The Mountain Gorilla, native to the region where Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet in Central Africa, has long been on the 'Red List' of critically endangered species kept by the IUCN. Currently numbering perhaps 600, the Mountain Gorilla faces multiple threats to its survival: habitat loss, poaching, human disease, and war; consequently, the efforts to alleviate these threats must be mobilized with all possible haste.
This was the impetus behind the formation of the Association to Make Protection a Top Priority. The AMPTP views itself as a partner of the Mountain Gorilla, one that is called upon to make some tough decisions on the Mountain Gorillas' behalf in the interest of the long-term survival of the subspecies and, more importantly, of the AMPTP itself. Some of these decisions have not been without controversy. For instance, the AMPTP asserts that the Mountain Gorilla, though critically endangered, is nevertheless overpopulated for the territory that would sustain it and that their numbers need to be drastically culled to ensure a viable population going forward.
But their most provocative decision has been the hiring of big-game hunter Nick Counter to spearhead their efforts to rescue the Mountain Gorilla. Known as a 'scorched earth' preservationist, he is credited with bringing worldwide attention to the plight of many endangered species in Guam, through his tireless efforts to eradicate them with a range of weaponry not commonly associated with recreational hunting.
Counter's strategy in the case of the Mountain Gorilla was straightforward: herd them into an enclosed area, and wait. Whether it took weeks, or months, or entire seasons. Let them starve and turn on each other; only then will the strongest and most capable of them survive and contribute to a strong gene pool going forward. 'Or whatever,' he said philosophically. In the meantime, the AMPTP would do their part by clear-cutting all the habitat surrounding the captive Mountain Gorillas so as to better keep an eye on them once they were released from captivity.
'I will do everything necessary to save these rough beasts, even if it kills them,' Counter muttered impassively under the broad, starry African sky on the eve of his campaign. He poked a stick at the dying embers under the skewer where the evening's dinner, one of the 900 remaining (at the beginning of the day) Slender-Horned Gazelles, had been roasted. 'I will teach them something about themselves,' he murmured over and over, as the coals cooled to ashes and the fire’s glow on his face was gradually eaten by shadows.
His plan, though doubtlessly well-intentioned, was either lost on or too-well understood by the Mountain Gorilla. Soon he was to find the events would awaken self-discovery for all concerned.
*****
The expedition was proceeding most successfully to plan. The Mountain Gorillas had been virtually penned for more than two months, and the less courageous or colony-conscious among them were allowing themselves to be used in the AMPTP's very successful public information campaign. It was a perversity to see, the acquiescent monkeys grunting out servilities in their editorials and blogs, imagining themselves maverick free-thinkers when instead they were hideous caricatures, like chimpanzees in prom dresses, dancing on the plantation porch and imagining themselves part of the household. Their eagerly pliable 'independent thinking,' yearning for a grateful stroke from their master's hand on their complicit, guileless heads, was broadcast to a largely credulous and scarcely informed outside world--how were they to discern the crucial difference between Preservationist's Gross and Park Ranger's gross? From the virtual steno pool that the AMPTP had made of the local print journalists? Not likely! All was indeed going exactly to plan, in precise, freeze-dried detail.
Still, the slow success of the effort, glacial in both pace and compassion, brought little joy to Nick Counter's implacable heart. Like so many of humanitarian impulse, he longed to be stained to the elbows in blood, and the death march of the engagement gave little satisfaction in the way of savage gestures. So when, one day skirting the perimeter, he spied a baby Mountain Gorilla dozing alone under a tree, he could not resist the natural impulse to quietly, carefully, and considerately approach it so that he might get close enough to behold it, and to stave its skull in with the butt of his shotgun.
He inched closer, slavering. The little gorilla tossed itself in a fitful dream of butterfly chasing so adorably that Counter could barely restrain the urge to blast it with both barrels and render it scattered bits of hairy paste, but alone, and with adult Mountain Gorillas at an unknown distance, he didn't dare. He was now standing nearly atop the sleeping youngster, and cast his shadow over it. He struggled to control his rising excitement, trying to savor the moment, like a Sheik deliberating over the hymen of an Eastern European teenager bought for an evening's entertainment, trying to get his money's worth. He raised his shotgun slowly, and prepared to bring it down with all the force he could leverage. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears, drowning out all noise: of wind in the trees, of the wingbeats of departing birds, of the two adult Mountain Gorilla males that approached him from behind and at whose shadows alongside his own his head tilted in curiosity upon noticing. Panic hit him with a concussive blast.
Adult male Mountain Gorillas, known as Silverbacks, average about 6 feet in height and weigh between 400 and 500 pounds. They possess a strength that is difficult to fathom or put in human terms, as it is more in the order of hydraulic machinery. The first thing Nick Counter did upon discovering that he was in the immediate company of two larger examples of adult male Mountain Gorilla was to eliminate everything he had eaten in the previous 12 hours. This was more reflexive than strategic, and it's impossible to say whether it had any effect on the smaller of the Mountain Gorilla's decision to snatch Nick Counter by the shoulder and, in an eyeblink, fling him 12 feet against a tree with enough force to shake leaves on the top branches. The larger of the Mountain Gorillas examined the shotgun curiously from different angles, shook it, listened at it and even peered into its barrels before snapping the stock off in a moment’s carelessness. He dropped the fragments and the two approached Nick Counter as he roused from a temporary faint.
Nick Counter sputtered, trying to get control of the situation despite the skyrockets of pain coming from his shoulder. 'You know what? I think we can come to terms on DVD residuals. How does an extra half-cent sound? Pretty good I bet!'
The Mountain Gorillas regarded him curiously, waiting for his next move, oblivious to the pinioning power of the terror their presence created--though it did not stifle an electric flinch in him when one of them began to beat on his broad, black chest. Because Nick Counter had done his homework on his adversaries long before the game stated, and he well knew that a Mountain Gorilla beat his chest as precedent to a very narrow range of intended activity. He had every reason to expect violence of a very sudden and unrestrained nature as they moved closer; a brutality so unthinking that it failed to comprehend its cruelty, as mindless of its implications as a child with a nuclear launch code.
Nick Counter strained to keep panic out of his voice. He knew what a note of weakness could do to his position in a negotiation such as this. ‘How would the two of you like jurisdiction over animation? You want to talk about some non-binding gains? I'm the guy that can make it happen!'
Both of the Mountain Gorillas beat their chests again, and the moments seemed to pass with an ominous drumbeat. There was no keeping a shrill note of pleading out of his voice any longer. 'It doesn't have to be like this! I'm back at the table! I wasn't going to starve you all to death! I'm back at the table!!'
It is at this point worth noting that the conditions of captivity Nick Counter had brought about had aroused some very surprising behavioral changes in the Mountain Gorilla. Mountain Gorilla Silverbacks usually moved in units where they were the only adult male, with attendant females and their young. This being the case, whatever tendencies toward violence they have were seldom given opportunities for display. Packing so many of these formerly free-roaming units into an enclosed area had heightened the males’ sense of violence as being necessary for their survival. Similarly, in their natural style of living, there was little instance of homosexuality among them. The unnaturally dense cohabitation of males brought on by Nick Counter's strategy had, however, aroused something that had lain dormant there too, as evidenced by the shocking pink thermos-sized extensions Nick Counter noticed pointing at him from each of the beast's middles. His mind raced as he recalled Mountain Gorillas don't just beat their chests before they fight.
They also beat them to signal their intentions immediately before sexual intercourse.
'I...uh...think Fabiani & Lahane are the guys you big fellas are looking for…OH CHRIST NO!!!'
As the Mountain Gorillas tore at his shit-filled khaki field trousers, the hot panic he had felt just a minute before seemed like a quaint memory, one he struggled to hold onto for comfort in the fresh hell he was soon to be roughly ushered into. His flaccid arms flailed ineffectually; his blows landing like a light rain on his unnoticing, diabolically intent suitors, and his own waste filled his nostrils, but did naught to dissuade or disincline their rough and heedless wooing. It would not be long now. He prayed to pass out as impossibly strong hands seized his hips and lifted him off the ground, and with merely the pressure of thumbs, folded him forward to helplessly receive whatever would come. It was not long in coming. He felt as though a small truck had backed into his rectum, and was pulling forward and backing up repeatedly trying to fit within the lines of a parking spot hopelessly too small and not deep enough by half. But this was no small truck. It was a relentless Mountain Gorilla cock, with a considerable length left to be introduced. Had he been more aware, he might've been grateful for the lubricious nature of his own waste, but his mind was occupied by other things at this point, chiefly screaming. Had he been more ruminative, he might've wondered if these circumstances weren't a turning of the tables so apt as to seem poetic, and pondered the possibility that somewhere inside him he envied the Mountain Gorilla's mercilessness; he might have, just then, related to his partner in a new and meaningful way. But again, the whole 'screaming like he'd slammed his genitals in a car door'-thing was taking up most of his concentration just then, with just the slightest room in his consciousness left to wonder exactly how much pain a person can reliably count on to knock them out or at least give the relief of going into shock, and what he might do to lower this threshold. He certainly didn't have any curiosity left to wonder why the second Mountain Gorilla had left off his hooting, chest-beating and agitated leaping about and was lifting Nick Counter's head up by the ears.
Two things entered Nick Counter's head at roughly the same instant. One was the thought that when he awoke this morning, he never imagined his day would go so grotesquely awry. The second was the tungsten-hard shaft of Mountain Gorilla fuckmeat crammed suddenly into his mouth, intent on occupying a space well below his gag reflex, and as heedless of its objections as a court order.
As his lips were pressed in an urgent kiss to the matted hair at the base of the Mountain Gorilla’s cock and his nose was seared by the odor of a being whose life was free of the complications of bathing, he marveled at the unexpected turn that negotiations had taken. Pulled back and forth by his new friends, it was as though he were impaled on one continuous length of Mountain Gorilla fuck-musket running all the way through him, the pounding Mountain Gorilla hips merely buffeting him eight or nine inches back and forth on the living skewer. He tried to touch the ground with his arms or legs to get some bearing, but merely dangled helplessly off of his captors’ monkeymakers. They either had great faith in the elasticity of his throat and rectum, judging by the rough use made of them, or the matter concerned them awfully little.
Then, the strangest thing of all began to happen. His own muffled screams and the thunder of his rapid pulse seemed to fade, and the volume of the Mountain Gorillas’ excited grunting seemed more distant. He could hear the sounds of the rain forest’s floor underneath their feet, and the cascade of the breeze through the branches up above them, and then he seemed to hear…beautiful music? Sure, at his flank the larger of the Mountain Gorillas was still demanding more of his rear cleft than any asscrack could be expected to yield. Confronting him was still another Mountain Gorilla making terribly rough use of his ears as he slammed his Mountain Gorilla chowder-pouch again and again off of Nick Counter’s chin. But still, the strains of the music grew until it was all that he could hear, so loud that it seemed all that anyone could hear, shaking the ground, filling the trees, affirming every moment, not just here and now but everywhere and for all time.
And in an illuminating moment, he saw God’s foot on the treadle of the loom, and heard the soaring music of the weaving.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium!
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo Dein sanfter Flügel weilt!
His face ran wet with tears, but not tears of anguish, or of fear, or of pain. They were tears of joy, streaming unashamed down his grateful face. Did they, force-fucking him this way, hear the music too? They must, he thought, satisfied. They seemed to be tearing him apart, gripping him in opposite directions, and at the same time, fathoms deep inside him, to be somehow putting him together as they worked frantically to meet in his middle, setting him to right at his core. Did it take this, exactly this, his throat and rectum tearing against the berserk thrusting of two evolutionary cousins, to finally see what was important, really important, in life? Was this the most alive he’d ever been? Was this all he’d ever really wanted, all he could ever ask for if he hadn’t lacked the words his whole life? Were these two miraculous gurus driving koans of meaning into him with their crude yet magical tools?
Life is funny, isn’t it? Ass-raped and gullet-fucked by half-mad Mountain Gorillas, and yet he felt like he was being crowned Homecoming Queen as his classmates cheered him wildly. He couldn’t wait to introduce these Mountain Gorillas to his family. He could see the three of them making a life together. Sure, there would be difficulties and obstacles—when was anything worthwhile without its challenges? Whatever came their way, he knew they could get through it together. His chest swelled with joy, and he grasped and clutched with his hands and feet at the hips of his partners in this wondrous dance, urging them inside him to unite as one.
Suddenly he was running through an open field of tall grass, in great, slow-motion bounds, laughing to fill the sky, holding hands with two Mountain Gorilla cocks miraculously fit with strong arms and legs, skipping alongside him, like bawdy carnal versions of the anthropomorphised hot dogs in the ads for movie theater concession stands. He felt the sun on his face and the sweet breeze in his hair, and the fellowship of their hands in his. If Heaven makes an eternity of our moment of greatest happiness, then this would be his afterworld and the permanent fixture of his fondest heart. They would fall and roll together, and cling and lift and run again, over and over, through this endless field, forever, always.
But that would have to wait, as he was roused from his delirium by the sudden gush of Mountain Gorilla ejaculate flooding his esophagus at about 300 PSI and shooting forcefully out of his nostrils. Just as suddenly, the Mountain Gorilla that had face-fucked his teeth loose dropped him to the forest floor with a thud, though his hips were still held high by the Mountain Gorilla taking his pleasure in lustily rapid final thrusts at the other end of his digestive tract. Suddenly he felt his rectum fill with a warm enema bag full of Mountain Gorilla gunk, and the rest of him was dropped to the ground as well. The Mountain Gorillas, not as inclined to post-coital cuddling as Nick Counter would have liked, turned to leave as though summoned elsewhere.
He crawled after them.
*****
The weeks that followed were, by far, the happiest Nick Counter had ever known. He lived as one in the community of Mountain Gorillas, and spent his days foraging for food, picking nits out of the Mountain Gorillas fur, and trying to lure the males into a line to monkey-fuck him from hell to breakfast.
To the five Mountain Gorillas who gave him their business regularly, he ascribed affectionate pet names: Merrill, Wayne, Alan, Jay, and Donny, after the singing group The Osmonds, whom Nick Counter had for years spent most of his discretionary income collecting the memorabilia of on eBay auctions. Each of them had an essential nature that was reflected by their namesake: “Merrill,” stoic and direct, would take his pleasure whether Nick Counter was eating, sleeping, or already at maximum occupancy with two other Mountain Gorillas. “Wayne” was the lighthearted prankster who refused to urinate anywhere else but on Nick Counter. “Alan” was the natural leader who with ‘never take no for an answer’-moxie had plundered Nick Counter’s ass-cherry in that magical episode that marked the dawn of his new life. “Jay” was the inspirational figure who had helped him find his voice by rubbing his larynx with the pulsing head of his Mountain Gorilla snot-launcher that same wonderful afternoon, and “Donny” was, well, Donny. Sigh!
Their days together followed a happy routine. Upon waking, Nick Counter would scrape dried Mountain Gorilla excrement off of himself with leaves and join the group’s morning activities: searching for the roots, fruit, shrubs, bark and bamboo shoots that make up the Mountain Gorilla diet. Nick Counter hadn’t developed much of a taste for these staples but that didn’t matter; he took most of his sustenance from Mountain Gorilla semen, and had actually managed to put on a few pounds this way since settling in with the community---not to mention the beneficial effect this diet had on his hair, skin and fingernails.
Nick Counter found the female Mountain Gorillas more difficult to win over, as they regarded him with suspicion that he couldn’t alleviate simply by taking a vigorous, extended solo on their fuck-trumpets. He tried to win their confidence by helping with their chores and simplifying their lives as much as possible, and by showing affection for their young, who regarded him as a playful new friend. When the females were most unyielding with their approval, he found that singing to them did indeed soothe their savage breasts; especially effective was the 1983 hit Total Eclipse of the Heart. Nick Counter did not, truth be told, think much of post-Osmonds pop music, but this song was a felicitous exception, and he did not mind singing it whenever necessary.
Perhaps the idyllic scenario he saw their lives as being during those days together was a distortion born of all the Mountain Gorilla cocks he was so happily catching, but even through the Gorilla jism-tinted lenses through which he now viewed the world, he could see that things were growing increasingly desperate for the population. Foraging took longer and longer each day, as the available food in the enclosure became continually more depleted. Mountain Gorillas were going hungry, which made them moody and irritable. Nick Counter tried to lighten the mood of the males by offering up his asshole genially, like a cornered baboon, whenever he saw one looking glum. He was encountering more resentment from the females as well; many of them had entered estrus and could not find a male to respond when they postured assertively for copulation, owing to the fact that Nick Counter had already milked all of their Mountain Gorilla ballsacks dry. Truth be told, their gunk-bags ached most of the time from the demands Nick Counter’s insatiable appetite placed on them. His presence was increasingly resented by all parts of the adult population.
*****
When word filtered into the community that the neighboring Hamadryas Baboons had reached an agreement with the AMPTP, agitation swept through the ranks. Parts of the treaty seemed palatable, and even on the problematic aspects, the AMPTP appeared willing to negotiate in good faith. The Hamadryas Baboons had obviously gotten what gains their agreement reflected through the efforts and solidarity the Mountain Gorillas had demonstrated, and were only being used as a method of delivering a resolution to them, though the Baboon council could be heard, off in the distance, as they chortled triumphantly over their ‘A Deal By’ credit.
Word of an impending resolution could not have come at a worse time for Nick Counter. He was increasingly feeling the sting of rejection from the Mountain Gorilla males, for whom the novelty of his orifices had largely dissipated, and the thought that the restraints holding this wonderland of primate sploogekickers together might be loosened vexed him terribly. He loved them, each of them, and wished only that he could somehow, through some miracle of conception, make a uterus of his bowels and have each of their gorilla butt-babies. He had never known love. Perhaps that was what had made him so good at his job, but that was all over now.
He contrived a plan. When the Mountain Gorilla males gathered to discuss the framework of the treaty and how it might be workably altered to bring a final resolution, Nick Counter set about grooming duties on those females in the community that were menstruating. Nick Counter knew that periods of menstruation led to higher rates of copulation among Mountain Gorillas, and as he worked his way through those females, he was careful, bit by bit, to slowly cover himself from head to toe in Mountain Gorilla menses. He intended to make himself, as much as possible, an irresistible Mountain Gorilla fucktoy, to lure the males to cluster-bang him into an ecstasy of oblivion, and to thereby distract them from making any advance in their discussions. He didn’t kid himself; he knew he was just buying time—but at least it promised to be a great time.
He found them in serious talks and knew he must act decisively. Nick Counter spun like a dervish into their midst, coated in several thick layers of pungent Mountain Gorilla menstrual fluid, and came to an abrupt stop on all fours in the center of their tribal circle. He held his mouth open expectantly, but none made any movement to fill it. He scrambled around quickly so that all could have a clear view of the enticements he offered, but still no takers came. He put his head in the dirt and held his asscheeks open, pivoting on his face and he danced in a lurid circle, offering up his asshole with an almost irritated insistence. The Mountain Gorillas were nonplussed.
Then came the most crushing blow Nick Counter had ever felt. He looked to see “Merrill.” He was yawning.
Confused tears ran down his face as he felt their rejection like icy fists and writhed on the ground in anguished, convulsive sobs. Surely he could not love and need them this much without them feeling something in reciprocity. He ached for the sublimity of their brutal touch and their bestial intrusions, without which he would be inconsolable. He’d been high on Mountain Gorilla sperm for too long and was too strung out on the stuff to not go into a very uncomfortable period of withdrawal without it.
Suddenly, he felt the welcome touch of Mountain Gorilla forepaw. But it wasn’t working a thumb into his mouth to signal intent to fuck his throat, or prying apart his asscheeks---would that it were! He opened his tear-filled eyes and made out the watery outlines of the dominant female Mountain Gorilla—whom he had named “Marie”—as she lifted him onto her powerful shoulder, turned, and carried him away. He looked to see that the Mountain Gorilla males, with monstrous callousness, had resumed talks. They didn’t even acknowledge him, as he flailed and screamed for them from the shoulder on which he unwillingly departed.
“Marie” stalked through the thick vegetation purposefully for a long time after Nick Counter had given up struggling. He accepted that she was taking him a great distance and once they arrived, she would snap his neck with a quick twist of her powerful wrists. He did not fear this death. He welcomed it. If he could no longer take his pleasure at the end of a Mountain Gorilla custard pump, he saw little reason to go on. ‘Kill me,’ he thought, ‘Kill me now,’ so that he might go to that eternal field of everlasting frolic with those Mountain Gorilla fuck-tractors he had glimpsed during his first encounter, now so long ago. Recalling those visions made him eager to die.
Finally in a clearing, “Marie” shrugged him off and he fell to the ground in a limp heap. He closed his eyes and knelt, putting his head to the ground so that she might stomp his skull to fragments. There was no fear, no rushing of his pulse; only resignation. He felt that he had died back at the council of the Mountain Gorilla males; this was just epilogue. Anything now could be nothing but. The heel could not come quickly enough; what was taking her so long?
He looked to see she had stalked away. Confused, he rose up on his knees, and with cracking voice, sang to her pleadingly:
‘Turn around, bright eyes!’ he begged. ‘Turn around, bright eyes!’
But she was gone; gone forever. He looked in the other direction: he was on the outskirts of the AMPTP encampment. She had banished him home.
*****
Nick Counter, red as the Devil with caked-on Mountain Gorilla menses, made his way into the camp and through the main trail that passed through the various stations with plodding, deadened steps. The other members of the camp stood, disbelieving of the spectacle he presented. He did not hear their shocked murmurings as he passed.
'Sweet Jesus; he’s gone native…'
'This has got to be the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome on record…'
'He’s turned into…he’s a total…Gorilla-bitch.'
He went directly to his tent, and pulled the flap closed behind him. He collapsed on his bunk and curled up, outwardly and inwardly. All was lost. Nothing would hold any value for him now. His Sun had gone out, and the rest of his life would be a deadening, deepening numbness. He wept bitterly, piteously, and inconsolably; not for what had happened, but for that it would never, could never happen the same way, the right way, ever again.
