Lion Puncher

By Patrick Spragg

Why would someone break into a zoo, break into the Lion enclosure and punch the King of the Jungle on the nose? What happens next? Read this book to find out. Written as part of Nanowrimo 2017. Unedited before publication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9780244351557

Book preview

Lion Puncher

Lion Puncher

Copyright © 2017 by Patrick Spragg

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-0-244-35155-7

1. 01/11/2017

So here’s the thing. I punched a lion in the face. I can’t even say it wasn’t in cold blood because I planned to do it, I broke into the zoo, I broke into the lion pen and I punched the lion full pelt in the face. Right in between its hairy mane. On its oversized Cat nose. With my right clenched fist. It looked genuinely stunned. Like if it could talk it would say What the fuck? Who is this cunt? And what’s he doing punching me on the nose? This is my enclosure, I’m going to call the fucking RSPCA! Of course he didn’t say that - at least not with his mouth - he said that and more with his eyes. In fact he probably didn’t have much time to think about it all either as I followed my right punch with a strong sweep of my left hand. This time feeling the gentle squidgy thud of his right eye ball quell under my knuckles before I made full contact with his brow bone. There were no words said with his eyes this time. Just a giant roar and a leap into the air at me. There’s nothing quite like a fully grown pissed off lion flying through the air at you mid roar, mouth open, eyes blood shot with rage. You can imagine it making a good slow motion camera shot. You know like in Blue Planet or Planet Earth or Blue Planet 2 or Planet Earth 2. You know what I mean. Slow motion. A bit like the last few sentences not really moving this story on just talking about fucking film techniques from Nature Documentaries. Anyway he was leaping towards me majestically. Magnificently and lion like and fucking well pissed off. As his outstretched claws came nearer to my face and soon to be not there throat I instinctively stepped to my left. As I did I tripped on something underfoot and fell violently to the floor. I fell at such a force that my foot shot into the air above me as my shoulders hit the ground. All at the same time as the Lion clawed annoyingly at the space that I had just been inhabiting but now was completely void. Of me. There were still particles of air there. Anyway my violent foot swinging up in the air cracked him on the side of his skull - the same side where I’d punched him in the eye. And made full contact, like a fucking footballer doing an overhead kick. An accidental overhead kick on an African Lion. Did I mention it was an African Lion? Well it was, okay? Was this what the Kenyan tribes do if they can’t afford a football? Kill a lion, cut off its head and play keepy ups with it? Probably not but that was the image that went through my head in that nano second. The kick made sweet contact and the lion was flung backwards at full force. Yelping like a kicked puppy. Not that I know what a kicked puppy sounds like. I’m not a fucking animal. Well I’m a human and humans are animals but I’m not a puppy kicking animal. Fucking hell this is slower than a slow motion camera. Get on with it. The lion fell yelping to the floor. I was genuinely shocked, I had decided to fight a lion and I was fucking winning. If I was genuinely shocked, the lion was genuinely fucking flabbergasted. It looked around to see if anyone else was around. If I hadn’t known better it looked as though he was looking for a hidden camera. Or Jeremy Beadle back from the grave hiding in a nearby bush dressed up as a safari guy silently giggling to himself. But no it wasn’t. This was real. I’d just double punched and overhead kicked this majestic beast to the floor. The king of the jungle (Although African Lions don’t actually live in jungles) had been decrowned. Uncrowned. I was now the king of the jungle. King of the zoo. I realised that I’d gone on too much of a tangent just at the right minute. I’d been thinking like a James Bond villain monologuing too long when a simple death blow would have sufficed. The lion had rallied, probably at the sight of the self congratulating thoughts running around my head, given itself a good stern roaring to, coiled itself back on its hind legs and threw itself back at me. Although this time it moved a lot slower through the air. More measured. Was it tired? Or was it just being more careful with its prey who had been the one preying on him if anything up to that point. I came to from my thought monologuing just in time and stepped backwards slightly keeping me just out of range of his tired / over cautious / actually slightly half arsed now i come to think about it leap. This reaction seemed to be part of the Lion’s plan though as he bounced straight off the floor with much more vigour and determination and velocity and anger. Teeth bared, claws dinging like a perfect cartoon character’s shiny white teeth does on TV he seemed to grow as he approached (Not just because he approached - it wasn’t just perspective) my face. I was still backing off until I slipped on yet another piece of loose ground (I suppose the ground of the lion enclosure would be rocky and savannah like so there would be lots of loose rocks and the like to make it feel like home also probably not many volunteers to clean the Lion enclosure - sounds like quite a dangerous job) and fell quickly backwards, the lion tried to change its trajectory in mid air. Forcing its forearms (There’s a Two Ronnies joke in there somewhere - actually Lions don’t even have arms what am I talking about!). Forcing its front legs towards the ground bringing the arc of its leap down to a quicker conclusion. My buttocks hit the floor and my back rolled myself along the floor in a fluid action. It was completely accidental but I fell like a stunt man, the velocity of my fall continued to flow through me rather than be used up cracking a vertebrae or bruising a buttock. The lion was still trying to alter his landing but hadn’t had enough reaction time to get his claws lined up with my throat. Instead they came down either side of my ears, the rest of his body crushing down on my ribs. But they didn’t crack as I was in movement. I was a rolling flowing ball of kinetic energy and this giant cat had got caught up in the wrong fur ball. I can’t really explain how it happened but it felt for a moment like we were hugging each other while my body continued to spin around. Like a Greco-Roman wrestling match inside a Washing Machine. Then all of a sudden I was back up on my shoulders, my legs were extended into the air and the lion had been projectiled into the night air. Did I mention it was night? Not a long way into the night. I’m not a fucking superhero. This isn’t a fantasy story this all happened. I didn’t fling a lion into space. I just fell over and had a really lucky landing. The lion however did not. This weird physics phenomenon of a throw had got him over the moat and he was now impaled on the perimeter fence where the spikes came down to protect the zoo visitors. They are not designed to protect lions being flung at a fence. It was stuck up there whimpering and gurgling its last noises and breaths respectively. Like some kind of Lion Jesus. Isn’t that what Aslan is? As I watched the life ebb away from this beast, I noticed that just beyond the perimeter fence and the bloodied corpse of Mr. Lion Face - I didn’t know his actual name at the time - I could make out the flash of two phones that had clearly been filming the whole thing. Or at least the last gory throws. These lights were quicky joined by the flashing blue and red lights and sirens of the police who managed to retrieve me from the enclosure after the zookeepers had distracted all the other Lions away. Or actually there were no other lions in that enclosure. That makes more sense otherwise they may have joined in earlier. Or there were lions but they stepped back / didn’t join in / kept away because I had defeated their leader. Let’s go with the last option.

Well that was an epic paragraph. But I do feel that the epic nature of the content deserved such an epicly lengthed section of prose.

Why did I do it? fuck knows. Well actually I do know and I’m going to try and explain it to you now. The simplest way of explaining it is by saying I wanted to kill myself. I was fed up with my life for a variety of different reasons and had had enough of all the shit. I’d always thought it would be a weirdly romantic way to go. Either fighting a Lion or diving into a volcano. Something excessively dramatic - or is that just called melodramatic - like that. I’d even joked to my friends that if they ever saw me buying tickets for a zoo or an air ticket to [an exotic island with an active volcano on it] that they should tackle me to the floor or at least make sure they have enough black clothes in their wardrobe. It was one of those jokes where people aren’t really sure if you are joking or not though and they just look at you and give you a sort of sympathetic smile. Like a snake that’s feeling pitiful towards an earthworm. Well not really like that at all. In fact absolutely nothing like that. So yeah I was unhappy, deeply unhappy. I won’t go into the details right now as you’ll find out why later on. I was unhappy enough to want to kill myself and creative enough to want to do it by punching a Lion. What I hadn’t realised was that I was hard enough to bloody well win.

2.11.2017

The public didn’t take too well to my little rumble in the jungle. Scuffle in the zoo. Aggro in the enclosure. Of course the media helped that cause. Fanning the flames of people assuming I was the world’s biggest arsehole. I mean who goes around killing Lions. Well apart from rich people with guns. And everyone knows that those people are cunts. But at least they go to the Lion’s home. My lion was literally a captive target. Talking about captive I was being held in custody awaiting the bail trial (What is that even called?) the following week. Remanded in custody? I was only in there for a couple of days before my trial started but by the time I got to the dock the whole nation was against me including my wife and kids. A few days before they had been allowed to visit me. I’d explained to them what I’ve already explained to you. How yes I had planned to punch a lion but I hadn’t planned to kill it. A solitary tear rolled down my wife’s cheek. She knew I had tried to kill myself, we had talked about that being my preferred way of going previously (She had been one of those people who were unsure if I was joking (Like a snake smiling at an earthworm (Still not anything like that))), but I couldn’t explain that to my kids. If anything they looked proud of their dad, the inter-species-ial MMA champion. All you are getting is wife and kids at the moment by the way, you’ll get names, characters, quantities and maybe even some photos that I keep in my wallet later on. Anyway the kids were quiet and the wife was annoyed but it was all still fresh enough that she was confused quite why. When they left I was left alone. Alone in my cell. Alone in my enclosure. With my thoughts in the dark. My dark Lion killing thoughts.

It seems that over the next few days every media outlet in the country ran the story about the Lion puncher. Headlines went from the red tops Mane Offender, There’s a new King of the Jungle, Rumble in the Jungle to the more factual and accurate Man breaks into zoo and kills Lion in unarmed combat. There was a whole page of scantily clad women wearing Lion accessories (Claws and ears) in a Sunday Sport Supplement, a mocked up Dear Deirdre where she was giving me advice on how not to punch an email, a 10 page report in the Daily Mail outlining how immigrants are really what was to blame for this new politically correct culture where it wasn’t okay for a man to fight a Lion. Wasn’t that what we are here for?!! They had screamed in ink. Then there was the Guardian Long Read dedicated to it. They had asked leading psychologists, zoologists, authors and Germaine Greer to share their thoughts and opinions on something they were basically guessing at with conviction. The summary was that there was probably something deeply wrong with me and also that zoos are intrinsically a bit wrong anyway and maybe it needed this kind of statement to highlight that. I mean isn’t an animal being kept in a zoo each day a bit like it being punched a little each day? Or maybe it was just Greer who said that. She was probably right. Well except she wasn’t right. I hadn’t done it as a protest against the very concept of zoos. I’ve already told you why I did it.

Then there was the investigative journalism, I’ve accidentally left the quote marks off that last bit. Feel free to draw them on with a pen. This investigative journalism consisted of an old hack shouting what he felt to be pertinent questions at my wife and kids as they went on the school run. HAS YOUR HUSBAND EVER KICKED A PUPPY?! I’LL TAKE YOUR SILENCE TO MEAN YES. YES? OKAY! or through the letterbox DID YOUR DADDY EVER SHOUT AT YOUR CAT? which made them start crying but the reply still made it into the