Miricales of Elephants

My 2015 500 word entry for the Radio 2 competition that I found floating around in my notes. I hope it makes you feel something.

He always opened the crates himself.

He had them delivered to his rooms for the very purpose.

Chuck R. Swartchz was a billionaire and big game hunter.

Such was the nature of the man; he enjoyed shocking people with his macabre obsession, letting a snake of a smile slither on to his face whenever he saw them gaping in horror at the countless animal head trophies that adorned his walls.

He would don heavy duty (yet stylish) leather gloves and take a silver crowbar from its own special draw, savouring that precious moment of anticipation.

Prising open the crate's wooden cover he peered in greedily.

Chuck had expected to be greeted by the sight of his latest, biggest and most coveted kill yet. The head of the African Elephant. The guide said it was the largest he had ever seen, possibly the largest in Zimbabwe, in Africa.

So when a grey blur streaked out from the box's confines and barrelled straight into his chest, he almost had a heart attack.

As if in slow motion, Chuck's face contorted in pain, shock and cinematic horror as he was knocked over backwards, air forced out of him in a sharp 'whoosh!'

The thing squealed and smashed head first into the trophy covered wall.

They wobbled and began to tilt.

A particularly large warthog landed centimetres from Chuck's now bleeding nose.

The dazed and winded billionaire rolled to the side just in time to avoid impalement on the protruding horn of a Rhinoceros, that lodged itself in the floor boards with a satisfying 'Twang!'

Chuck whimpered and staggered to his feet only to survey the mass destruction of the scene before him.

Priceless vases lay shattered and trampled into the carpet, century old paintings were ripped and arcane artefacts strewn about the room like worthless antiques.

His trophies were ruined.

Glass eyes rolled around the floor, Giraffes were lodged in bookshelves, Zebra's lay discarded in tattered heaps and his lion!

Oh god, his lion!

It's once superior facade showed now an expression of upmost embarrassment as it tried, yet failed to look supreme and menacing whilst stuffed in a wastepaper basket.

Chuck felt like crying.

But his trembling gaze focused on the cause of his sudden and inconsolable misery.

The terrified baby elephant still managed to look nonchalant as it chewed on an million pound painting by Van Gogh. Deciding it had had enough of its short lived adventure the elephant trumpeted tiredly, hiccuped and returned to it's crate, dragging the remanence of the ruined painting in after it.

Chuck sank to the floor amidst the carnage of the once lavish room.

He stared in silence at the elephant calf, curled up next to the head of his dead mother.

He knew he should feel something, anger, resentment, pain.

But he felt nothing.

It was a female elephant.

He had known that, not known it had a calf.

A baby.

A child.

The little elephant wrapped its tiny trunk around that of its stiff mothers and slipped into gentle slumber.

Chuck had never known his mother and now because of him the calf would never know it's mother either.

Whether it was a because of a miracle or an elephant, something snapped in Chuck and he cried for the first time for years.

***

Hope, the elephant's name couldn't have been more apt.

In it's name, Chuck gave up everything to open a chain of charities that campaigned for the end of the big game industry.

There was hope for the future.

If you saw him now you would not recognise Chuck as the same man.

Gone was the cruel, empty contempt and in its place was a man at peace with himself and the world.

His face was sanguine and care worn, his tone gentle, his eyes bright.

If asked about his past he would simply smile and shake his head.

"I was saved," He'd say. " Saved by the miracle of an elephant, I was nothing before that."

The elephant was called Hope for a reason.