The first episode of a double-episode mission

Sometimes an adventure is so dangerous that you must chop the account in half & share it in smaller bits, or else it will present a choke hazard for your readers. So here's part one of a two-part thriller for my TYGER BRYAN storybook. Enjoy it responsibly!

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Five

Next, I, Bryan the Tyger, decide to visit a prison. So I leap thru the window and go stand before the check-in desk.

“Can I help you?” sez the saleswoman.

“Yes, hi, my name is Bryan the Tyger. Could you direct me to the part of the prison where you keep all the cages, so that I can have a look around? I’d just like to meet some of the inmates and also befriend at least one guard.”

When the saleswoman looks up from her computer screen, she seems taken aback to realize that her customer is literally a jungle beast. She screams a little, and then sez:

“Well, you need to commit a crime in order to get into a prison cell. That’s just how it works.”

I answer: “No, I’m not interested in criminality — I mean, maybe I might maul the warden, if I see him; but that would only be when I’m already on the inside.”

“Oh!” the saleswoman seems to have grasped my point at last: “I think I get it: You’re not requesting to stay here for any amount of time — at least not months or years — you just want to do a brief walkthrough and look the place over?”

“That’s correct,” I say.

She presses a button and the large glass security door makes a buzzing noise and opens up.

“Go right in,” she sez. “When you reach the end of the hallway, take a left.”

“Thank you!” I say.

So I skulk down the hall and find the place where all the prisoners are kept. I first try to get their attention by roaring, but they’re all too listless to pay attention to me. So I skulk up to the cage directly before me and bang on its bars with my huge right paw.

“Oh my gosh, it’s a Lion!” the prisoner in the cage finally notices me, and he begins to shake his inmate who’s asleep. “Barnabus, wake up, the circus has arrived!”

“I’m actually a Tyger,” I explain. “My name is Bryan. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Paul the Saint,” declares the prisoner, making a bow. “Yes, likewise: nice to meet you, too.”

“Say, Mister Paul, do you know where I might find a prison guard? I’d like to prowl around and explore this whole cage-system here and, if possible, have a word with some of the inmates. If there’s a way to do this that doesn’t involve calling a guard over, that’s fine; I simply want to get on the other side of these bars, and I heard that prison guards possess keys that can open up all the locked entryways.”

“Oh, what you’re referring to as guards,” Paul answers, “are more properly known as Roman Centurions.”

I tilt my head and then reply: “Guards, centurions, whatever — I just wanna get into this network of cages so that I can have an adventure.”

“Sure,” Paul nods; “I understand. Here, let me rattle my drinking cup against our cell’s metal bars. That usually works to get the Roman Centurions’ attention, because the cup is made of tin.”

Paul makes a brief racket, and about fifty prison guards come running out of the break room with their weapons drawn.

“Sorry, false alarm,” Paul explains to the mob of guards; “There’s no fire or anything: I just was asked to summon your presence because this Lion here would like to get inside our cell.”

“Boys,” the tallest guard addresses the other guards (he is apparently their leader), “y’all can go on back to the break room; I’ll handle this—” then he pulls a set of keys from his belt; they are attached by a retractable chain. He opens the door to Paul’s cell; then turns to me and utters: “There you go.”

“Wait, don’t leave yet,” I say to the guard. “Also, please tell your friends that they don’t need to leave either — just as I am interested in befriending these prisoners here, I’m equally interested in befriending all of your fellow staff workers.”

“Nah,” sez the guard, “my boys gotta return to the break room; they haven’t finished their cigarettes yet, and we only get two fifteen-minute periods per eight-hour shift to enjoy smoking. But I’ll stay and talk to you, if you like.”

“You don’t need to finish your own cigar or whatever?” I say, now growing concerned.

“Nah, nah,” sez the guard. “I’m the highest ranking Roman Centurion in the whole legionary cohort; so I can bend the rules and smoke whenever I want. Thus if my allotted fifteen minutes pass in conversation with you and the prisoners, I can just light up and puff a cig at any point of the afternoon before my half-hour supper break. Plus I’m a non-smoker.”

“No kidding?” I say “That’s gr-r-reat!” (I roll my ‘R’s when I talk.)

So the prison guard enters the cell with me and Paul and Barnabus, and he closes the barred gate gently after us, making sure that my tail is fully inside the cell so that he does not accidentally pinch it.

“Well, here we are,” sez the guard, holding out his arms in a gesture that draws attention to the cell’s interior.

“Nice place — cozy,” I say, gazing around and nodding. My eyes alight upon a picture that’s above the bed. “Hey, is that a portrait of Jesus?”

“No, that’s Barnabus,” Paul sez. “He’s a sinner. That’s why he’s in prison.”

“No, I mean the picture on the wall there, just above his head.”

“Oh,” Paul nods, “yes, that’s Jesus. I painted that myself. Had to break a commandment to do it. That’s why I’m in here with Barnabus, rotting away with the rest of the malefactors.”

“Wait,” I say, “which commandment sez that you can’t paint a portrait of Jesus?”

Paul stares at me with his mouth partly open; then he replies: “I mean the one that goes ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth [Exodus 20:4].’ – And Jesus meets all three of those criteria: Lo, he is God’s son, so that makes him in ‘a thing that is in heaven above’; plus, having put on mortal flesh, he is a member of the class of things ‘beneath heaven, on earth’; and lastly, he’s also ‘in the water under the earth’.”

“But” I say, “that law prohibits graven images specifically, not paintings. And why would Jesus be underwater?”

“That’s where the grave is: Sheol! — don’t you remember when he had to go down there for three days and do the dead man’s float? Besides, it doesn’t matter about painting versus engraving,” Paul shakes his head; “the judges can interpret the statutes however they see fit; and those legal experts are more righteous and honest than us regular folks. So if they say that I, Paul, committed evil by painting a likeness of mankind’s savior, then there’s no choice but for me to pay my debt to society. You know what they say: Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

“Ah, that’s a catchy, rhyming proverb,” I remark. “Plus, it’s true.”

“Most are,” Paul states in a melancholy fashion; “most are.”

“Alright, that’s enough moody brooding,” sez the prison guard, snapping out of his spell of intense interest in our lawyerly discourse. “Let’s take Bryan the Tyger here on a tour of the prison.”

“Wait, you’re a Tyger?” Paul is shocked. “I thought you were a Lion!”

“Yep, I’m a Tyger,” I smile. Then I add: “It really was nice meeting you.”

“Yes! same here,” sez Paul. “We’ll have to keep in touch, if I ever make it to the outside.”

“Sure, sure,” I say; then we exchange our contact info.

As the guard and I proceed toward the rest of the cells, I look back, raise my mighty forepaw, and shout to Saint Paul: “I hope that you do not meet your death in this prison!”

“Thanks, Tyger Bryan!” he solemnly salutes.