'The Hunter and The Deer' by Conrad Gardner
Image by Mareks Steins from Unsplash
The hunter smiled at his predicament. The turquoise deer stood fifty metres ahead, oblivious to his presence. It lingered by a yew tree, raised its head to the sky. Peonies and daffodils sprouted where its hooves stepped. The hunter aimed, then fired. Pierced its throat with the bolt, where it would feel pain and fear in death. Flowers the deer had given life to withered as it fell. Triumphant, he watched the deer’s blood drain, and its life follow. He tore the bolts from the lifeless deer’s body, and dragged it to his campsite.
Drawing his knife from his belt, he plunged it into the deer’s flesh and tore it through the legs and back. After stripping enough of the coat, he placed his boot onto the deer’s bare skin and yanked, tugged the remaining hide free. He recalled the tales of his childhood, the words that the old people still believed. ‘That deer isn’t to be hunted or touched. She brings life wherever she walks,’ his grandfather told him, many years ago. But the hunter knew better, ignored the senile buffoon’s ramblings. Why he remembered this as he skinned his prize, he did not know.
The carcass was still warm. It slipped in his hands and he had to tighten his grip, kneading the naked muscles. ‘You were supposed to be special,’ he said. ‘Thousands of deer, none of them like you. But you were nothing, just sport.’
Its flesh would serve as his food; its hide, his bedding. The perverse delight he took from knowing that the animal would never be able to mew in pain or protest stilled the forest.
As the sun set, he started laying a fire. He brought out a knife with a serrated edge, sliced into the deer’s leg. After setting the meat on a spit over the fire, he removed his gloves, matted with mud and viscera. He laid the hide onto the grass by his fire, and sat, slowly turning the spit. Flesh roasted from the fire’s heat, little drops of fat dripping into the flame.
When the leg seemed well-cooked, he bit into the charred flesh, still bloody as he liked it. Unlike anything he had tasted before, more tender than any previous kill he had enjoyed, he bit another, larger mouthful of meat until he felt a jab in his belly. An internal tearing, worse than a severe stomach ache. Looking down, he froze.
His belly was pulsating, a shape pressing against the skin. A fresh sprig of flowers emerged from his stomach. Then another through his ribs. Another through his lower stomach, his intestines beginning to poke through. He yelled in a frightful combination of shock and pain, as the flowers forced their way out of his body. Flowers from his back and legs sprung roots that bound him to the ground. Airless, gasping noises emerged as they sprung out of his throat. He screamed until flowers ripped through his head and mouth and he was no longer able to scream, for his voice had been taken. Then, nothing. Silence.
Dawn broke on the hunter’s camp, a fresh mound of flowers covering the foot of an oak tree. The deer’s carcass had sunk into the ground beneath the flowers, accompanying what remained of the hunter. The deer’s heart beat once more.
Edited by Marshall Moore