Billy from Borneo (6)
The hot sun woke him up. He kicked his mother in the belly, she still wouldn´t wake up. There was a heap of fruit left within reach outside the bamboo cage but Billy hadn´t the heart to reach out his long hairy red arms to get it. The little hairless ape was asleep beside the cage. He poked it until it woke up. It rubbed its eyes and then rubbed Billy´s head. Billy tried to keep hold of the little ape but it just stared at Billy´s mother and muttered something. Then it broke free of Billy´s grasp and ran into its house.
Later it came back with the big hairless apes. They threw a blanket over the cage and Billy felt it move upwards. He was about to pull it off but he had learnt quickly that these apes were much better to you if you didn´t make them angry. When the dirty beige blanket was finally drawn off he couldn´t believe his eyes. Here was the largest congregation of people of the forest that he had ever seen. Some of them looked like model orangutans, their auburn red hair was glossy and they seemed content and well fed. However, he also spotted a group nearby that were badly battered and some even had severe burns. He was picked up by one of the hair only on top apes and he hung on. It passed him to the strangest looking ape that takes everything. It had an extra pair of eyes that hung off its ears and nose. These eyes were not unlike the light reflecting ones he had seen on the dust making aliens. This ape had a mass of wiry white and grey hair floating out of its head. It was female and its skin lacked pigment. It didn´t look as healthy as the other apes. He felt safe with it but then he panicked when he saw them dragging his mother away.
He was left in the pen with the other orangutans. They ignored him for the most part, some of the hairless apes sat among them, they were generally there to control everything. An enormous orangutan leaped over to him and hugged him. “Daddy!” shouted Billy. He was really badly burnt and his arms and legs were wrapped in cotton.
“What are you doing here son?” he asked,
“We came looking for you, Mother´s here too. Oran and Scaffold escaped. What is this place?” said Billy.
“It´s a refuge for injured people of the forest, it seems there are some hairless apes that want to see us alive, once you are back in tip top condition they let you go back to the forest, but never mind that, where is your mother’” said the old orangutan.
“I don´t know, they took her away, they half beat her to death and then brought us here. What happened to you?” he asked sadly.
“They beat me with sticks and then threw an evil smelling liquid over me and using their bad magic suddenly all around me was hot and hurting and hot blue, red and yellow burning streaks flew up all around me. I ran to the lake. I don´t know how or why I did it but I felt so hot I thought I was going to explode and I needed a cold liquid to kill the hot liquid, luckily it worked. Next thing I remember was this pale white haired ape with four eyes fixing me up.” he sighed. “They really are devils, trust none of them, I can´t even for the life of me understand why they fix us up in the first place, sure they will do this again to us once we are released back home.”
Billy put his arm around him. “At least now we know they are fixing Mother.” he said.