Short Story: The Hunter

So some of my new goals for this year were to start writing. Here’s short story numero uno which I titled The Hunter.

     He stands up and gazes down. His arms are covered in blood to his elbows. It drips slowly from his hands. Dark red congealed pieces have dried and now lay in the corners of his fingernails. Wide-eyed, he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, his breath billowing out in front of him in the cold, crisp air. The boyish fops of blonde hair stick out from beneath the beanie covering his young face. His world has changed.
     Earlier, the day started out as a beautiful and exciting one. Fresh snow had fallen the night before and had frozen into a brittle crust over the ground. Their boots crunched across it as they walked. Big as giants. The prideful destroyers.

     They walk to their positions and climb higher. Firing lanes spread out before them like light from the sun. Now the waiting game begins. The boy is happy and proud. His youthful innocence drinks in the beauty of the forest around him. He is glad to be with his father. Hurried excitement ebbs to a quiet peacefulness. He feels at one with nature. The sun warms his face. Cold water drips off of icicles, the sun shining through them like diamonds.
     Sounds in the distance. His gut tightens and his breath quiets. Eyes gazing off into the distance, his ears strain across the silence. All is quiet again in the perfect stillness except for the rhythmic whooshing sounds of his blood rushing through his neck and into his ears. He feels the pores on his skin prick open and a warm rush moves over him. False alarm, he thinks. He relaxes.
     Time passes in silence. Still as statues they sit. No words or gestures. The two executioners wait at the ready. The boy grows sleepy and tired. The meditative calm of the winter morning have sedated and relaxed him. All of the sudden, out of the corner of his eye, movement.
     He turns his head and looks out. His targets in front of him. Like ghosts they have arrived in silence. Their holy presence blankets everything around them. He raises his rifle and looks down the scope. Frantically, he searches. The final target appears. He has been instructed well. He knows where to put the fatal shot. Breathe slowly. Center the crosshairs. Now bring them up a little. When you’re ready, let them slowly fall across the target. As they pass their mark, exhale and squeeze the trigger. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t jerk. The rehearsed words of his father slowly repeat themselves in his mind. His concentration is singular and complete. There is nothing else.
     The rifle explodes. The blast tears him from his calm and all of the sudden the world comes flooding back. The morning light, the snow, the trees, all zoom back into focus. The first twinge of the never ending reality hits him. He exhales sharply. Mixed confused emotions already grasp upwards at him from the pit of his tense stomach. I really did it, he thinks. The thoughts a declaration as much a condemnation.
     He slowly walks up on the victim, now his alone. Rifle in hand, he secretly fears that the dead body before him will come back to life with burning eyes and accuse him of his terrible deed. The only real witness of the cruelty of man, of life, the only one who had truly received it in all of its unbridled entirety, lies dead before him. The eyes only gaze ahead lifeless.
     We take care of our own, the father says tossing a knife to the foot of the boy. That statement more true now than ever. He kneels and starts the bloody work.
     If only our lives and the loss of our innocence were defined as sharply and as singularly as that rifle crack, the boy thinks much later in life. But we are shot over and over. The many pieces of us each dying its own death. So many murders. So many deaths. We die a thousand times over.
     It’s been many years now since the boy, now a man, has held a rifle. But he is not done hunting. And his weapons have become more accurate and devastating. His victims haunt his soul, crowd his thoughts. The stare at him with accusing eyes. For these witnesses still walk. They still breathe. They cannot take back what the hunter has taken and claimed for his own though. He still takes his share.
     And so he continues on. Walking through the streets much the way he did that cold winter morning so many years ago. When will the killing stop, he thinks.
Rifle slung over his shoulder, he walks. Footsteps quiet on the concrete, he disappears into the darkness and it envelops him, a final hug for the good hunter. He has come home.