Fiction by Scott Weedall
By Scott Taylor Weedall
Giraffes, Zebras, Elephants, Lions, Tigers, Wild Boars and Grizzly Bears were
just a few of the animals that the indelible Colonel Green had stuffed and
mounted throughout the palatial mansion in which the decorated war criminal
resided. The colonel’s natural viciousness and cruelty enabled him to quickly
advance in the ranks of the United States Military, often using tactics that
would make his weaker stomached comrades shiver. But none of his war medals or
accolades he had acquired were meaningful to him, only the corpses of his
enemies. Though as he got older and retired from Combat it became less socially
acceptable to kill people, so he had to settle for the hunting of dangerous
animals. He only hunted animals that posed an imminent threat to him. Whether
it was a herd of stampeding bison, a moose protecting her children or a pack of
hungry wolves, he had to feel that if his prey tried hard enough it could get
the best of him.
This pleasure was diminishing for the colonel too. Industrialization was
causing the world to shrink and the few wild animals that remained felt less
terrifying as a result. There was nothing left that he could hunt with
integrity. Until he heard a rumor from a fellow hobbyist who’d just returned
from Africa. While on the continent he’d planned on going elephant hunting in
the Serengeti but had been warned by locals not to wander into the bush, lest
they fall victim to the strange Englishman known as Doctor Johnathon Dolittle.
Indeed, many hunting parties did disappear, with only rumors and traces of
clothing as evidence of their existence. The colonel was elated and filled with
inspiration. What if this Doctor Dolittle was the thing that he’d been yearning
for, the thing that could fight back.
The colonel sat at a desk in the private suite he’d purchased for his trip
across the Atlantic. After doing some research through his network of hunters
and his ties to the US government, he had been able to ascertain that the doctor
was much more than a rumor and had even once been an upstanding member of the
medical community.
Outside the porthole the colonel admired the cloudless azure sky, contrasted by
the dark turbulent waves which would slide up the side of the ship and smack
the window which illuminated his studies. On the desk was a wide array of
documents The colonel had been able to collate about the doctor leading up to his
defecting from society and retreating into the bush. This is what Colonel Green
had ascertained thus far. Dr. Dolittle was a student at the Imperial College
School of Medicine in London, he was invited to participate in a study where
the limits of animal biology would be pushed with the intention of finding new
information about humans. The good doctor agreed but was quickly revolted by
the techniques which to him amounted to animal abuse. The screams and cries
were intolerable, but one moment was scarred into his memory. The eye of one of
a goat staring back at him. In that moment the doctor felt that he could see
through the eye of the creature into its very being and knew it was staring
back at him in a similar manner. He felt an understanding and a sense of
kinship he could not experience with most people and the knowledge that he was
at least partially responsible for inflicting torture on the helpless creature
made him feel disgusted with himself. The doctor quickly rescinded himself from
the project.
A few weeks later the University shut down the project and attempted to destroy
all documentation of the experiment’s existence, fearing it would destroy the
university’s reputation and credibility. Civilized people at the Academy forgot
the experiments, but the doctor could not. Instead, he used the experience as
inspiration to help him pioneer a new field of scientific inquiry, the
interspecies communication of humans and animals. Many scoffed at his
revelations and doubted the very concept that other species were even capable
of sentient thought, but the doctor remained undeterred. He had a natural
proclivity for linguistics, and soon he could quickly learn the subtleties of
any species’ dialect. His research in London was not particularly lucrative.
Shortly after graduating, his parents passed away, he inherited his parent’s
old manor, moved back to his hometown of Puddleby where he became, by default,
the village doctor.
His bedside manner with human patients was atrocious. While his medical advice
was sound, people felt that this was negated by his condescending temperament.
The doctor would curse himself for not having become a surgeon, patients were
so much easier to deal with when they were unconscious. He attributed the
maladies his patients experienced on eating the flesh of the animals. The good doctor
and a few of his eccentric contemporaries had determined that eating animal
flesh contributed to a massive host of diseases as well as increasing the
overall level of violence in the world. Most of his patients did not wish to
consider this. Over time the village folk opted to travel to nearby hamlets to
seek medical treatment, making it increasingly difficult for the doctor to make
payments on his debts, but this also gave him more time to pursue his research.
His animal friends were extremely supportive of his scientific endeavor. It was
extremely rare for a human to take the time to understand another’s perspective,
so they were more than eager to help him fill in the gaps in his research. His
home became a haven for wayward animals who’d been dislocated from their
homelands by England’s imperialistic hunger. There had been reports of a
traveling circus that had disappeared in the woods. No bodies were found, only
the torched carriages of the caravan. There were rumors of sightings near the
doctor’s manor of an orangutan, a tiger, or some other exotic animal that did
not belong in dreary England, yet none of the villagers dared question the doctor
on the issue. The doctor attempted to pivot his services to being a veterinarian
yet ran into the same problems he’d had when he was a human doctor. Pet owners
did not want to hear they were responsible for their bird’s melancholy and
farmers did not like to think of themselves as slave masters.
On a fine summer day, the doctor was frolicking with his fuzzy friends the
sheep through a field in the English countryside. A young Lancashire boy ran up
to the doctor. “Doctor! It’s an emergency! My poor mother has fallen ill so
quickly! She needs help immediately!” The Lancashire boy yelled. This would
trigger the inciting incident that would make Dr. Dolittle a legend amongst
those who dared to wander too far into the Bush.
The colonel had to stop reading. His ship was close to docking and he wanted to
watch the land slowly get closer to the ocean where the boat was stationed. He
perched himself on the bow, allowing the waves and the salty mist to gently
exfoliate his face. Taking in the fresh sunny air of the cape. Before he knew it,
he was on land with his face inches away from a steaming locomotive, barreling
past him at dangerous speeds. He had no reason to stand this close to the
train, other than he found it exciting. One of the colonel’s favorite pastimes
was standing as close as possible to speeding locomotives without having his
face ripped off, he always won.
The colonel had arranged for a troop of hunters to help him go deeper into the
bush than most locals would feel comfortable. The colonel paced in his suite,
his nerves were on fire with elation and anticipation. He was so close to
finally confronting the eponymous Dr. Dolittle. The colonel spent his final
night in civilization reviewing the two remaining documents that the colonel
had collated regarding the doctor.
The doctor ran through the rolling green hills of the English countryside.
First to his house, where a python named Monty handed him his medical bag. Then
to Lancashire’s home. The Lancashire boy quickly ushered the doctor into the
house and towards the bed where his dying mother languished in. The boy was
eager to see what the doctor would do. The doctor removed his stethoscope and
other medical equipment and performed a thorough examination of all her vital
signs; his prognosis was not good. “Oh dear, I’m afraid there’s only one thing
in my medicine bag that can help end her suffering.” The doctor said. The
doctor removed a syringe from his bag and injected her with a large dose of
cold morphine. The doctor pulled out his gold pocket watch and kept his fingers
and waited until he could be sure her heart had indeed stopped beating. The
doctor pulled the sheet over her face. “Time of death, eleven thirty-four in
the morning.” The doctor announced.
The Lancashire boy was shocked. He stood paralyzed, incapable of expressing any
emotion, gesture, or words other than, “You killed her…” “Don’t worry, I knew a
sufficiently large dose of morphine would be effective in stopping her heart,
it was the most comfortable way.” The doctor confidently assured the boy. “But…
you didn’t even try…,” the boy stuttered. “Try to help her, oh no, no, no. She
was too far gone for me to do anything but euthanize her. Perhaps if she made
better choices she wouldn’t end up in this position. You should try to learn
from her mistakes. And don’t worry, I’ll mail the death certificate to the
coroner this afternoon. Have a good day.” The doctor bid farewell, closing the
door behind. The Lancashire boy was left alone, staring at the corpse of his
mother, slowly heating up like a teapot, and eventually boiling over with rage.
The jovial doctor returned home, proud to have helped another patient. There he
was greeted by the sheep from earlier that day, exotic birds chirped, tropical
reptiles hissed, wild apes hooted and even a zebra neighed as they galivanted
around the manor to show their enthusiasm for the good doctor’s return. He
hugged many of them to return their affection. He stepped over a python and
around an artistic orangutan finger painting on the peeling wallpaper to sit
down at his desk where he was greeted by the past due notices. “This simply
won’t do,” he muttered, “this is all a pile of rubbish.” With his dwindling
customers and rotting mansion, he thought that a lifestyle change was in order.
Perhaps if he were able to liquidate his assets he could finally begin anew.
He had always fantasized about other lands, reading stories, listening to
travelers. The stern serious mannered British just didn’t share his values.
Ignited by passion and anger he bolted up and swept all the documents off his
desk. He danced down the stairs, invigorated by a newfound passion he had
not felt before. A frog hopped onto the tea table and looked at the doctor
inquisitively. “Tell everyone I have important news that needs to be shared.”
Soon a crowd of animals gathered around, stuffing themselves into the room and overflowing
into the halls. The little air there was to breathe was dense with stinky ox
breath and alligator farts. The good doctor addressed all his friends and
family. “I used to think that I was free. However, I increasingly realize that
I am constrained by many shackles, and the shackles grow heavier each day. I
think it is time all of us thought about what it means to be free and how we
can live the way that we are meant to live, without anyone imposing their will
upon you. I love you all with deep sincerity, but I can no longer provide this
house for you as a place of refuge. Our paradise must end, because if we don’t
end it now then the debt collectors will come for us all.”
The doctor pulled out a box of matches, ignited one and stared at the flame in
enchantment. “The village of Puddleby was built on a swamp and has stood for
hundreds of years. But given enough time the swamp always wins.” He tossed the
match onto an old dusty curtain. Flames shot up to the ceiling and animals leapt,
crawled, and flew out of the doors and windows. The good doctor stood out front
of his burning mansion, proud of everything he had accomplished that day. He
decided to head for the coast and catch a boat to France. He’d never left the
British Isles and was invigorated by the discharge of his debt.
His soon to be voyage was interrupted by the sight of the Constable, the
Lancashire Boy, and the Shepherd whose flock the doctor had been fraternizing
with earlier. Black smoke plumed from the remains of the house. Nothing but a
wide field of tall green grass blowing in the wind as they stared at each
other. The Lancashire Boy was the first to speak. “Doctor Johnathon Dolittle,
there you are!” The three men charged the good doctor, knocked him to the
ground and continued to beat the daylight out of him. The Constable with his
club, The shepherd with his cane and the Lancashire boy with his modest fists
and boots. The Constable shoved his face into the duff and cuffed him.
“Get a load of this scum!” the Constable yelled, “not so cocky now, eh?” The doctor
had no answer.
The doctor spent that sleepless night pacing back and forth in the courthouse
jail, trying to construct a rock-solid legal defense. A magpie landed outside
the bars of his cell and offered him friendly company and legal advice for how
to proceed the following day. The next day all the Townspeople were crammed and
overflowing the courtroom, all eager to see the eccentric doctor Dolittle be
held accountable for viciously murdering the poor old Lancashire woman. They thought
him cruel for caring more about animals than his human patients. They wanted
him hung by his toes. The shackled doctor was marched down the aisle and held
his head low, avoiding eye contact with all of the people he despised, which in
this case was everyone in the room. The Judge cleared his throat, adjusted his
spectacles and read the doctor his rights in a harsh and dismissive tone.
“Jonathon Dolittle, you have been found guilty of medical malpractice,
manslaughter, arson, resisting arrest and worst of all failure to pay your
debts. How do you plead?”
The doctor cleared his throat and spoke in an unnervingly calm and collected
manner. “I have concluded that this entire trial is a sham. What I have done
may have violated your laws, but it does not violate animal laws. Well, I’ve
had it with Human Law, especially British law, from now on the only law I
observe is animal law, which is infinitely more nuanced and compassionate than the
rituals of this court room. In short, I exist outside of your domain of control
and if you attempt to exact control on me, you will be held accountable to the
standards of animal law.” The philosophical ramifications of the doctor’s
speech were far reaching, however, as any good practitioner of the law
knows, a legal trial is not about what is actually true, so much as it is about
the outcome of that specific trial. The judge sounded exhausted in the delivery
of his response. “Based on the contents of your speech, I’m going to consider
your impassioned lecture to be an admission of guilt. May God have mercy on
your soul.” The judge slammed the gavel. The good doctor briefly pondered his
own death.
It was at that moment that there was a loud banging on the door, accompanied by
other strange and indecipherable sounds. The entire court turned to witness an
orangutan gallivanting on a zebra, heroically whooping as it led an army of
exotic animals into the stultifying atmosphere of the British court system.
Over the years the good doctor had done many favors for the traditionally
voiceless animals, now it was their time to return the favor. All manner of
species stormed the court trampling everybody in sight. The crowd began clawing
the walls to climb to higher ground. The poor Lancashire boy had his legs torn
off by an alligator, and other acts so horrendous that it even made your humble
narrator pause for breath. Amidst the chaos the doctor snatched the keys
from a guard who was too busy having his eyes pecked by crows and a top hat off
the shepherd who was bleeding to death. Court was adjourned.
After that the records were sparse. A few days after the trial there was a
story of a deranged shepherd who stole a boat and sailed to France. Somehow the
doctor had made his way through Southern Europe and North Africa to find one of
the last few places where wild things still lived, in a frontier to be hunted
by the indelible Colonel Green. The Next Morning, before sunrise, the colonel
went to the Well at the edge of town that the Mercenaries had instructed him to
meet at. The colonel impatiently pulled the gold embossed pocket watch out and
angrily watched the seconds and minutes slip through the hourglass of time.
What could possibly be taking the guide so long to show up.
“Are you the green man?” He turned and saw a band of three men, filthy and menacing.
Between the three of them they barely had enough teeth for one mouth. In each
of their dispossessed eyes the colonel saw the same aimless anger he wanted in
all his foot soldiers, the kind of blind fury that existed solely to be molded
by men like him. He knew that they cared only for the kill and did not care
enough for themselves to worry about the threat of the good doctor.
The colonel smiled. “Let’s Get Started.” Colonel Green and his band of merry men crawled
through the tall grass, encircling a family of elephants that were eating in a
small clustering of trees. The colonel did not want to shoot the Elephants just
yet, he knew that if the good doctor showed up he would fight even harder to
keep them alive. The colonel salivated at the thought of such a struggle. From
his vantage point he could see the three men forming a semi-circle around the
herd, waiting for the signal to strike, but then suddenly, he only saw two. And
that is when the colonel knew that the real hunt was about to begin. One by one
the other two men were subsumed by the Grass as well. The elephants grazed
undisturbed. The colonel knew he was next and cocked his elephant rifle, surveying
the windblown grass searching for any perturbation of the blades. Wham!
Dr. Johnathon Dolittle leaped out of the grass and began wrestling with the colonel.
“Give me my gun so I can murder you!” ordered the colonel. “I cannot oblige
your request sir!” replied the doctor. In the struggle the rifle went off
startling both the doctor and the elephants, who then stampeded in their
direction. The colonel barely rolled out of the way of the stomping goliaths. When
the dust settled the doctor was gone, and colonel’s rifle had been mushed and
mangled beyond use. Like the animals he hunted he was left with only his hands
and his teeth. Though unlike the elephants he hunted he was not able to turn
his jaw into a piano, for he only had the tongue of a mad man.
The sun set above him illuminated an upside-down landscape, full of deep red
canyons and purplish mountains which hung like stalactites, converging at the
horizon where the red sun retreated from the sky and land above with dissipate
with the waning of the moon. But before the stars could twinkle down on the mad
hunter he saw a grove of trees where three white men hung from their neck by
the branches, intrigued by the stench of death the colonel investigated and
realized that these were the three hired hands who the cruel doctor had so quickly
dispatched of.
The colonel screamed at the corpses. “Dr. Johnathon Dolittle! I know you can
see me. You may think yourself superior because of your power to talk to
animals. But my power is derived from my ability to hate, and by the blood-soaked
earth upon which I stand I swear I will out hate you!” A rustle in the grass.
The colonel, an experienced hunter, knew that even nature’s slyest animals left
discernable trails. He also knew that more savage and reckless creatures left
even larger trails. For the doctor to desecrate bodies in such a way he must surely
be an extremely savage and unruly beast. The hunt was still on.
The colonel was too focused on the trail to admire the sun setting and barely
heeded the gathering of storm clouds as he followed the wild doctor. The
colonel left the tall dense foliage of the grassland and followed the doctor
onto the hard baked earth, so arid and hard that not a single weed could grow on
this inhospitable land. The storm clouds that gathered above might as well have
been the first rain to touch that piece of earth in almost a thousand years.
The chase stopped when they reached the field of death. The hot steaming
carcasses of elephants were sniffed by the hyenas and vultures. Clouds of flies
swarmed around bloating internal organs, feasting on eye sockets and brain
tissue, pouring out of the ears, and wriggling beneath the skin, providing the
last few twitches of life to the epidermis. The empathetic doctor was petrified
by the sight of so many dead elephants in one place. The colonel was in his
element.
The colonel slowed his pace, caught his breath and bellowed to the doctor as he
walked towards him. “Good evening, doctor! How fortuitous it is we meet on such
a sanguine evening. I was initially worried that you were trying to run away!
But now I see that you were merely anxious that our reintroduction wouldn’t be
quite as memorable as when we first exchanged cordialities! I travelled so far
just to see you. You know, we’ve both stepped over many dead people. That is
why we were destined to meet. Two ruthless killers, you with the capacity to
command bestial life and me with the ability to manipulate others’ anger. We
are not like the rest of the unredeemable, unlovable, unforgivable,
underserving swine that is the entirety of our wretched existence. There are
only a handful of real souls that traverse this earth, and we are two of them.
So, now that we’ve found each other, what do we do?”
The doctor took a deep inhalation before stating his case. “I’m sorry, but I
must regrettably inform you that your worldview is fundamentally wrong. I do
not command anyone or anything, for the so-called ‘beasts’ you refer to are not
my slaves but my good friends. And I lash out only when bad actors engage in unforgivable
transgressions against those that I care the most about. You have taken an
innumerable number of my friends away from me. I must dispose of you.” “Very
well.” intonated the colonel. “Then I will kill you too.”
The two swung fists at each other as the simmering clouds sizzled with lighting
that tickled the earth. Their unfocussed anger and swinging knuckles smashed
into each other, two unyielding forces smashing into each other; a mutual
self-destruction. For a moment it seemed like destiny that they would both be
stripped of all their senses and forced to spend the remaining hours of their
life stumbling around a thunderous, endless desert stretching out for all
eternity.
A bolt of light descended from the sky and struck the colonel in his left Achilles
tendon, boiling his flesh and peeling open his leg, revealing bone, displayed
in a picture frame of charred flesh. The doctor was stunned by the sudden turn
of events just as much as the colonel was by the lightning. The colonel was
splayed face down on the hard dirt then slowly raised himself up, a maniacal
look stretching across his face. The colonel grunted, winced, moaned and screamed
hysterically while repositioning his melted calf. He used his three functional
limbs to drag himself towards the disgusted doctor, like a tangled marionette,
with the all-consuming goal of destroying the doctor.
The colonel bellowed. “You may think that you have me beat, but even in death
my soul will still hunt you down! I might become a crow and peck your eyes out
or become the entire ocean and flood your lungs with salt water or maybe I’ll
incarnate as your own son and slit your throat while you’re asleep! In death I
will find you and I will eat your soul!
The doctor raised his boots and began to stomp on the face of the indignant colonel.
The colonel couldn’t deliver his dying manifesto, while choking on his own
fractured teeth. The colonel sputtered out incoherent words before his
talkative nature was snuffed out and his blood soaked into the parched soil.
- Scott Weedall grew up in Portland, OR where from a young age he enjoyed writing Onion Style Articles for his High School Newspaper. His Vegan Journey began when he got a job in the meat department of a grocery store. When directly confronted with the violence inherent in meat consumption. Combined with being exposed to vegan ideas in college Scott developed a personal philosophy that adopting a plant-based lifestyle was important not just for personal/moral reasons, but also for the survival of the planet. Shortly after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the Evergreen State College, Scott packed everything he owned into his car and began driving around the United States. On his journey he met his Partner who also helped support him living a plant-based lifestyle. Scott currently lives in Lincoln, NE where he is a Social Worker. He lives a quiet life with his Partner and two cats. “The Hunting of Dr. Dolittle” is his publishing debut.