I haven't written anything concrete in ages, but this was a little something I wrote that felt deserving of the notebook. I'm debating whether I can get a story out of it or not, so please let me know if it's worth using, maybe as a back story for a character for example??
TWs:
• DISCUSSIONS OF DEATH (OF AN ANIMAL TECHNICALLY)
• ANIMAL CRUELTY (?) / HUNTING
• BRIEF INDICATION TOWARDS CHILD ABUSE
• MENTIONS OF A GUN BEING USED AND A KNIFE IS ALSO USED
• DEATH OF A DEER (DONT READ THIS IF YOU LOVE DEERS IG)
(If I missed anything let me know)
None of this is super detailed and gory (I hope) so yeah do with it what you will, if you read it, great! If not, I don't care.
The forest was quiet. If you listened carefully, you'd hear nothing but the branches swaying and the birds singing. But if you listened, not just carefully, but with intent, you would hear it.
The sound of death.
A deer, a creature once so ignorant to the cruelty of man, wheezed and rasped for air, its peaceful life slowly drawing to a close. As it lay in its final resting place of dead leaves and dewy moss, above it, towering almost larger and doubly more imposing than the great pine trees, stood a father and a son.
Silently, and without preamble, so the whistle of the deers shallow breathing and the soft rush of wind was all that drifted between them, the father handed a knife to the son.
'Do it.' he commanded, his voice like jagged rocks. The son flinched, frightened, his hands trembling, palms sweaty, heart pounding in his ears so that he almost didn't hear the father repeat himself.
The deer wheezed beneath them, breathes haggard, lungs failing. Death would take hours.
'Do it.' The father spat impatiently, dissatisfied already. The knife began to slip.
A Not good enough. The son had only to look up into those cold eyes to know the father was thinking it. To know he would speak it, make it sting even more, if he were not aware the son already knew.
'I can't.' The son spoke, finally, voice as weak and fragile as a bowstring. The deer had eyes as void as the night, and yet they pleaded so openly. So desperately, as its hunters towered over it. The son could not look into them, for fear of seeing his reflection in the darkness.
He'd never been this close to death before.
The father stayed silent, though his breathes grew uneven. Heavy. A warning. A threat, not voiced, but clear all the same. The son forced his hands to stop shaking.
The deer suffered. If it could speak it would beg for release, the son knew, as he knelt in the leaves and the twigs, knees dampened from the moss, knife poised and ready. He would give it what it desired. What he had forced it to desire.
A hand on his shoulder gave him pause. Made him still. He looked up, hoping to see a proud smile, but a motionless, set frown met him instead. Unsurprising.
'I taught you the kill shot. Helped you master it.' The father's words were like a somber prayer, and how befitting it was, that the son had knelt to hear it. 'But a gun is a variable-"
"And we do not deal in variables.' The son parroted the ending of said prayer he'd heard a hundred times. That frown twitched, a lone movement. Besides it, the father stood like a statue. Stoic and unmoving.
'Exactly. Which is why it is important you learn now the importance of that knife in your hand. If you're smart, it will never be a variable.' The father nodded towards their prey, haggard anticipation lurking behind that impenetrable facade.
The son faced the deer again, reassured now of what he must do. Of what was required of him.
But even as he prepared himself, positioned to strike and finally give peace, he felt guilt rise up in him like bile in his throat. He had done this. He had made this innocent creatures hell a reality. He had positioned his rifle on his shoulder, aimed to maim-'not kill' his father had demanded-and fired the bullet.
He had become death. He had taken something that was not his to take. He had made an irreversible promise, and so now he must fulfil it.
With one brisk movement, in a split second of silence like the deer was holding its already wavering breathes in anticipation, in acceptance, he struck.
He killed, not for the first time, but now he'd seen it happen. Felt it as the life was torn from flesh that did not belong to him. He'd done it, up close. With his own hands. Using his own muscles. From the perspective of a god, taking something like he'd given it in the first place. Like he had a right to it.
It felt agonising. He did not show it.
'Well done, son.' The father stepped forward and knelt, examining the kill. He did not spare a glance for his son.
Because he did not need to. The son had already learned, and so there was nothing left to teach. Nothing left to say.
A father had taught his son death. And so the forest lay silent once again.
