It’s fiction Friday here on Sharon Hughson’s blog.

Here’s the start of a short story I wrote several years ago. I recently reread it, and I liked the character voice.

I know what a juicy steak feels like.
Need a bit of context for that statement? I don’t want you to think this is a story about a meat market because that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’m an academic. As such, I have an appreciation for classic literature. While some people might have experienced THE JUNGLE BOOK in a cinematic way, my first and favorite meeting with the story was in Rudyard Kipling’s collection of short stories with that title.
People traipsing through the jungle with Mowgli are a bit put off by Bagheera. In case you don’t recall, Bagheera is the black panther (jaguar).
“Why is he looking at me that way?” one of them asks.
“Because to him you are food.”
Mowgli’s answer is the line that popped into my head the day I came face to face with a black panther.
No one expects an academic to roam anywhere near a jaguar’s domain. Usually, I’m on the campus of Northwestern University, grading papers written by my ecology students or poring over research about climate change.
When I won a grant to pursue my research into global disbursement of the rain forest’s oxygen, it came with access to a cabin on the fringes of the rain forest in Brazil. Since Portuguese is one of four languages I speak fluently, I couldn’t have asked for a better placement.
Most people wouldn’t have liked the one bedroom cabin situated on a knoll beside a tributary of the Amazon River. Solar panels offered electricity, and a bushman arrived with supplies via boat every three weeks. If things had worked out with the last woman I proposed to, I would have agreed with most people.
But losing Amanda was strike three in my relationship attempts, so it seemed isolation on the edge of the jungle could be the perfect antidote to a broken heart. If I’d had one. Mostly I had an irritating sense of being defeated by something less technical than the pile of research I’d combed for data when proposing my scientific hypothesis.
My mind couldn’t fathom how maintaining a relationship could be more challenging that environmental science. In fact, Amanda informed me my density on that subject was the main reason we needed to part ways.
But back to the panther.

I’d lived in the hut for a few days longer than three weeks. Each day, I took two walks along the same path into the jungle. Most days this meant donning a rain slicker and covering my ginger hair with a wide-brimmed rubber hat.
Not so on the day in question.
An hour before sunset, I whistled as I approached the trees but fell silent when I strolled beneath the canopy. I enjoyed identifying the different species of birds and monkeys based on their calls. Sometimes, I glimpsed colorful wings in the branches or caught sight of a pale tail overhead. Most of the time, the only reason I knew I wasn’t the only living thing around was the noise.
That day, the forest sounded subdued. A breeze knocked limbs together. Clicking sounds indicated insects nearby. Chatters sounded far off, and not a single bird called.
Leaves rustled and a vine swung a few feet off the path. The lowest branch was nearly a foot above my seventy inches of height.
I glanced up. My feet turned to cement.
Wide, hazel eyes stared at me from a black feline face. The sleek cat crouched within easy springing distance.
I blinked. The cat didn’t. It won the staring contest I didn’t know we were having.
My brain whirred to life, searching databases for the answer to what a puny human should do when coming face to face with a big cat in the jungle. Run? Don’t run? Make yourself appear larger? Curl into the smallest possible ball?
I’m an intelligent guy. My two doctorate degrees and list of publishing credits for research articles in peer-reviewed journals prove it.
But when a guy feels like food, the gains to higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs disintegrate. The primal urge to survive at any cost overtakes all else.
For me that meant running.
And I wasn’t a person who ran. I had often joked to my friends that if they saw me running, they should do the same because it meant I was being chased. Why had I made light of such a scenario?
I backed up one step. The cat’s tail twitched. Wasn’t that a precursor to pouncing?
My feet shuffled backward. Muscles rippled beneath shiny black fur.
Why hadn’t I studied more about predators in the area? Knowledge was power and its lack made for stupid mistakes. Was there any mistake stupider than being eaten by a jaguar?
“Bagheera,” I muttered.
The cat’s ears twitched.
I shuffled back again. My heel snagged on something. I pinwheeled my arms to catch my balance but sprawled to the ground anyway.
The cat sprang from the branch.

*****
Who’s ready for more?