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The Snare (Lexington Avenue Express - Short Fiction)
"Tell me a bit about the tiger cages, Colonel Merrick," the magazine reporter said with an unmistakable Australian accent. "Can you describe their dimensions, the means by which they were assembled and the like?"
"Each cage was approximately the size of a coffin." Merrick chose his words carefully, wondering why he'd begun yet another interview with the reporter.
"A coffin, you say?" Barry Serra repeated as he scribbled in his notepad.
The colonel nodded. "Stacked four high," he said.
"And each cage housed a prisoner?"
"Most of the cages contained prisoners," Merrick said.
The reporter nodded, visibly distracted for a moment by the wooden latticework that separated him from the subject of his interview. Colonel Merrick was shrouded in near darkness and had explained the unusual arrangement as necessary due to his physical condition.
"As I mentioned when I rang you last week," Serra continued, "West Oceania Magazine is doing a series of articles examining the lives of former American POWs residing here in Australia; a forty-year retrospective chronicling their memories, their life-journeys after surviving internment in North Vietnam.
"Only the snapshots remain for me, I'm afraid," the colonel whispered, his pale countenance slashed by the floating shadows of the latticework.
The man in the wheelchair watched the reporter's eyes move about rapidly, noting the man’s impatience. A westerly breeze pounded at the striped awning above the visitor. Behind him, the thundering blue-gray of the vast Indian Ocean stretched west from Perth, arcing gently over the broad horizon toward the unseen tip of Southern Africa.
The reporter muttered the single word, "Snapshots," as he fumbled through the odd assortment of enclosures on his well-starched safari vest. Merrick watched silently as the search yielded an American cigarette. In spite of the trellis-barrier that separated them, Serra gestured toward the colonel, offering him a Marlboro; the shrunken man declined with a slight shake of his head.
"Snapshots, you say?" Serra repeated as he re-situated himself, one leg hiked for effect atop the railing that marked the perimeter of their overlook above the rocky beach. He struck a professorial pose as he inhaled deeply and sat pretending to ponder Merrick's meaning.
At that moment, the silent house-servant who'd earlier directed the reporter to the verandah returned and offered the visitor a cool drink. Serra declined but watched the dark-skinned man as he bowed and disappeared through a nearby doorway. The door clicked shut and through the latticework, the reporter's eyes followed the white-jacketed native as he glided frame-by-frame behind Colonel Merrick and disappeared into an adjoining room.
Serra paused for a long moment, silently considering the unusual, yet hauntingly familiar circumstances of the interview. Motionless, Merrick sat in his wheelchair, a dark, wool comforter tucked chest-high around him. Colonel Merrick finally broke the silence.
"In any event, yes, snapshots, much like the rectangles formed by this latticework," the colonel said. As he spoke, Merrick formed a frame, shrunken index finger to pale thumb, shrunken index finger to pale thumb. As Serra watched through the trellis separating them, the colonel aimed his skeletal viewfinder toward the glimmer of bright sunshine still visible at the apex of the distant horizon.
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