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By Emmanuel Williams

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I walk through the forest, as I usually do. Lurking, waiting, but everyday they come along. With their bows and their arrows. 

Hungry. Hunting.

I wonder what it’s like to come home with a meal, but missing some solitary member of the group.

It’s quite simple really, I wait. They come.

Easy…

One team of men… it’s always men… Once there was a woman, but they kept her so close, I could only taste her scent. 

She bathed. Obviously like crazy. Because her skin gave off more harmonious flower than I’d ever been lifted by in all my time in these forsaken branches.

All I wanted was to eat her. 

Not like I had eaten the men who came before, that I’ve been stuck with really ever since. With their sweat that gives me strength, their furs that keep me warm, their soft and slippery brains, the food stuck in their belly… 

But I digress.

She returned with them after one hunt and I never saw, smelled, or enjoyed her ever again.

Today. Here. Now.

I lurked, soon as I could smell the salt of their flesh. Into my domain they wandered. 

Here, where I take selectively, wound gracefully, and escape without a trace…

But the missing manhide… of course.

This time I heard them approach. I had heard them approach before, but this… they were hungrier than usual. This asymmetry with history more unsettling by the minute.

I felt my prey before he came close. His energy like a worried calf before it’s first steps. And it came to me…

How many times have I killed these idiots?

So eager. So unaware that someone may be hunting them out here. You’d think they knew by now that I was here. But no, here they come, trying to share the bushes, the trees, the animal victims, with me.

Their enemy.

I could rob them of their precious meal, but they’re just so big a meal themselves. And that SALT!

The bears don’t have that.

The crows. Squirrels. Foxes. Wolves to some degree, but not in such a bounty as man meat.

I’ve developed one hell of a hankerin’…

Give me more!

Why not this little twerp from hell’s tavern? This inexperienced imbecile who has no idea how close to death’s door he has wandered.

Fear ye not, wary traveller. Your end is nigh.

My claw closed his beak. I drew him nearer. With my free hand I began to choke him. Soft at first, then slowly clenching his neck organs until I could make a fist, and the air could no longer find it’s way out.

This way he sweats, in complete revelation of death…

For you see… that is what I bring. To them all! One by one they will all fall to the murderous madness that must be myself…

But it is too easy. 

I take him back into the furthest bushes and begin my feast.

The skin falls into my mouth with the slightest tear of my teeth. Simple.

The blood falls to the dirt, almost unnoticed but for it’s taste. Like thick water from a river of mud. 

Then you reach the meat. The muscle. The matter.

I didn’t finish him till the sun came up. But I finished him. I always do. 

Something about leaving unfinished business lying abandoned in my forest.

Even the bones have a hidden snack deep in the core. And though they threaten, they haven’t defeated me yet.

Some day I’ll get tired of the easy kill.

But I don’t intend to miss the next hunt.

In fact, I think I smell sweat right… fucking… now…

*