I don’t like to talk about my experiences with the peligots, but Dr. Yuger has been telling me lately that I’ll never heal if I keep silent. I guess we’ll see.

Back in the late 90’s, I was stationed at a base near a mountain pass as part of a UN peacekeeping mission in Eastern Europe. The nearby road was critical for transporting troops and supplies. The mission was basically to keep it safe for our side and dangerous for the other guys.

The key thing above all else was to keep friendly with the locals. We were a small force, and the nearby village’s populace outnumbered us a twenty to one. They were our eyes and ears, feeding us a ton of valuable intel on enemy movements, rumored attacks, upcoming weather, you name it. The primary directive was not to piss them off.

The first time I saw a peligot, I’d been having a shitty day to say the least. I’d just gotten news that my wife was leaving and taking my kid, and all that the other guys in my squad would tell me was good riddance. Now, we generally weren’t supposed to venture out into the countryside, much less alone, but let’s just say I was in a mood, and no one cared enough to stop me.

I saw the peligot sitting in a tree at the top of a hill. At first, I thought it was a monkey, but when I got closer, I saw that it looked more like a sloth. It’s gray-white fur glistened in the low winter sun. As I approached the tree, it climbed higher in the branches, clearly afraid of me.

“It’s okay, little fella,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”

And then the peligot echoed back in its raspy, high pitched voice, “Won’t hurt you.”

I stayed there for hours, telling the peligot about my wife as it repeated my words back to me.

The other guys at base all had their opinions on the animals. Some said they were just parrots, repeating what we said. Others said they’d seen them solve puzzles and count to three.

Before the conflict, the western world had basically written them off as a myth, and now, no scientists had been stupid enough to risk their lives to come and study them in a war zone.

I’d always loved animals, and I guess I took kind of a shine to the creatures. I had a bank of uneaten MREs that I’d shlep up the hill to my little buddy, who I nicknamed Nails (he had incredibly long nails he used for climbing.)

I’d spend a lot of evenings sitting under the tree, talking through my shit while Nails listened, occasionally repeating what I said. Honestly, I’d probably never met a better listener in my whole life.

Apparently, Nails told his friends about the food, because after a few visits, about half a dozen peligots were waiting for me whenever I came.

At first, they were afraid of me, but when I kept giving them food without doing any harm, they eventually let me get close enough to pet them.

“Thank you,” I taught them to say, and they all squeaked it back at me every time they ate. And then we’d sit there for an hour, with me telling tales of my dad’s ranch back in Utah and all the trouble I’d caused as a boy.

One night I woke to screams from the nearby village. The place itself was maybe a mile across the valley, but the sounds carried in the night.

“Please,” someone was shouting in English. “No kill me! No kill me! Please!”

I woke up a couple of the guys, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. It had been a few minutes, and the sounds continued. Finally, I woke the captain.

“Sir,” I said. “Shouldn’t we investigate?”

He laughed and shook his head.

“It’s just a peligot,” he said. “Can’t you tell by the high-pitched voice? The locals are having a festival tomorrow.”

“Sir,” I said, trying to control my shaking voice. “They’re killing it.”

“I’d expect so,” said the captain. “Hard to eat it while it’s still alive. Now, I can’t say I condone the way they torture the poor things before they die. Something about the taste, they say. But then again, it’s not our job to rewrite their local customs.”

“But sir,” I said. “We can’t just let them–”

“Get back to bed,” said the captain, angry now. “It’s our job not to piss these people off. And taking food out of their mouths would certainly qualify. What, you some kind of vegetarian or something?”

“Please!” shouted the voice, a little weaker now. “No kill! No kill!”

Another one was screaming too now in the local language. I could only imagine what it was saying.

By the time I went to get my gun and try to sneak out, the cries had ceased. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining the suffering creature across the valley.

The next morning, I found myself shaking with fear. In the mess hall, the smell of bacon made me gag. I looked at my squadmates and was possessed with the near certainty that they were planning to kill me in my sleep and eat me.

“You good?” asked one of my old buddies, and I imagined his teeth cutting through my flesh.

I told him I was sick and left breakfast without eating.

Of course, we weren’t invited to attend the festival that day, but I watched the marketplace through my binoculars. Various meats roasted on spits. Some must have been goat and lamb. Some wasn’t. I watched them eating: the old men gumming the meat, the children carelessly dropping their plates in the dirt.

I threw up.

Later, I took a walk to the tree, counting the peligots as I approached. There were five of them now instead of six.

“Rock Boy dead,” said Nails. I hadn’t known the rest of his tribe had names. “Rock Boy taken. Screamed so much. Rock Boy dead.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

I would have said more, except that a rocket hit the base. Nails and the other peligots startled and started running for the valley (not that they could go very fast) but I knew any enemy attack would progress right through there.

“That way!” I shouted, pointing to the mountains. Nails must have understood, because he reversed course, and the others followed.

I waited until they’d made it safely out of harm’s way. Then I ran for the base to find the barracks basically obliterated.

There must have been a dozen bodies there alone. And even as I arrived another rocket struck, taking out the armory. At the same time, I could see the village was under bombardment across the valley.

The festival was now a scene of carnage. Blood ran down the gutters, and I could hear the villagers’ screams, punctuated with the blasts of additional rocket impacts.

“Get on the fucking comm!” shouted my captain. He was crawling toward me from the armory, both legs missing below the knee. “Get us some goddamned air support to take out those launchers or his whole place is gonna go up!”

As he said this, he just seemed to notice his legs for the first time and started screaming, over and over again.

Amazingly, the comms were totally untouched. I was able to reach headquarters easily.

“What’s your status?” asked the voice on the other line.

Suddenly, I realized that for the first time since I’d heard the peligot screaming, I felt a sense of peace. Another explosion rattled the windows, and I heard someone yelling that they were burning. But in that moment, it all seemed right to me. Watching the base burn, and the village across the way, my only thoughts were of Nails. I hoped he and the rest of his clan were okay.

“What’s your status?” repeated the voice on the comm, but I just hung up and ran toward the mountains.

Of course, Dr. Yuger reminds me that after the war, numerous scientists attempted to locate the peligots, only to conclude they’d always been a local legend. Perhaps they were wiped out over the course of the conflict.

I prefer to think of them as still living in those remote mountains somewhere, maybe telling each other, “Thank you, thank you,” as they share a bit of food.

As for me, I suppose they never should have let me back into the world. They found me near the ruins of the base a few days later, shellshocked and babbling, the only survivor without catastrophic injuries.

When I got back to the states, I looked around, and all I ever saw were monsters. Everyone suddenly looked so fat. And they just kept eating and eating, all the time. I couldn’t stand to look at them.

Maybe I felt like I had to punish people. And so I did, over and over again.

Finally, I got caught and started my work here with Dr. Yuger.

I appreciate that he lets me get online and talk to people. He says it’s an important part of my rehabilitation–to connect with others in a virtual space where I don’t have to think about them eating. He keeps saying I can be fixed, but only if I want to be, and maybe that’s the problem. Because I think the world needs people like me, or it’ll never get any better.

And when you’re thinking like that, you end up doing some very bad things. At least as far as the monsters are concerned.