
The next day - or more precisely, after the 17280th beat against the wall Nick hears - the meals are, again, slammed against the hatch aggressively and the tray's contents are wasted.
Nick tries to protest again against this ridiculousness, but his only outcomes are again mockery laughs and electroshocks. He tries to save a few bread slices here and there, maybe this part of the bug sauce is not that much dirty? Luxury is not something Nick possesses, he can't be that much picky when his resources are so limited, but he is still somehow prideful and doesn't let in anything that has touched the floor and its filth.
Even without the loss of food, being in the solitary is not a walk in the park. His friends would mock him endlessly about his vibe of needy and pathetic, but Nick was sure that besides the prejudice and oppression all of them shared, neither had been through so many rough times as Nick (except Honey). But it was still somehow different, in the solitary.
In the communal place for the regular prisoners, Nick would haunt the walls and corridors and beds and cells as much as any of the other inmates and their troubles souls, and he would still somehow feel that he was living in a world of mammals, inhabited and populated and run by mammals. Nick could rejoice in his loneliness as much as he wanted in the intermediary floors, but he still would see and talk and interact with at a dozen of mammals until the end of the day.
The solitary was entirely seclusion. He could interact with the constant beat and the meals slammed against his door and he would still feel like he was alone in the universe, accompanied only by the fluorescent light above his head that wouldn't let he sleep and himself.
It could be peaceful, at some extent, but as much as fox would like to call themselves loners, they were still inherently social animals. Nick's head was floating with thoughts and repressed emotions that felt like physical entities, crowding his head and making it full, unabling the engines inside his brain to function properly.
"I wish I had at least a broom or something." he said, as he scraps of fabric he found besides the 'bed' to rub the dirty floor with the waste of food "If they were to expect me to live in this hellhole and would throw all the food at the floor, they could at least provide me a broom. Maybe a mop. A bucket with water? Fuck, I really wanted some water."
Indeed, Nick felt like he had been caught in the rain, but instead of water, dry dirt was falling from the sky. His haunches' fingers, armpits and legs would rub against each other, iching with all the filth one could feel in oneself. Nick would kill for a proper bath, or even for the ridiculous gutter falling from a prehistoric shower the zoo provided for its regular inmates.
As the time passed, as the mechanical beats hit Nick's ears, he felt each time less human, each time less of a thinking being.
When the food was wasted through the door for the third time, Nick couldn't help it - fuck the pride and the self-respect (if he ever had any), it was surviving: he licked the food out of the dirty floor, as distasteful and unsanitary it was. When he finished, he looked down at the still dirty-looking floor covered in mysterious stains and his own saliva, and the weak glow it reflected somehow felt like slaps against his muzzle, as if the fluorescent light in the ceiling reflected to Nick's saliva manifested itself as the physical form of all the oppression Nick had faced until them.
Look how uncivilized the fox is! - someone said, as if a bunch of prey were following a particular prison guard - He will eat the dirty, will lick the floor and our feet!
He will try to outsmart us, the foolishness!
He's just a collared predator!
He'll beg for forgiveness, he wrapped around our twinkies!
He's just a savage, uneducated, he's the scum!
Stinky, disgusting chomper!
Nick knees at the floor, throws his head back and lets out a excruciatingly, loud laugh. It crashes against his throat and its savagery seems to rip the flesh apart.
He laughs again, snorts, feels as his belly contracts with the quivers of the emotion. He's out of his own control when the collar shocks him with the rush of emotion, and then he is in the floor, staring at the fluorescent light as it stains his vision.
The zaps stop the outrageous laugh in the middle, exposing to Nick the void of the emotion. He's empty inside, like he had been before, but this time is worse - the knocks against a wall, the fluorescent light, the loneliness of the solitary all seem light loud noise in his head - like a buzz of electricity each time louder, each time less bearable, until his eyes are full of tears and his head feels like exploding, like his brains are ripping apart his head and scattering itself through the floor in blood and tar, providing whatever officers that enter the room a very colorful physical display of the war inside him…
He wakes up covered in his own sweat, and if feels like if his entire body is made of hard and painful stone.
"It will be so AWESOME!" Nick says, not directing it to anyone in particular "I can't wait to see them all again!"
He is walking from one side to the other of the room, and his eyes are looking everywhere, every corner. They aren't taking in the view, but instead, his mind is clouding his senses.
Honey's bunker is displayed to him, as well as the completely tidiness of the place: the perks of not leaving your house is having plenty of time and dedication to organize it with all the tenderness in the world. Nick can nearly feel the rough texture of the crochet sheath of her dish towels and tablecloth, made with the love of someone who cares about their belongings.
Despite how fantastic it all was, Nick still let his heart provide him the hope of seeing it all again, feeling all again, like if humor couldn't keep it with being his only coping mechanism.
Nick can feel the sweetness of the honey jars she stores, as well as the amazing cornbread she does when he can convince her to bake when all she has beside honey for the dinner is burg-a-buga. The perks of being a vegetarian fox.
He can also feel the fluffiness of Ben's fur when the cheetah would be off the medication haze enough for the energetic hugs Nick always pretended to dislike. He knows everybody considers him a pathetic jerk, so Nick must fake some indifference now and then, for appearances.
He misses his friends deeply. Even Finnick's constant rage - usually towards him - is missed: despite all the discussions and teases, the fennec had it place in Nick's heart. And Gwen…
Gosh, Gwen. Nick had never the opportunity to apologize to her properly after their break up. They had went back to being friends, but it felt like if they had been apart for miles, even in the same room. He wanted to assure her that he was over it - quite - and that he wasn't in love with her, wasn't pinning her, and wanted to go back to their previous camaraderie. She was his first friend, they were nearly raised together. If he could, Nick would go back and would discard any feelings and thoughts of a possible romantic relationship with her, but would be her best friend instead. She did not need the load of negative feelings he carried in his shoulders to destroy their friendship.
And the fact that she liked vixens two, that was a thing. Nick wished he had noticed before any hope could culminate in his heart. Hope which seemed to jeopardize their friendship.
In the confinement, Nick's regrets came back to him like old friends, and like old friends, Nick greeted them all. They would haunt the corners of his mind in the sleepless nights and solitary days, but in the confinement, they were a constant presence.
He tosses those thoughts away. What about Wild Times? Could he reopen it?
The flush of his imagination makes Nick erratic. There is just so much boredom can take, now he is lost in his own mind. To accompany his lively mind, his body has to maintain a certain activity: he jumps up and down, like a crazy rabbit, laughing like the insane fox he has become.
The brilliant lights that provided its illumination in all shapes and colors, the sounds of happy predators in the afternoon time, the rush of the crowd, all letting go of the harsh reality of the outside world…
Nick knows that even he managed to leave the jail, he couldn't reopen it. The police already knew about his illegal activities and the location of the amusement park, and Nick doubted he could ever put his hands in a collar key after the events that lead him to his current situation - mentally and legally.
But in the madness that was the solitary confinement, Nick allowed himself to dream.
When Nick is left out of the solitary, if feels like if the universe is a broken mirror - it makes no sense, and everything he can perceive is scattered and twisted.
He is dragged out of the room the same way he was dragged in - a duo of officers interlock their arms with his, lifting him from the ground enough for his feet to wiggle above the floor - but this time, he doesn't fight the officers that take him.
As Nick is dragged through the zoo, the magnificence of the world and its features is surreal - Nick is completely unused to stairs and large corridors and the dark - does the damned fluorescent light damaged for real his night vision? He doesn't know.
In their way to the midsection of the zoo, Nick is mesmerized by the insides of the zoo like a freak. Those colorless features that struck him as boring the first time he saw it now are beautiful and detailed. And if feels…. Wrong. Wrong in the most intracecal way.
The vulpine felt detached. As he fought his mind against it's dazzled haze, his stomach - besides its emptiness - turned violently inside him. This is not a beautiful thing. This gray is not to be honoured, not to be admired, not to be loved. This is a sick, sick, hellish place. - he tells himself, but the horror of the solitary is such that his unused mind wins the battle, and despite how horrified Nick is with himself and those feelings, he feels lucky to be where he is.
The officers throw him nonchalantly in the ground of his cell - it's morning time, he notices surprised - and his cellmates stare at him, as they remember that Nick exists.
The same cellmates that had protested so vehemently before now seem to regard Nick with indifference. Nick had never really bonded with those mammals, but their indifference makes him feel like he is an ant instead of a fox, and that he is about to be trampled by the weight of this now too big, too magnificent world.