Project "Jumpman"

Prologue

My brother and I grew up in a one parent household, with my mother. Our father was a zookeeper at the Bronx Zoo and that's where he met our mother, Pauline. She fell into an open gorilla cage and the giant ape became territorial when she landed. The mighty prime ape was the alpha male and was the smartest in the zoo. The keepers called him Kong, after the hit success of the movie of the same name. These are journal entries of my mother, after these events. Entry 1:1982, I felt his hands grab my waist and lifted me over his shoulder. He climbed up a large oak in the middle of the enclosure. My ruby-red dress got snatched on several branches, chopping off large chunks of the dress. When we got to a satisfying branch (for Kong's standards), he looked at me with an intense stare, an almost human stare. His hands had strange warmth. There came a yell from behind us and I turned to look and her stomach dropped. She couldn't tell, but her face was probably pallid, because the handsome Mario was standing at the edge of the habitat. Kong let out a ferocious roar. Mario had a hammer in his hand and was screaming just as wildly as Kong. He threw hid pudgy body over the veneer and stared rushing towards the large oak. Oddly enough, none of the other apes attacked the giant of a man. In fact, they look terrified as Mario let out another horrifying scream. Kong looked at me and something in his eye said, "I'm sorry". He grabbed me once more and climbed up to a canopy that he probably made. There were large rocks and wood on one side. One in particularly struck me as odd though, a large stump in the shape of a barrel. It looked like it had been carved by a sharp stone near it. Mario was at the trunk of the tree and has started to climb up when Kong starts screaming and picked up a large rock. He stood at the end of the canopy and tossed it...