He filled his lungs with cool, fresh mountain air, puffed out his massive chest, and brought his heavy fist against his sternum.

He let out a powerful, rhythmic chest-beat pattern.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

The deep, resonant sound reverberated directly into the smartphone’s tiny high-definition microphone.

On the other end of the connection, Marcus’s mother gasped in pure, unbridled terror, dropping her phone slightly onto her kitchen counter.

“Oh my goodness, Marcus! Are you being attacked by an aggressive jungle drum ensemble?! Where are you right now?!” she screamed into the receiver.

Kibo leaned even closer to the device, his large, dark nose pressing lightly against the smooth, cool glass surface.

His warm, humid breath fogged up the glass entirely, blurring the glowing interface into a hazy, white cloud.

Confused by the blur, Kibo raised his thick knuckle and gently wiped the condensation away.

In doing so, his knuckle accidentally tapped the small video call icon floating on the user interface.

Suddenly, a live, crystal-clear video feed of Marcus’s mother in her bright suburban kitchen popped up on the display screen right beside Kibo’s face.

Kibo stared in complete shock at the tiny human woman wearing a brightly colored floral apron and holding a wooden mixing spoon in her right hand.

The human woman stared back at her phone screen, expecting to see her twenty-four-year-old son standing near a tour bus.

Instead, she was staring directly into the giant, furrowed, hyper-detailed, incredibly shocked face of a full-grown mountain gorilla.

And right behind him in the background foliage sat another giant gorilla, leaning back against a tree with a look of supreme, unbothered, judgmental disbelief.

For five agonizing, endless seconds, absolutely nobody made a single sound.

The jungle around Kibo was dead silent.

The sunny kitchen three thousand miles away was dead silent.

Marcus’s mother slowly, mechanically lowered her wooden spoon, her eyes bugging out and her jaw hanging wide open in utter, incomprehensible disbelief.

“You… you are definitely not Marcus,” she whispered into the phone, her voice cracking with confusion.

Kibo tilted his massive head to the right, blinking his long, dark eyelashes slowly with pure, innocent curiosity. 🦍

Behind him, Bako tilted his head to the left at the exact same moment, creating a perfectly hilarious image of wild primate synchronization.

“Where on earth is my son?!” the woman suddenly shrieked at the top of her lungs, her loud voice echoing off the ancient trees once again.

The explosive noise startled Kibo so severely that he instinctively swiped his wide palm across the glowing surface.

The red end-call button was triggered, instantly disconnecting the call with a soft, cheerful digital beep.

The bright screen faded to pitch black, reflecting only the dense green canopy above and the thoroughly bewildered faces of the two gorilla brothers.

Kibo sat back heavily on his haunches, exhaling a massive cloud of air through his wide nostrils.

He looked down at his huge, calloused hands, then looked back down at the small, dark, silent piece of glass lying harmlessly on the bed of moss.

Bako slowly, cautiously crawled out from his hiding place among the leaves, creeping right up to Kibo’s side.

He lowered his head, staring down at the dark, silent screen, and then looked up at Kibo’s bewildered face with deep respect.

“Is the tiny screaming kitchen human gone for good?” Bako asked softly in his low rumble.

“I believe… I believe I banished her back to her distant glass realm,” Kibo said, sitting up tall and trying his best to sound brave and heroic.

Bako stared at his older brother with profound, newfound respect, his dark eyes softening with affection.