Pfew. Ok, so we've got that out of a way. Though I have to say, it did absolutely nothing, nothing, to quell my obsession with the gorgeous piece of man-candy that is K. L (Miles). Mmm…. mmm.( Index finger and thumb in shape of a telephone frantically mouthing: "Ken - call me!")
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Ehem. (Trying to regain some self control…)
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I have taken some liberties with the geographical surroundings of the Hydra station as well as some outrageous freedom regarding the ins and outs of caring for polar bears. If there are any zoo keepers reading this – I suggest you just skip on to happier grounds – or you will doubtlessly take a sledge hammer to your PC in the rage induced by the ridiculous counsel on proper bear sanitation offered here. Coming right up….
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Dumping ground
'Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice.'
Clark's Law
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Barbara isn't exactly spoiled for entertainment. The height of amusement available at Hydra traditionally provided by the scientists bickering about who's turn it is to choose the Friday night board game. It might not be strange then, that the sudden arrival of the three new ragtag members to the station has already exceeded her wildest expectations.
Her new subordinates.
She likes the sound of that. Having been the bottom scrape of the barrel for far too long.
She ought to get back indoors, she has a ton of things to do before starting lunch but she just can't tear herself away. Her oddly large feet are planted to the ground. She stands a bit away from their direct view and just watches. Strong twig-like arms crossed across her flat, gaunt chest.
Something has changed in the group dynamic.
The vibes are palpably different since the arrival last night of that grumpy, unpleasant beat-up Asian guy. The two others, the fat one and the girl had seemed chummy enough when it was just the two of them. But all that has changed over night. Today, this stifling hot morning, all bets are off. The hostility lies like a thick sticky layer over the three and it puzzles Barbara to no end.
She had gathered them around to instruct them on the difficult tasks ahead - of giving the bear cages a proper scrubbing. It isn't an easy assignment under any conditions, clever cunning animals that they are. It provides for certain – well - challenges. The biggest obstacle, managing to lure the bears inside their dens using some kind of delicious bear candy, like seal eyes or rotten fish, as bait. This step is crucial and the most problematical. Having retrieved the goodies, the bears, who seem to be discerningly glued in on the duping part, will infallibly try to bolt as you struggle with the cumbersome heavy trap door. A proper spruce up of the cages will take the better part of a day and getting access to the them in the first place requires meticulous team-work.
Angry-Asian guy is in charge of setting up the bait by sticking his arm in between the bars of the short passage between the lighter outer hatch door and the inner, massive metal gate controlled by curly-fat-guy. Pretty girl is standing on top of the passage's thick metal barred roof, carrying on some hazardous acrobatic bouncing while looking preposterously content. Barbara can swear that she saw her almost skipping with joy up there. Not an easy feat to pull off while balancing on the one-inch wide iron rods. Pretty girl is supposed to tug up the rope that controls the outer door just as the bear has caught a whiff of the goodies. Obviously for this to work, one has to shut the passage just at the right instant, before the bear has had time to pause and retreat. And they will. Inevitably. Quick as demons - bears are.
It doesn't take a PhD to see that there is absolutely nil chance of any type of team-work to materialize between these three bozos today. Just won't happen. They have been at it for three hours. And if half of the exertion extended at annoying each other had been focused at the task at hand, Barbara is certain the job would have been a done deal by now.
That ugly busted-ass guy is the worst of the bunch. In fact; angry-Asian-guy is turning out to be a truly atrocious person. All piss and vinegar- a flagrant exhibition of antisocial behaviour.
No wonder the mainlanders sent him off. Hydra is used to deal with other Dharma rejects.
He is clearly not fit to be in the company of civilized people. Not that the other two are much better eggs but he certainly takes the prize. Angry-Asian-guy will gesture something rude or hiss under his breath at every single opportunity he gets. She can almost swear that she heard him wheeze; "ho-bitch" to pretty-girl in passing. And if she was better at lip reading she'd known for certain that he is repeatedly mouthing " I will kill you" to the curly-fat-guy while signalling with his index finger in a cutting horizontal motion across his own throat.
At first Barbara is pretty pleased that she can't catch most of it. But then as his behaviour grows ruder and more offensive by the minute she finds herself dangling between being mightily impressed and properly appalled.
Angry-Asian-guy seems capable of producing the most blatant and vulgar abuse with an astonishing variation and speed. She can't help being enthralled by him and his obvious evil creative genius. Realizing that she must have lived a very sheltered life - she has seriously missed out! Who would have thought there were so many sordid words to describe a woman of doubtful morals? It is a kind of thrilling and illegitimate pleasure watch.
The fat guy with the corkscrews is not treating his pretty friend much better. He is sweating copious amounts, staining both the back and the front of his overalls. He is the one in charge of manipulating the monstrously bulky inner hatch door. The girl is sucking up to him big time, trying to cajole and sweet-talk him and he just gives her the heavy-duty cold shoulder. Demonstratively turning his back to her painstaking attempts making her look like an annoying yapping little lapdog.
The way she plays the angry-Asian-guy eminently more gratifying to witness. Oh the drama, the theatrics, the top of the line performance has Barbara in awe. She alternates by pretending to be completely aloof and immune to his insults and then pulls some serious stealth action abuse of her own. The girl has some skills, even Barbara who is quite alien to this sort of outlandish shenanigans can't help to notice.
She is sleek and quick and sets him up for failure in a way that he has no way of catching on to. She continuously scrabbles, and bungles the whole project up by slipping up just so,
marginally, making it impossible for him to tell if it is intentional or not. But Barbara is no fool, she knows that the way the girl fumbles with the first trap door so preposterously ineptly just can't be anything else than underhanded purposely taunting of angry-Asian-guy. A wicked hawk-like alertness glimmering in her eyes. Barbara is finding herself liking this girl more and more with each unashamed calculated blunder.
"Whoops-a-daisy." She twitters sweetly, flashing angry-Asian-guy a toothy grin.
He glowers at her. Bad looser. Barbara can tell that the girl definitely has the advantage in this, whatever sick mind-game the two are embroiled in. She flips him the bird behind his back when he returns his attention to rigging the bait again. What is truly baffling though is that intermingled with the childish pulling of grotesque grimaces behind each other's backs, there is an odd air of something else. As angy-Asian-guy bends down to yet again position the nauseating fishy bear bribe, pretty-girl just stands there above him, her weight precariously on one leg, shamelessly ogling his upturned bottom. Barbara is by no means an experienced woman but the raw look of lust she dignifies his drab overall clad behind with is impossible to overlook.
And inexplicable.
Barbara hasn't enjoyed herself this much since she got to Hydra over a year ago. In fact, she finds that the entertainment value of having three brand new albeit seriously screwed-up subordinates is considerable and it is with much regret she retires towards the kitchen.
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This is hell on earth. Hades' fucking abyss.
He has spent the entire night unable to sleep, tortuously distorted on the ridiculously narrow cot. What twisted, perverted mind had designed these fucking bird-nest sized cots? Shit, not even enough space to fart for Pete's sake. His ass had been rammed flatly against the cold cement wall and his hands forced to cling desperately to the edge of the bed. He had repeatedly and pointlessly tried to fluff up his pillow in an effort to make the 3-inch wide bed slightly more comfortable. Fat luck of that, with a pillow about as plump and fluffable as a sheet of damp sandpaper.
He hadn't been able to catch more than a wink or two before dawn. What with Hugo snoring like a congested walrus and refusing to do the civilized thing which would be to close the frigging door. But what was worse was that his allotted room, and it would be generous to call it room since it is more of a crypt belonging to the Prince of Darkness than a room, had been located right next to hers.
Kate. In number three.
Sleep - out of the question. With her there, fucking bricks away from him. The consequence being that today, this first fucking morning in purgatory, he is in a historically filthy mood. It freakishly hot and he sweats like a pig in a blanket. It must have rained, and in any case, the insane clamminess of the island so aptly named Hydra, has made the ground muddy and slippery making it hard just to get from point A to B. The moisture of the air envelops him. It's like being submerged in a bowlful of jelly. Even the sounds of the hysterical jungle insects seem to travel at a different speed, their rowdy serenading muffled by the heavy thick air.
His head is pounding incessantly at the thought of his fucking company. Both of them, driving him completely over-the-edge-psycho. It isn't his fault that the mere vicinity of those two idiots sends him in to, what will turn out to be, an epically low as personal temper tantrum goes.
When they had been sent off to their task of the day, to do the frigging mama bear's housekeeping, the little pissed off neurons in his brain had nearly imploded.
The mythical fucking cage.
He had stopped in his tracks at the sight of it and bit his lip until he could taste blood. He is soaked through and through with an anger. As cool and aloof as a peeved-out hyperactive leprechaun. His left leg fricking twitches as he tries to stand still for the frigging bear poop-cleaning lecture being presented by that the colourless plate of corned beef that is their new "capo".
How the Dicken's frigging beard do you get your groove on in a fetid old bear coop?
It must take some complete far out, off the wall lack of inhibition that Miles can't claim to have. Kate is standing next to Hugo swinging her large aluminium bucket jollily like she was on her way to a fucking picnic at the zoo. A glance at her, her dark wild hair held back by a red paisley patterned headscarf tied cutsie-pooey at the back of her neck. Apple-red cheeks, innocently rounded. A shit-eating grin that rhymes badly with the ingenuous girl-child image she obviously is trying to portray. Enough to make him want to hurt her. Or someone.
Fuck.
Should have been me.
His heart does some weird shit in his chest at the thought of Kate with the freaking love-god in that cramped enclosure. His stomach knots in all four corners. He takes up his frenetic pacing on site moving his feet continuously on the spot. Anything is better than the funky unwitting leg-muscle spasms. Incapable to stand still even for a second. Unable to look at that infernal bear-slash-funky-love-shack a second longer, he turns his back to it, waiting for Barbara-the-boss to finish her monotonous briefing. He doesn't catch a word she says. Not a single word. Barbara…hmm, rings a bell but he can't really put his finger on as to why…
Fucking bear cage.
Fuck LaFleur. - Fuck that saucy pervert!
Fuck their sordid sexy history. Why the fuck did it have to be fucking S-a-w-y-e-r? With her? It is just so fucking ironic, that now that he could have had a fucking chance, they are here, right back where the freaky little monstrosity of the fucking Sawyer-Kate love entanglement swelled out into epically orgasmic proportions. Fuck Jack also for telling Hugo – and fuck Hugo for being so completely impossibly unable to keep anything under his fucking lid. And fuck his own big fat fucked-up mouth for not knowing when to shut the fuck up.
Fuck all that!
" Here's the bait buddy. You know what to do right?"
Hugo's big keen eyes trying to catch his while eagerly stretching out a bucket filled to the brim with something that a whale has probably gagged on.
Ouf. The stink.
He snatches it testily, without a word, managing to splash some of the unspeakably slimy gunk onto the front of his overalls.
Oh balls!
So how frigging hard can this be? Bait the flipping bear. Get his hairy ass into the tunnel, and shut the fucking door for fucks sake. But Miles soon finds that he has seriously underrated the power of stupidity. Or is it stupidity?
"Whoops-a-daisy" Kate's chirping from the top of the hatch when she slips up for the umpteenth time, infuriatingly grating on his quivering mass of nerves. Big ear-to-ear, face splitting fake-regretful Joker smile.
"Sorry Miles! Lets try it again!"
Hugo rolls his eyes at her transparent act in an obvious attempt at kissing ass. Miles just has to shoot him a piss-off glare and Hugo looks down at his big feet like an overgrown hurt child. Sticking his bottom lip out in a big mopey pout.
" Ready!" She shouts in a chipper voice that makes his bloody blood boil. She is leaning carelessly backwards like a person with a death wish, grasping the thick hemp rope with both hands, oddly at home on the top of the bars. A cross between Pippi Longstocking and fucking Indiana Jones. She looks luridly happy.
He can't concentrate. It is impossible. It's sick, is what it is. Holding his breath he bends over to stick in a handful of gloppy bait again.
" Watch-out, here he comes again!" she singsongs and he can hear the rustling of her soles against the bars as she braces herself to pull up the trapdoor again.
Accidental kiss. – Load of bollocks!
He admits that he might well be a bigot for feeling like this. He has never had a problem with, or you could say, he would definitely class himself as a liberal pro girl-on-girl action. But the horrific scene is playing on a diabolical loop in his brain, over and over again. And in his imagination, the kiss is all heated and frenzied, greedy hands sliding over naked skin. The type of kiss that he didn't have the guts to give her. But his mom probably did.
How could he have been so stupid?
He wishes, oh god he wishes, he'd never found out.
Oh buggeroo. History blatantly repeats itself. Bear in, bear snatches bait, bear bails out before Pippi fucking useless Longstocking manages to drop the damn hatch.
This is getting old.
Another roll of eyes from jumbo. Miles cuts it short by mouthing a "one word and your dead!" this time, finger pointed to the temple for extra frigging emphasise.
Some badly disguised sniggering from above his head, and then all artificially sugar-sweet and sappy:
" Oops, sorry guys – it slipped!"
Well fuck me Freddy. He can't help a fleeting look upwards. She is making some kind of clownfish face. Lips pouting red and moist, eyes wide and round and insane, cheek blown up in mockery. Wisps of hair having escaped from behind the scarf around her forehead, crazy and fuzzy like Crusty the clown.
Lord have mercy.
And although, he does have more urgent matters at hand right now, his mind betrays him by lolling off to Kate and the shower. Come to think of it, the desire to blow his brains out with the high compression water at his feet is overwhelming. What the hell's bells did he have to do that for? Why did he have to ask that question? His thoughts wanders wistfully to what might have been, what might have happened if he hadn't been the largest dork ever to be born. He could have been blissfully ignorant. He could have spent the night there. In her cell – the alluring number three.
It seems an infuriatingly plausible turn of events now. Now that it is not ever likely to happen. He imagines her pale long legs draped around him and her head thrown back, exposing a long stretch of white neck. Dark hair spilling out across the pillow like in some goddamn romance novel. He imagines her sounds, how she might sound as he moves with her and shit. Shit! He inhales in a ridiculous haste, causing a fit of coughing so strong he practically oozes bear bait out of every orifice.
" You cool buddy?" Hugo peers at him with pretended concern from his position on top of the heavy inner door.
" Fuck off." He sneers, the best he can. Man that guy's got some nerve, bonking his mom and then all this buddy-buddy stuff. It just makes Miles want to chew a whole in the ground and put himself in there.
Good. Crisis averted. Image of Kate a state of sexual abandon temporarily banished. Imagination is one thing, but in reality he doesn't think he could. Lara or no Lara. He just doesn't have that kind of nerve. Not with her. It fricking freaks him out like he is back to being his geeky virginal fifteen year old self again. She scares the big bejeezus out of him.
And fact is, he does know about Lara and there is no going back on that, the thought of it makes him physically sick. There must be words for this, some diagnosis for the disgusting deviation, the sharing a girl with your mom. What is even more sickening is that although he is pissed, pissed as hell at Kate, it doesn't stop her from being the stuff that dreams are made off.
The fifty-eleventh time is a success or rather a half success. Kate finally manages to drop the trap door before the bear has time to buzz off again. Though Hugo is prepared for another failure on her side so he messes up and though his door is wedged open like a gapping guillotine the bear remains stubbornly in the space between the two doors. This half victory is enough for now, at least for Miles who can't contain himself. The tension released in a loud girlish squeal.
" Yahay! Yooohoo!"
A bit of jumping up and down on the spot, fist punching the sky like some fucking cheerleader before he catches himself, pulls back the mop slash pom-pom in his hand. He shrugs off the indignity of it all and gathers up the cleaning supplies. He eyes the growling beast a bit wearily. Ideally it would have felt better to have him safely behind two doors but he decides that it will have to do if they are ever going to finish the work. They still have three more cages, it's almost lunch and they have not even started on the first one.
" Lets get this freak show on the road," he mutters as he unhinges the big padlock on the gate.
The other two don't make a sign to have heard, not budging from their places on the hatch. Watching him curiously, no doubt. Hoping he will do all the fun stuff himself.
And everything you've got to do yourself! Useless motherfuckers.
He fearlessly kicks the entry door open. Pooh bear, here I come. Then Hugo's sissy voice from up on the passageway:
" Ehem, Miles…Don't move or. Move. Or. Move very fast. I forget what you are supposed to do in these situations…."
" Just shut it Hugo-boy!"
" But….."
" Just pipe down or I'll scrub your innards out with this!" Menacing waggling of the mop in a random manner. Not even bothering to turn around.
" You might want to listen small-fry." Tiddly-winking Holly Hobbie this time, cool as a cucumber, still on top of her part of the hatch. " Or not. Suit yourself asshole."
A growl.
And not the sensual in the throws of passion kind of growl. – More the; I'm gonna' feast on your skinny Encino ass variety.
" Run dude! For the love of god – RUN ! The bear is out!!!!"
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And this is how the polar bears got out in my honest opinion….