The Hunter

God is dead, and I killed it. Its ethereal blood has seeped into the ground by now, into the clouds and the frigid expanse of space. I haven’t kept track of how long it’s been since the arrows hit, for all I know it’s been anywhere from a week to a year. Regardless, the sky’s still that saccharine blue, and an empire of weeds commands the Earth. They steal and kill just as they did before, running from the peace they always have. The great cosmic disease of agency has outlived its inventor, so my work isn’t finished—my gaunt limbs dangle as they did before, my cloak catches wind, my bow whistles into deep brush, my hard fingers spark like matches.

The morning is bright above the canopy; it’s scraps tumble down through knots of leaves before stabbing into the forest floor. The air swelters, almost boils. As I near the edge of the jungle, a few hundred yards away, I hear a young corpse cry over the birds’ and cicadas’ duet. Though the birds and cicadas are closer, the screams still drown them out. I pay little mind, feeling only brief excitement for the prey’s freedom and bitterness for the predator’s shortsightedness. Now, the stink of rot lurches through the leaves, wherever that prey animal is heading. I’m heading somewhere much farther ahead.

More light pierces through the trees, and with it, more heat. The trees thin, and the prickly ridges of grass replace the squelching compost. I turn around, and face the jungle. My iron nails reach for a leaf nearby. I hold my hand against it, and strike the stone skin of my thumb—launching a spark onto the leaf, and soon the rest of the forest. It’s unclear if this will burn the dense foliage clean, the wet mass that it is, but I can always circle back later. For now, what can die will, and nothing else will change.

The grasslands outside the jungle are unkempt and vile: tall grasses like an octopus’s arms grope at the sun with desperate hunger—some catch the light they seek, some starve below. Hiding in between their knots, tiny rodents shiver. With each footstep, I clean the dirt with cutting frost. Steadily, the grasses retreat, but the frost doesn’t spread, not really. Wherever the grass isn’t, the frost is—it isn’t taking space as much as it is the space itself laid bare, abandoned. The rodents are freezing now. When faced with an end to their constant running, they muster all of their strength as if they were still being chased. I’ll never understand that fear, why does life fear the salvation I offer it? The cold doesn’t hurt, I’ve done everything to keep it from working like one of those savages, so I offer nothing akin to the wrath of a tiger or bear. Thankfully, it doesn’t matter—in spite of their stubbornness, I grant them the peace they stole from themselves.

I still have a long ways to go before I finally reach where I’m headed. I continue to muddle through the wilting grass; about an hour passes of silent hiking. Suddenly, I see crude wooden parapets peaking just above the horizon. The walls are flimsy and curved; bent nails stretch out of them like cysts; rust grows on the nails like smallpox. The town is a Frankenstein’s monster of whatever scraps could be found: decades old wood is jammed next to fresh logs, and the odd brick beneath holds them up. This desperate architecture characterizes the place—street after street, the same haphazard design philosophy imposes itself. But at the Northern edge of town, past every dilapidated house and skeleton of a shop, there is a circle of white-capped mushrooms large enough to denote a border. A wide tarp hangs just above, keeping white and yellow folding chairs beneath adequately cool.

A long table traces the tarp’s shadow. It’s a graveyard born of apathy—scores of dead things line the table head to foot, and flickering candles jump from the gaps to scare off ravenous flies. Most of the food has been eaten by now, and all of the townspeople, short and thin, have taken the hand of another, or just settled for dancing solo. A chorus of drums mimes a sick heart, and the people of the village move in kind. Like thunderclouds in a turbulent dream, they roll and bounce and spin their way across the floor, sweating in shade, rattling themselves outside of their papery shells. They cannot listen or watch, this single waking moment is cut from the pretenses that bind a life together.

Their movements’ slow as the air gets colder. With every step, the warmth weakens, and their blood thickens into syrup. In the moment, confusion consumes them rather than fear—maybe a storm is coming, they probably think. I take my bow; I fire—one down, two down, three down, another, another, another until in the blink of an eye, the jagged scraps of foreign bones have shattered their own. The flies quit their vain hunt at the table and move scavenge what they can out of the former people. As they fall asleep, the empty town becomes ruins. Now that the humans are gone, it’s time for the flies. I go under the tarp to steal their attention away from the corpses. After raising a crude wooden knife out of my cloak, I saw through the tip of my finger and let a rot-smelling slush ooze out. They all flocked over to sip at it, they all fall to the ground instantly. I squeeze a few drops onto each of the bodies to kill any stubborn microbes, finally wiping the town clean. I count the dead: one-hundred-forty-four. Before lighting each house on fire, I count the beds: one-hundred-forty-five. Someone must have been lucky enough to pass earlier than the rest of them.

I watch the smoke rise for a few hours, watch it bind into an opaque grey blob, then fall away. The next morning, the sky was unstintingly blue. There was no smoke rising above the direction I came from; the forest must have survived. Whatever, I have an eternity to try again. That said, it could be helpful to get a closer look for next time. After walking for about an hour and a half, I finally reach the forest again. The treeline is scarred with black stumps and naked branches, but that was the extent of the damage. New saplings sprout where their shadows end, spreading the forest further into the grassland. I stand there for what must be a few minutes, looking for clues about the forest’s resilience. That’s when I hear a twig snap; I turn my head to see a blur dash into the tree line. Behind the trees, partially obscured, a young girl holds her breath. She’s muddy and bruised, but her eyes carry the heat of passion and desire. In her hands, she carries clusters of tree nuts. Soon, they will be saplings. A small rodent is nuzzled between her arms and chest, coughing up soot, but very much healthy, and very much alive. They hold each other tight enough to forget anything besides their hands. They’re scared, I’ll never understand why, nor will I ever understand the passion that radiates from them. They hold it like a rifle at my head, and lock me in place with some unnameable force. Regardless, I can always circle back later and release them. Now that they’ve seen me, I’ve become the very predator I hope to save them from.