Past Stories

Hunting Season

    
     They don’t tell people about the animal. The animal in the forest, I mean. They just give them the money and a gun to work with; they did for me anyways. I never thought I’d be so regretful of taking five-thousand dollars in cold hard cash in exchange for a day’s worth of some ordinary game. Well, I suppose there was nothing ordinary about the game in this forest.

     It all started with that man wearing a purple tie walking up to me at the convenience store. I was moseying along the bar area before sitting down at a stool, already ordering a drink to show the man that I was too busy to chat. He responded indifferently and continued to slowly pace to the bar seat next to mine. As he sat down, his purple tie seemed to shine in the fluorescent lighting of the lamp above the table.
     The man looked at the bartender before offering, “I’ll pay for hers if you get me what she’s having, as well.”
     I side-eyed him around the brim of my hood, cautious of what he was trying to accomplish. It wasn’t like I was the type of woman a man would buy a beer for. When the bartender brought out the drinks, he glanced at me carefully before reading off the total, “Fourteen sixty-seven.”
     The man in the purple tie handed the bartender a twenty-dollar bill and didn’t speak again until he was given his change back. After he took a few sips, and me remaining hesitant on the drink, the man spoke up, “This isn’t what you think it is. If I wanted to drug you, it wouldn’t be through a beer.”
     I rested my head on my hand, elbow standing on the old bar table. Impatient and extremely apprehensive, I demanded, “You need to tell me who you are right now before I put a hole in your chest.”
     The man grinned in amusement to himself and carefully reached in his jacket pocket, calm as if this action didn’t signify anything. My eyes widened and seriously, I reached into my own pocket and swiftly pulled a knife to his throat. He froze, his purple tie swinging slowly as the convenience store grew silent. His gaze drifted to mine before continuing to pull out a wad of money.
     Still tense, I questioned him harshly, “What’s that for?” I resisted the urge to snatch the cash out of his hand but restrained myself for my dignity. Money was hard to come by in that town. A nice little clip of dollars could have kept me full for months.
     The man dropped the money on the table, inching slightly away from the cold knife on his throat. He swallowed before answering, “It’s your payment. You know...if you want to take a job.”
     Hesitantly, I released the knife from his throat and returned it back to my pocket. I allowed myself to relax by a fraction, and said, “I’m listening.”
     The man began to explain the job to me. Basically, there was this forest he wanted me to clear up – a wolf or bear breed was holding up a deforestation effort. Though I personally didn’t agree with this man’s company on the matter of destroying the environment, five thousand dollars was five thousand dollars. The man said that his company would provide the guns and ammo to get the job done; they would even drive me to the forest themselves.
     The job was a no-brainer for me, a hunter during the winter season, who was now apparently a freelancer. As I said, money was tight back then. A deer and a rabbit a day only got so much for me to live on. Even though five thousand wasn’t much, it would have changed a lot for me. I would’ve gotten some warm clothes, maybe an actual apartment. I would’ve put some in a savings account just to have it there.
     But I wasn’t given all the facts when the man in the purple tie approached me with the assignment. He gave me almost nothing as I would soon discover.

     I don’t even remember what day it was – Sunday? Monday? Either way, I remember it being a cold and cloudy morning. It didn’t snow very much where I lived and I suppose it didn’t in this forest, either. Though there wasn’t any snow or frost, the trees looked almost completely dead and decaying, trunks scattered along the ground and every footstep resulting in a crunch that filled the forest with sound. It didn’t seem like anything was moving in the forest; it was a ghostly silence residing in the area.
     As I trekked through the woods, I remembered the drive up to the forest:

     The man in the purple tie asked to meet me at the convenience store parking lot three days after our first interaction. I went prepared: enough food for a few days, items to set up camp, a radio for emergencies, and navigation tools to find my way around the forest. When I met up with the man, he handed me enough weapons to support myself during the hunt, but, strangely, never once told me where the forest’s location was.
     “It’s not far. You’ll see.” The man insisted as he sat in the driver's seat of a nearby car and waved for me to get into the passenger seat. I obliged and cautiously sat down next to the man, noticing all the pristine gadgets inside of it. There wasn’t a speck of dust to be found on the dashboard nor on the floorboards.
     Before the man in the purple tie started the car to leave the parking lot, he reached in front of me to open the glove department. He dug through some papers before pulling out some refreshments, handing them abruptly to me. I eyed the offering, it including a metal liquid container with nothing inside of it. My eyes drifted to the man’s expectant glare.
     As if realizing the strangeness of his actions, the man in the purple tie nodded and chuckled, “Oh, right. You won’t take any drinks from strangers. This is for you to put whatever you want in it. You know –water, soda, beer, if you’d like. Whatever you want, and I won’t touch it. Here.” he placed the bottle in my lap, earning a tense jerk on my thigh; the bottle was heavy even without anything in it.
      I decided that I had better make use of the bottle, so I grabbed one of my beer cans from my drink cooler in the backseat and poured it generously into the bottle. After taking a few sips of the drink, I waited for any change in my body but found none. It seemed as if nothing was going to harm me, so I kept indulging in the drink.
     The car was silent for about half an hour, so I took it upon myself to watch the roads and surroundings, perhaps trying to navigate where the man in the purple tie was taking me. However, I found myself paying attention less to the roads and mostly to the foliage and scenery we were racing past. The trees were faded green, and the winter season had left them with fallen leaves around their stumps and dried roots.
     The scene didn’t reflect an ominous or a foreboding tone, though it was bleak. However, it did feel like it was hinting at the conditions of the forest I was going to. It looked like the presetting of a horror movie almost; there was nothing cheerful about it at all. I stared at the trees wondering this before they began to swirl in blurred spirals. The trees moved in a way that resembled a record spinning on a record player. It entranced me.
     I watched this phenomenon in awe and confusion, before my vision disconnected and became black.

     The memory of the events in the car brought back an unsettling feeling inside of me, realizing that I never used to fall asleep during long car rides. I tried to shake the thought of an ill-intentioned employer before remembering that the man in the purple tie was right behind me in his car, starting his engine again to leave me in the forest.
     “You’ve got everything, yes?” He inquired to confirm with me before he left.
     I hummed in acknowledgement and gripped my belongings in my hands and near my feet. I affirmed, “Yep.”
     The man raised his hand out and extended his thumb, “Alright then. And you already know the station for communication on your radio, right?”
     I nodded and affirmed once more, “Yep.”
     “Excellent. I’ll have my radio on me constantly if you need me. And if, for some reason, you need to see me in person, I’ll be at the checkpoint near the entrance of the forest. You’ll see it if you follow this road west,” he pointed at the road which his car was on, “and then you’ll just follow the trail markers from there.”
     Nodding again, I noticed the man in the purple tie’s shaky demeanor. He was constantly eyeing our surroundings and even adjusted his tie in the middle of his explanation. Before he turned to walk to his car, the man glanced at me and said, “Good luck, miss. See you soon.” The idiom didn’t sound genuine, but I waved a thanks at him anyways. I watched the man scurry off to his car, confused as to why he was in such a rush.
     As the man drove away hurriedly, I looked around the forest again and decided to go ahead and set some traps in the vicinity. As I walked to the location of the potential traps, I listened to hear if any footsteps were being made around me, but the only sound present was the leaves crunching once more below my boots. However, the occasional flurry of wind would send a slight chill through my body; I sure was grateful that I chose to bring my heavy hunting jacket along with my light one.
     After I prepared my traps and snares, most of them included bear traps, spring traps, and deer traps, I concluded that I should make a fire for my camp that night. I wanted to get accustomed to the forest’s overall mood before I began my hunt for this animal. Once I got the fire started, I knelt near it and attempted to warm up my hands, the fire’s crackles being the only noise in the area.
     I remained quiet for a long time, occasionally looking up to scan the area where I had positioned traps. There was no sound other than my fire in the forest, however, every once and a while I could’ve sworn that I heard faint chewing in the distance.

     I elected to go to sleep as soon as the night got dark and cold, as I could barely see three feet in front of me. I rolled my sleeping bag onto the cold forest floor, avoiding any damp patches of dirt. Sleeping in forests was not a problem for me, as I had done it my entire life. As soon as I laid down in the sleeping bag, I immediately relaxed and felt the warmth of the fire as it lulled me to drowsiness.
     Woods were where I was most comfortable; I could have lived primitively in them very well if needed. In fact, I loved the wild more than anything else in my life. It was calm even if slightly dangerous; it was predictable while it still often surprised me; it was beautiful yet ugly.
     It was my home.
     That thought lingered in my mind for a few minutes before it finally eased me to close my eyes and sleep.

     The hunter slept peacefully; her body repeatedly rose up before it descended with quiet puffs of air. Apart from her and the fire as it still blazed with its warm aura, nothing could be seen in the forest. It was as black as a starless sky, the only other shimmer of light shone from the moon; its shape was only a sliver of a crescent wide. Once again, the crackles of the fire were the only thing to be heard during that night.
     The hunter would never expect to be in danger in these conditions. Her hearing surpassed those of every other person and her instincts were even sharper. Surely, she would have detected if something was amiss. If something was awry, she would have realized it as there was no ambience to confuse it with in the forests.
     However, she did not know where she was. The effects of the drug given to her on her journey to the forest made her lose consciousness; therefore, she had no idea how far away the forest was from her home or any other place familiar to her. She might have felt comfortable and safe while she slept, but this forest was unlike any other forest.
     Of course, the man in the purple tie had not told her this because no one would want to take a job if it meant the forest would most definitely take their life. That is just poor employer skills.
     So, some information was kept from the hunter; that was most certainly the shortcoming of the man in the purple tie. Another shortcoming of the man in the purple tie was slowing down halfway to the checkpoint towards the entrance to the forest after he dropped off the hunter. He had received a call from an anonymous number telling him to employ one more certified hunter for the job. He pulled to the side of the dirt road and engaged more into the discussion.
     His last conversation went like this:
     “I thought my last one was the lady?” The man complained.
     There were some murmurs on the other end of the line.
     “That isn’t what you said two weeks ago. You wanted me to bring her here and then you said you would pay me. Now you want me to bring another person so you can have, what? A spare sacrifice just in case?” His tone triggered the anonymous caller to fall completely silent.
     The only sound in the forest was the sound of the man in the purple tie’s car engine which still ran. The man stared at his phone in anticipation before he suddenly felt extremely uneasy. The atmosphere had changed.
     The man in the purple tie looked around his car and surroundings anxiously before he tried to talk to the caller once more, “Look, I’ll do it if it means I never have to come here again when it’s done.”
     Still on the line, the man’s attention slowly drifted to his driver’s side view mirror. Nothing was said between the caller and man anymore.
     The man froze in terror, his faced had paled to a grim shade of white. There was again no sound.
     A loud scream rose from the man in the purple tie. It would be the last sound he would ever make. The scream arose such a force that it caused the man to lose all senses which made his phone drop to the floor of his car.
     The anonymous caller finally spoke, hinting at a small chuckle as they concluded, “It seems as if we do not need to hire anyone else anymore.”

     I woke up to the sound of one of my traps which had been triggered, immediately energized to see what set it off. I unzipped myself from the sleeping bag and grabbed my hunting jacket, knife, and rifle as a means of safety.
     I was excited; for the first time in my life, I would catch something within a few hours of trying. I ran to the trap; a wide smile had already appeared on my face. I raced to the tree stump where I had put the trap and looked behind it only to be deathly shocked.
     There was no game, not even a small rabbit or squirrel. I was shaken so badly at what my trap had caught that I had to take a few steps away from it to try to calm down. What it caught spelled imminent danger for me.
     In the snare of the bear trap laid a disheveled purple tie.
     It was the same purple tie that my employer had. I examined it further to see if what I saw was not just my imagination. But when I inspected the tie, I noticed faint blotches of what looked like dark purple stains on it. I didn’t realize what it was until I saw the stains oozing onto the metal trap. I gasped as soon as I saw what the liquid was –blood.
     As soon as I gasped in horror, a muffled snap sounded in front of me. I swiftly raised my head to meet the gaze of a horrid creature which I had never seen before. My blood ran cold, and my limbs felt heavy on my body; I was unable to move.
     I wasn’t quite sure what I saw then, as the animal resembled no other animal I had ever heard of before. Its entire body was an abysmal onyx hue. Its shape was unnatural as well; it had four distinguishable legs, but its torso and abdomen had protruded angles, and bones which surfaced to its flesh. Everything about this monster was terrifying, but the most otherworldly horror about it was its head. The creature’s head was larger than my entire body and had a forest floor mane that cascaded down to its gargantuan feet. Its mouth was full of jagged spines that acted as teeth; a crimson fluid dripped from its snarled lips. I think what disturbed me the most was that the monster had no visible eyes. Where eyes were supposed to be seen, thin slits in the shape of Xs.
     The monster growled in a malicious manner and inched itself towards me; I cowered before it before I snapped back to reality. I turned around and began to dash towards a tall tree I had passed that was not far from the dirt road. I scurried up the tree as fast as I could while the creature attempted to scratch the tree down with its razor-like claws. It eventually gave up and started to pace around the tree as if it hoped I would just leap down.
     I hugged the tree as hard as I could and squeezed my eyes shut; I couldn’t stand to even glance at the monster anymore. All I wanted to do was wake up from the nightmare I thought I was in. I waited for it to happen, but I could not ignore the rumble of the monster below.

     This now brings me to the present. Of course, I’m still in the tree. It has been for a few days, now. I really thought that the big guy down below would’ve found a way to come eat me already, but it seems as though it’s just as dumb as I was when I decided this trip would be a good idea. I guess that dumb monster isn’t as bad as I thought it was when it isn’t five feet away from me. In fact, I think I kind of have a certain power over it now.
     I’ve discovered that it hasn’t moved a single inch from this area for the past few days –not even to eat. I believe that it can only eat people; that’s why it hasn’t moved! And since it can’t climb up to me, it can’t eat me! Ha! So, it’ll just starve while I get out of here alive. I’ve been making sure the beast knows that too: “Hey, big guy! I may be going a bit crazy up here but guess what! You can’t come up to me, so you can’t eat me! And if you can’t eat me, then you can’t eat at all! Hahaha!”
     And, no, not having food for a few days has not made me crazy –not in the slightest. Soon, I’ll be out of here and can eat in the safety of my home. Maybe I’ll even have some beer, too!
     I sing, “I’m going to get out of here~! Hahaha!” Looking down to sing to the monster, I find that it’s not there. That’s weird. Huh.
     “Hey, what’s that growling sound?” Looking up, I freeze in terror; my throat hitches at the sight of the creature drooling hungrily over me. I giggle nervously, “H-Haha...it lo-ooks like you c-can come-me up here...”