Untethered

After focusing mainly on poetry over the past few years, I’m really enjoying diving back into short stories—creating worlds and exploring them in new ways. My last two stories (Beatrice Never Leaves and Silently Seeking Soles) began as quirky true events that I stumbled across online, and this one is no different.

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction: when I came across an article about a kidnapped emotional support alligator, misplaced and set loose in a Georgia swamp, I thought, Now, there’s a story!

As you know, I love telling stories from unusual perspectives. So here’s my take on the alligator’s own side of the story, as he discovers the unsettling truth of what freedom really means.

Untethered

I have never belonged—not in the pen, not beyond it. Maybe not anywhere at all.

The air is heavy today, thick with something unfamiliar. Before I hear them, I sense them—quick steps, hushed voices. Not like my master, whose slow, measured movements once shaped my world. But he is gone.

And they are here for me.

Their whispers ripple through the air, charged with wonder, excitement—the same kind of awe that used to trail my master. I have heard it before, from the crowds he gathered, those who stared at me with uneasy fascination. They never knew what to call me. He never told them what I was. Only what he wanted me to be.

I was the mystery, the marvel. The thing that made him important.

But he never really saw me. Not as I was.

Now these new voices murmur, circling closer. Their footsteps hesitate, then press forward, bold with the certainty of those who believe they are doing something good.

I know that look in their eyes. Reverence, curiosity—something else. Something that makes my skin prickle.

They lift me.

The ground falls away. The air presses close—thicker now, unfamiliar. I do not fight them.

I do not know how.

· · ·

The harness is snug around my body, the familiar pressure just behind my forelimbs. I have worn it for as long as I can remember, its weight a quiet anchor, holding me in place. Without it, I don’t know what I am.

Their hands grip tight as they carry me outside. The air shifts—open, uncontained. I am not used to this. I have lived inside walls, boundaries pressed firm around me, the edges of my world clearly drawn. The pen was small, but it was certain.

They talk like I should be grateful. He’s been penned up too long. He deserves this. Their voices hum with conviction, thick with the kind of hope that belongs to those who have never felt caged. They think they understand what I need.

The harness loosens.

Fingers work the straps free, sliding them from my body. The weight I have always known slips away, leaving me exposed. The ground feels unsteady beneath me, or maybe I am the one who is unsteady.

This is their moment of triumph. The moment they think I will become what I was always meant to be.

But I have spent my life inside the pen.

And out here, there is no fence.

I shift, uncertain. A flicker of something moves deep inside me—a memory of motion, of cutting through water, of speed and strength. I reach for it, desperate now, trying to remember what it felt like to slice through water, to command my own body. But the memory is a phantom—just out of reach, dissolving the moment I grasp for it.

Their hands lift me higher.

Maybe they know something I don’t.

Maybe this is the world I was meant for.

Maybe, beyond the edge of what I know, I will find the piece of me that has always been missing.

· · ·

The thought stirs something deeper, and I feel my body tense, a ripple of energy coiling through me. A flash of certainty—brief, instinctive. For the first time, I feel the possibility of motion, of speed, of power.

I flex my limbs. A rush of strength surges through me.

But then—

“He’s moving—careful!”

Hands fumble. Their grip slips.

Suddenly, I am weightless.

The sky tilts, a streak of pale light spinning above me. A rush of cold air slams against my skin, sharp and sudden. I twist, disoriented. There is no control now, no steady harness holding me in place.

I am falling.

For a heartbeat, I think—this is it. The thing I have been waiting for, the moment I was meant for.

The wind rushes past me. The sky stretches open. For a fleeting second, I believe—

But then the impact slams into me, sudden and unyielding.

It is not what I expected.

I hit hard—unsteady, wrong. A shock of sensation crashes through me, but my body does not respond the way it should. The world around me shifts, distorts, presses in from all sides.

I try to move. My limbs flail, disjointed. This should be easier. The pull inside me stirs again, deeper now, urging me toward something old, something buried. But the memory does not sharpen. The pieces do not fit.

I was supposed to know how to do this.

The water does not cradle me. It grips. It pushes. It drags me down.

· · ·

I sink.

Not fast, not with the sleek certainty I should have. The swamp takes me slowly, folding around me, pulling me down in a way that feels more like swallowing than release.

I try again—kicking, twisting—move. But my body does not remember. My strength scatters, directionless. The movements should be fluid, powerful, effortless.

They are not.

The voices above are muffled now, distorted by distance. I cannot see them anymore, only shifting light, fractured by the surface.

They thought they were giving me freedom. That I would return to something buried deep inside me, something waiting to be awakened.

I thought it too.

But I have spent a lifetime in stillness.

I was never taught how to survive, only how to be held.

The world above fades, shadows dissolving into deeper dark.

This place they call freedom is just another cage—vaster, endless, but closing in all the same.

Maybe I was never meant to rise.

Maybe I was always meant to be still.

© 2024 Robert M. Ford. All rights reserved.