It was easier to care for the animals in the Thessaloniki Zoo when they were dead. Ahmad Aydin would know, having shoveled their shit in one lifetime and quieted their souls in another. Another zookeeper now held the shovel, while Ahmad soothed the spectral animals, entering agitated bodies to hush demons barking for freedom. There were demons. The animals were always starved for warmth, and there hadn’t been a visitor in weeks. Inflation, perhaps. But also the simple explanation of fear—only a few months ago, the zoo’s only tiger mauled a man in front of his mother, inexplicably ripping out his throat. Ahmad didn’t care for the profit visitors brought but knew visitors to be requisite to peace in their middle realm.

The Thessaloniki Zoo sat atop a brown hill, surrounded by more brown hills. Scattered trees painted the brown green. Concrete paths paved it gray. Ahmad made his rounds throughout the day—witness to the sunrise’s bright light, the afternoon’s soft blue. He tended to the ghost of the bear, who, jealous, liked to bat fish from his living roommate’s paws onto the dirt until she cried out in frustration. Ahmad stroked his back gently till the bear ghost rolled over for scratches. He broke up a fight between two ghost otters by entering the body of a live one and juggling balls to catch their attention. When he threw two in opposite directions, the otters dove for them. When he needed rest, he sat with the deer, who despite their hunger, were not inclined to the pettiness of other animals. He dropped mint leaves in their pond, pretending to brew tea he could pour through the transparency of his throat.

By the time the living zookeeper left, muttering not about the lack of visitors but about the persistent chill she felt, even on the hottest of days, at her place of work, Ahmad was already at the back gate, unlocking the chains and hoping that if not a visitor, there would be a trespasser who knew no better.  

In the evening, the light at the zoo grew red and gold, melting over the trees and dirt to expand, for just a moment, the brown-green duochrome of the small park before bluing. Ahmad trailed soundless fingers along the metal weave of a peacock enclosure and ignored the fanning of a ghostcock insistent on seducing the peahen grooming herself.  

A dog barked. Ahmad followed the sound, walking slowly, his uniform not rustling against his arms. Through the gate, two lovers, holding hands, one carrying a black backpack and smiling at the ground, the other chattering, eyes on the sky. They spoke English quickly, as Americans often do, the traffic of their words blurring like headlights on the road below the hill. They pointed at the peahen, seated and ignoring the advances of the ghost cock. They stood beneath the monkeys, unaware that ghost counterparts were flinging nonexistent shit. They found their way to a bench and sat, setting down their belongings. Ahmad watched as one woman brought her hands to the other’s hair, tucking it behind her ear before kissing her, the brown skin of their entwined arms made silver in rising moonlight. There was an inhuman ferocity to the kiss. Ahmad stood beside them, and felt the gentle tide of their intimacy.  

Ahmad found the barking dog beside the monkey enclosure—all black, a mutt. He felt the concrete between the webbing of its paws, the heaviness of sweat beneath its wiry fur. As its spirit gave way to him, Ahmad was reminded of his first love, who held him so tight around his cock he choked with pleasure.

The dog approached the lovers’ knees and encouraged one to pet him roughly. Oh gross, the other said. You don’t know where that dog has been.  

The one who pet him laughed, took her dirty hand and threatened to touch her lover’s face. When the dog bit her waving wrist, he expected a shower of blood. Instead, he found hardened flesh; bloodless, stiff. The lovers’ teeth were suddenly bared, the edges of their eyes blackened. The dog howled as they cried out, then grabbed their backpack from the floor and ran.  

They could have chased him down, Ahmad thought as he remembered how a body felt—wind in fur, at the neck, through silver air—but they didn’t. They remained on the bench, fretted over broken skin, and left the way they came, unsure of what had happened, into the early night. 

At a safe distance atop another hill, Ahmad unzipped the pack with his sharp teeth, found four red liters of blood kept cool in hospital baggies beside packs of ice, and bit into the bags, puncturing them at the top of the hill and letting gravity carry the blood down.  

He let the dog return to itself, watched it whimper and run from the blood. The once-living animals left their enclosures, never quite so bound as Ahmad trained them to be. They pawed the blood and used it to bathe; the bear, the deer, the peacock, the cats. They returned to their enclosures to rest, suddenly calm, remembering for a moment the warmth of their lives. Ahmad let his hands find the blood beneath his feet, used it to rub his shoulders as he used to after a long day.

It was his beloved’s idea to settle in Thessaloniki. A miracle they’d made it, they knew. Asylum was a dated concept. His beloved said, Once, our people conquered this city. Who is to say we could not do it again? That was before he left him, migrating to colder climes, unable to fathom that Ahmad lost his body to the cliffs. He was right there, Ahmad tried to remind him, cold fingers on a heart at night, even if bodiless. When his lover left, Ahmad returned to work. How long it had been since his beloved’s lips bled into his own. He licked his fingers clean.