-THE HUNT—By David MorningWay
The mist rolled through the fields of fading green like silent waves on a forgotten ocean, giving the autumn pathways of the local park an even more eerie setting within the dawn’s early hours. In the Smokey Mountains, if one got up early enough on the right morning, it was almost like getting to jog through Silent Hill, like stepping foot into another world, before the sun would rise and chase the fog away, like a shepherd scaring off the wolves so the herd could walk along safely.
None of the other sheep saw me follow her, obscured by forest and mist, I followed the woman’s scent from the wood line of her apartment complex, which is only about a mile away, all the way to the park’s entrance, which borders the local college. This convenient setup has delivered me several victims so far, most of which naïve young college students, just like little Jennifer here, who is now about a half-mile into her morning jog before class. I’ve been watching her for almost a fortnight now and must wait until she hits the one-mile mark before I move on her. For at one mile, she reaches her peak performance level, and she will need every ounce of her strength if she is to survive my presence and she must have somewhat of a chance, if the hunt is to be enjoyed. If there is not a chance for here to escape, then it is not a “hunt”, but simply killing…and that is not enough, not for such graceful and beautiful prey. She is only about five-hundred yards away now, cutting through the mist like a sentient blade with her perfect form and relentless speed. I begin to slowly unfurl myself from the image of man, breaking and reforming my bones and tendons as the façade of humanity melts away with the pink flesh around my rapidly expanding skeleton. Although she had earbuds in playing loud pop music, I try to slow my transformation so the sound of snapping marrow and ripping muscle won’t alert her to my close proximity, which she inches closer to every second. As my metamorphosis becomes complete, so does the gap between us, as she reaches a parallel position to me. Within the forest, I see the very first tell-tale sign of her brain recognizing something is wrong, recognizing me, as her nostrils begin sniffing the air, no doubt smelling my sweet and lovely sulfuric rot.
I know she has smelled me prior to this morning, but probably justified it within her mind as the decay of a natural forest animal. However, I am about as unnatural as a creature can be in this world, at least on this side of The Veil. I know she has felt my presence too, for each time she runs, the number of times she looks back and around, becomes more and more prevalent. Her head has been on a swivel the entire mile to me, frantically scanning for the threat that she is running directly to. You should have stayed back in the barn with the rest of the lamb’s little girl, but you are not a sheep at all are you? No, you are something a bit more, something courageous, something restless and fast…something delicious. The sheep all freeze in place, all lay down for the slaughter with pleading cries, but you will be different, you will run away with practiced skill fueled by desperate adrenaline. I can no longer hold back, no longer need to as I take my first heavy step towards you from out of the woods, the fog thick with your sweat and fear, your scent parting up my nostrils as the mist parts around my advancing figure as I move slowly towards you with strained patience. Before you take in my full horrific visage through the fog, you fulfill my greatest desire and run, like you have never run before! Thank you, Jennifer, I promise not to make you wait long. As she sprints off at a speed superior to most of her kind, I jump onto the gravel path and begin my pursuit, forcing myself to go slow, before I can no longer take the manic excitement and begin charging after her. She tries cutting through the field to make a shortcut towards the parking lot, but I knew she would, for I have planned this extensively and began turning through the field even before her. By the time she realized her mistake it was already too late. As she glanced back, I was already reaching the pinnacle of my jump and pounced upon her before she could even consider a course correction. As my jaw unhinges for the first Exquisite taste, I thank her, for her to return a fiery FUCK YOU at me before I begin. A fighter down to her very last moments…fighters, ALWAYS taste the best!
The dream woke me up at precisely 3:33am as they always do, making me spring up out of bed so instantly that it almost felt violent, as my breath pants strong with still lingering adrenaline and sweat pours heavy with slowly fading excitement and fear. As the implications of the dream ease into my conciseness, so does a smile, gently warming its way up my face like a welcomed sunrise. I had been growing quite bored waiting for my next vision of the hunt, waiting for my next wayward victim to track down. As I rise out of bed to relieve my Blatter, I stop and stare at the silver crucifix that was gifted to me years prior, gently rubbing my thumb and index finger around the circular band that surrounds the crucifix, right where the two crosses intersect. For several minutes I become lost in this act, circling my thumb around the silver band, as the warm suttle vibrations of the powerfully blessed precious metal calm the storm within my mind. The concealed energy within it creates electric goosebumps that shoot up my arm and ascend through my spine like a charged battery flowing through a circuit board. I stop and wonder just how many times this special amulet has hidden my true presence from my prey, and then let out a small bout of laughter at all the previous memories of the hunt. I release the silver amulet as it gently slaps against the tall mirror its hung on, making take notice of myself. The dark sky blue that usually fills up my Irises’ is glowing a fierce yellow, but that always happens when I have a premonition, the dream drawing out the power within me regardless of my level of control over it. I breath in and out deeply, as the vibrant yellow dulls, then transitions back to blue. How excited I am to find you Jennifer, how truly happy I am to once again be the hunter. Don’t worry, I promise not to make you wait long.
I sighed deeply as the alarm’s snooze function on my cellphone issued out loudly for the third time. My parents never allowed me to sleep past the third sounding of the alarm’s five-minute snooze delay, and it was a habit I kept through all three years of college so far. Fuck, I say in a half-mumbled tone as the hazy fog of sleep refused to dissipate from my now waking, but still clouded mind. Although I had been doing fairly well at switching out my morning caffeine for a ginger and turmeric tonic, I have a full class schedule AND need to get some cardio in AFTER I do some pull-ups and push-ups, so I’m definitely going to have to approve some fresh brewed coffee, and quite immediately. A lot of my classmates are prescribed Adderall, or even use meth to enhance their motivation for such obstacles, and I would be lying if I said if I never tried to do the same before…unfortunately. About three-quartes of the way through my freshman year I became overwhelmed, overworked, hyper-anxious, depressed, spiritually lost and pretty much any other negative side-effect this world can throw at us at the hardest of times, and this unwanted blending of hopeless emotions led me to make some, less than logical or safe life decisions. Fortunately, things like speed, alcohol and most other drugs end up having adverse or unpleasant effects on me, with the actual enjoyment of the substance being outweighed by the horrid after-effects with the gravity of a planet. The ratio of enjoyment compared to then feeling like rotten death after partaking, was never even close to being balanced, with the latter always being far superior for me, and thus it not being fun or worth it at all. Although I didn’t want to be able to enjoy doing such obviously self-destructive acts, it was still annoying seeing how others could sometimes functionally use this for their benefit, while I had to fight tooth and nail with every ounce of my energy and will power to even TRY to succeed.
This is a blessing Jenn, I reminded myself, and thought of how these substances have turned my cousin Charlotte into the walking dead, of how she was a track star and piano prodigy, and how she now sells her body and robs storage units for drugs. Although the memory of my cousin’s de-evolution in life saddens me deeply, the perspective shift of my own situation hardens my resolve and wills me to grab my running shoes as the coffee maker hisses and sputters its usually symphony, signaling that the last remnants of my morning brew are now ready for consumption. After a few sips of coffee, I chug some branched-chain-amino-acids and start my pre-run push-ups and pull-ups before I start thinking about my life too long, and therefore lose motivation. After about half an hour I complete my strength training and head out of my front door to the park. The only inner debate I have left at this point is music, motivational speech or horror story to fuel my run with. I decide on the story, after noticing that my favorite YouTube narrator uploaded a new forty-eight-minute story with an interesting title, something about the Olympic Mountains, and since I’ve wanted to move to Port Angeles ever since I watched Twilight as a little girl, I select part one, and begin my morning run with a bit more enthusiasm now. It takes about half-a-mile of steady jogging before my anxiety begins transitioning into endorphins and a full mile in until I get my prime stride, making my arms and legs pump back and forth methodically like mechanical pistons, as I become more driven machine than tenacious woman at this point.
I lose myself into the horror story as the narrator’s deep voice lulls me along, the thick morning mist accents the suspenseful tale like ketchup on hot crisp French fries. Oh God, I say out laughing at myself, I must REALLY be getting hungry if even my inner monologues are dominated by food metaphors now. I quickly look behind me, doing a three-sixty turning spin as to not fully break my stride whilst glancing back…and this is not the first time I’ve done this today. Why did I even actually do that, I try asking myself honestly, and genuinely have to think about it before I am completely honest with myself…I was scared. Why though, I ask myself, nobody was there that time, or the other two times. I have listened to creepypastas and other scary stories while doing NIGHT runs, so this little morning jog should be nothing. You know that feeling you sometimes get in the middle of the night? That feeling like you’re being watched in the darkness by something? Then the feeling gets so unignorable, that it forces you to get up and turn the lights on, but not too quickly though, because you don’t want to let IT know that YOU know it’s there…whatever IT is. That feeling had been growing inside me like a virus ever since I left the apartment, and save for the coverage of the rolling fog, all the lights in the world were expanding within the early morning’s sun…so there was nothing left to turn on, no switch that could be flipped to make the feeling go away or fear subside.
I tried using logic to shake off the creeping dread that was ascending inside me, tried telling myself that the half a cup of coffee I drank was playing on my already frayed and anxious nerves. Just as I thought, this process was beginning to work, until my dread swiftly and unforgivingly evolved into pure panic, as I began to smell rotten eggs and dead animals. It was like the smell was making my brain jump into fight or flight mode, which makes no sense because I’ve grown up in the mountains around bears, dead forest life and even a mountain lion once briefly. Luckily for my brain I’m LITERALLY already jogging, so I just follow my instincts and run the rest of the trail as I had planned anyway. However, instead of jogging back to my apartment the way I came, I just take the round-about way through town after getting a Gatorade. Once my frayed nerves calm a bit and my rehydration is complete, I jog on the road back to my apartment for the last mile. I think tomorrow I’m going to take my bear mace, it’s kind of big and clunky, but if it will stop a Grizzly, then it should handle anything out here. There I go, giving my fear away to nothing but the ether again, nothing but imagination and empty radio waves. Sorry, I’m studying the effects of frequency and vibration upon living biology, well, I WANT to study it that is. After all my basic credits are out of the way, I can transfer to a more prestigious university with a better science department. Seeing as I turned the horror off after needlessly panicking, I suppose I’ll finish it now, on the way back to my apartment. I guess I’ve become a bit sensitive to caffeine after taking weeks off and make the preemptive decision to switch back to Ginger and Turmeric tomorrow morning. I mean it had to have just been the coffee working on bad nerves, that’s all, I tell myself unconvincingly.
Okay, it wasn’t the caffeine! It’s been an entire twenty-four-hours since yesterday’s incident and the exact same thing happened on my run this morning. I began listening to part two of the story I began the day prior, but after having to restart it a fifth time due to my now wandering mind and paranoia, I simply gave up and opted to listen to the awakening sounds of nature instead. That seemed to start working for a short time, with the early morning birds flushing off my unease with their sing-song melodies. Ya, it was working, right after the smell came back at a completely different location than yesterday, eliminating the possibility that I was just smelling the same dead animal twice.
With the arrival of the horrid smell, came the departure of every single sound of forest life, like a switch was flipped within the very primal core of nature…life on, life off…and it happened so fast that the length of time it actually took seemed immeasurable. I stopped jogging completely now and held my bear mace out as if something would violently erupt from the woods and give frenetic chase after me. I was terrified of the unknown, or did my instincts actually KNOW something was out there and were desperately trying to scream at me that I’m very much in real danger. I ran the rest of the way in a cautious slow jog, my head turning back at random places whenever my nerves deemed it necessary. I walked all the way back through town with the most recent incident overwhelming my train of thought. What the fuck is going on, I think to myself, like a desperate detective without a lead. All I know for sure, is that if I’m going to keep running, then I’m going to need something better than just bear mace.
She’s definitely the one, I say to myself as the young woman jogs by, seemingly oblivious to my presence, let alone my true nature or what profound danger she is truly in. She does a quick spinning turn whilst jogging, doing a fast check to see if anybody is behind her…she shouldn’t have picked up the scent yet. Perhaps this one is a bit more in-tuned for picking up paranormal or supernatural presences, perhaps this one is special and more sensitive to feeling life-forms from beyond The Veil…and no doubt much more. As I see her nose twitch up and down as she squints her face, her aura changes, signaling to me that fear and anxiety are now bubbling to her surface. She just now picked up the scent, confirming my suspicions, for a force deep within her genetics, her very soul, alerted her to otherworldly dangers, BEFORE she even smelt the repugnant decaying rot that now permeates the air. The next morning, she returns seemingly both more aware and prepared to the paved, gravel and grassy trails of the greenway park. She is obviously more alert now, looking around randomly and unprompted at the misty forest scenery as if she is being stalked. She stops completely this time and holds out a can of bear mace like a pistol, feverishly looking around in fearful anticipation of some attack…she is definitely sensitive. I step back a bit, letting myself take in the big picture as I rub my silver crucifix with my thumb and index finger, making myself focus entirely so things don’t play out too prematurely. She takes the public path back to her apartment through town, as she did the day prior, and I follow her closely from the sanctity of the forest, the entire way.