Rudolph Pritchett

CW: Contains themes and/or references to torture, murder, abuse, and sexual violence

The years have all flown by so quickly, sixty-five winters and sixty-four summers. He is getting old and can feel it more and more with each passing day. He is not able to stoop as low, move as fast, or see as far as he once could, as he straggles through the woods. His mane of long thick hair still sways down his back, but it is now grey and white instead of auburn like it once was.

In old age, his mind is consumed by only one thing, the hunt. It is not just a hobby like it was years ago. It is now a necessity. He needs the hunt -the kill. He no longer keeps trophies; he also does not waste the meat. The hunt sustains him -mind, body, and soul.

He often sits and daydreams about the times when she would join him. Julia, she was gorgeous, the best thing to ever happen to him. She was the only one he ever loved, the only one to ever love him. He despised women. A cruel, immoral, abusive mother helped with that. Julia was different. She was sweet and soft and did not mock him if he stuttered. She did not smoke and drink and tell him he is useless. Julia also loved the hunt. He was young then; she was too. Julia shared in his pain of a horrid childhood, and it was the hunt that helped bond them.

They would spend days in the woods, living off the land, and tracking their prey. The two of them took such pride in field dressing it, collecting their meat and trophy. The hunts would end at camp, roasting their fresh kill over a fire, maybe a few drinks, and after their supper, they would usually make love by that same fire.

He bought this place for them. The vast acreage was sure to make for some mighty fine hunting, and it started out that way.

One morning though, Julia sat up on the side of the bed and said she was done. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she said it was wrong, and she could not do it anymore, hunting all those innocent creatures. For the first time, he felt betrayed by Julia. How could she do this? She was no better than any other god damn woman -no better than his mother. He trusted her, loved her, sacrificed for her, and for what? Just so she could turn her back on him. He snatched her off the bed, pinned her to the ground, and stared into her eyes as he began to strangle her. He could not do it though, not her. He could not even begin to imagine a world where he could hurt his Julia. He destroyed the interior of the home, smashed glass and broken drywall, as she packed a bag and quietly left. He never saw Julia again, and he never tried to find her.

He stayed on his land and started his farm. Luckily, there was always cheap labor hanging around in a town nearby. This was in the days before the internet, so whenever he needed some new farmhands he would ride over and spend the day asking around town. They were all mostly young, mostly runaways or homeless. None of them were really that dependable, but they were good for the short term. The old farm gained quite a few of them throughout the years.

The farm work is done for the day, and now he is on the hunt. It has been normal enough so far, mostly unremarkable. One of his shots was a bit off. He wounded one of them. The other shot was clean; that one dropped right away. He has spent the past couple hours tracking, and now he has had to crawl down from his horse. Based on the blood trail, it has ran into a thicket, and he will have to make it on foot.

The drops of blood have been getting lighter and sparse for the last few hundred yards or so, but he considers himself incredibly lucky, because it has ran into a bottom with steep sides. He has slowed his approach so he does not startle it. This bottom runs into a river with a strong current. He is going to do his best to not spook it in hopes that it will not panic and jump in the rushing water. What a waste of meat.

As he creeps through the bottom, he is reminded of Julia. In a situation like this, she would have been on the opposite side of the bottom, making sure it could not escape. Then once they closed in on the thing, if a distraction was needed, or if it needed to be directed a certain way, she would be the one to spring from the foliage. He was always the better shot; Julia was able to get her fair share too.

He knows he is close. He can smell the water, hear the rapids, and he just found a fresh track in the mud. It is exactly what he is looking for -a woman’s size nine tennis shoe. He thinks his lucky stars, because he wants to end this soon. It is getting dark, and he has to circle back to pick up the other little bitch he shot in the head before he shot this one in the shoulder.

They were two girls from in town, hippie types, free love and no bras. The two had responded to an ad in the local paper about becoming farmhands. He had considered slitting the blond’s throat and fucking the brunette before he snuffed her out. Maybe have a second go at it once she was dead. He decided against it though. He decided to chase old memories.

It was a hunt he had with Julia years ago. They had relocated to Alaska for the summer; running away from a bad situation, involving a desert hunt, down in Arizona. They had been hanging around Anchorage, enjoying the local night life, when they met this pair of college age girls that seemed pretty promising. The two had escaped the lower forty-eight too, running from a boyfriend or something, and they were on their own.

One a brunette and the other a blonde, he enjoyed hunting brunettes, probably because his mother was one, and Julia was always partial to blonds. It was something about the way that golden hair would shimmer as she scalped them -alive, of course.

They befriended the girls, and over the course of a few weeks, the couple convinced the girls to go on a camping trip with them. They all chartered a plane and were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. They tortured the poor things for a few days before turning them loose in the Alaskan wilderness. This was probably their second or third hunt like this, and they considered it their best challenge yet. They lost some of the prior game to a grizzly.

He lines up his cross hairs and slowly begins to squeeze the trigger. He watches the blond hair shimmer in the last of that evening sun as he debates on bitch stew or bitch steaks for supper.