ANIMALS
A hulking, armoured Bear tattoos a war drum with an orange glow in the night, softly shifting the fog deeper against the winter rains.
Both he and the pacing Wolf can feel the echo of the beat.
A promise of violence is shivering through the gentle woodland. A divergent, snaking arrow of feral anticipation has electrified and sharpened every edge of the meadow, entangling and infusing this patch of existence with the brutal stink of War.
The air is heaving with tension, and as the horizon seems to draw in, each moment draws out.
The laws of the universe do not breed reason.
The laws of the universe broker collisions and breathtaking conflicts. The coming together of chaos and devastation.
The universe demands change.
And when the universe demands change? Well… that’s when The Bear needs to die, or the Wolf must perish.
Neither is hungry. Neither is here to eat. This battle is drawn upon the lines of the primal gods of old- Greed, Jealousy and Malice.
Shadows that bite.
Doves and Eagles alike have been banished from the sky above. The frail rumour of mercy has been expunged. A flock of ruthlessness takes wing, and despair sets upon the weak. Sharks take advantage of dark water in the storm-clouds, stalking maelstroms on the margins of the chaos.
The stage is set.
It feels like several worlds turn on the outcome of this fight.
Slash! The wolf rushes with blinding speed and the battle is joined. Slashslash! The first lunges find no wound, but the difference between sinew and thin air leaves no room for error. Crunchcrackrip! The Bear draws first blood, and shears off three of the toes on the Wolf’s front left paw in an instant. YelpSlashRoar! As it darts away in pain, the wolf slices the left nostril of the Bears’ nose with a blindingly quick and vicious rip of teeth, leaving jagged edges to drip blood onto the thirsty ground. Tooth and fang begin searching, in earnest now. For fur that will whimper. For bones that will crush. For blood to flow. The distance between life and death diminishes with every feint. The inevitability of a pain too terrible to imagine sends both into a sickened, frothing frenzy.
For the gathered crowd, there are collective memories of the Ark that promised to carry them, to keep them safe through the worst. And indeed, it brought them here, but their journey robbed them of something vital. Accursed witnesses to the constant and savage forking of fate, these souls are fallen now. Captives, captivated by their own misery. Aroused, they debase themselves, imagining it to be in gleeful defiance of eternity. On cue, the cameras roll. Artists and robots work feverishly from the drone-tops, capturing every little detail for the breathless hordes who tune in, as if by magic, from all the corners of the Pale. Blue. Dot. Popcorn is popped. Odds are set and bets are placed. The sickness of the world is in the watching.
The Wolf is badly hurt and fading, but pride still has his hackles raised. He has managed to bite the Bear with ferocity at least twice, and in his heart he can hear the pack howling at the taste of this Nemesis blood, but this is a dead wolf walking.
The Bear, with all the earned arrogance of an apex predator, knows this fight is won already. He can end this, at any time. An overwhelming sense of power floods the fibres of his muscles. Surely, this is the moment of deliverance and victory.
A single shot rings out.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° MEN
Worlds away, in a sternly lit white room, furnished with stainless steel and surgical tools, an old man begins his butchering. His attention focuses on each task with practiced ease.
First, the meat animals. But really, it’s the trophy where he’d outdone himself on this trip.
As well as the two deer (a couple of good sized doe), he’d managed to take down a simply monstrous Bear, with the added good fortune of not having had to blow it all the way to smithereens with a shotgun. Satisfied, with the inner smile of a child who has learned to play chess, he takes a moment to admire the dead giant lying before him. He silently repeats a phrase that had built him the kind of life billions only dreamt of.
“A failure to plan is a plan to fail.”
In other words, Yogi, you might be smarter than the average Bear, but a rifle is a rifle. You lose.
He had started building the vantage point from whence he threw an end to the bear’s life 3 years ago, after weeks of looking for the scat and game trails that would put him right on the doorstep of the Bear’s den. He had built during the hibernative period, and spent days at a time in the hide so that if his quarry did smell him, the smell would quickly fade into the insignificance of the everyday. He had dulled the once shiny rifle and then added a silencer the size of Mount Doom. No sense in alerting other potential prey, after all, which is how he’d ended up with a second deer in the bargain. Looking at its hulking form, now it was in an orderly, human space, amazes him all over again. The sheer bloody size of the teeth confirms for him just how good of a shot he was. The Bear will look fearsome mounted in his parlour. He’ll get the taxidermist in tomorrow and sell the removed flesh to the knackery.
But first, the meat animals.
He starts whistling. It really has been a good day.
Skinning gives way to quartering. Quartering, to portioning.
As his knives find their well worn grooves and second nature takes over, he muses, not for the first time, on the relationship between Predator and Prey. His opinion? While they may not all wear wool, everyone around him is still mostly made of sheep. Wandering aimlessly, oblivious to external dangers. Reliant on protection. No way will he be going out like that. He wouldn’t allow it. He puts trusts in himself and God. And seeing as God had blessed him with such a good day out hunting, he must be doing something right. Damned straight. As he breaks Bambi’s mother into something unrecognisable, leaving the bones clean but his clothes filthy with dark blood, he continues to mutter to himself absently, in tongues only heard at crossroads. He has never lost. Even the Reaper hasn’t seen fit to try. Even with the white in his hair going clear like glass. He has ruled his domain with absolute power for almost a hundred years, and has yet to meet the enemy who will defeat him. He knows he isn’t invincible. But secretly, he wonders.
Don’t we all?
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
and shadows
in the greyest corners of the white room a shadow giggles they has watched the man carefully since the man was just a boy they has guided the man with whispers, led him to this point they has fed the ego of the man with comfort and safety filled the man up with honey and cream and sugar and salt hollowed out his soul with whiskey and sin they has added a layer of complexity to the flesh with a variety of aromatic smoke watched the meat soften and fatten up on the man for decades they has waited patiently and tonight was the night it all paid off