A Hunt........

            He needed for there to be justice in the world.  And thus, he stalked his prey. Five nights previous he had been listening to his police scanner and had heard the report come in.  A unit had been sent to a possible domestic incident, and a six year old boy had been sent to hospital with a broken rib.  The father, also the alleged attacker, was apparently resisting all attempts to be interviewed.  And so, for the previous four nights, he had observed the goings-on in the small apartment.   

            Every night, his prey would come home from his job, berate his wife for the better part of an hour, then sit in front of the television and drink the cheapest of bottled vodka.  The Hunter snorted.  Trash was trash and it did not matter what rung of the socioeconomic ladder it was on.  Occasionally, the brute would hurl an insult at the woman who would noticeably cringe with fear every time.  Other times he would simply dispense with the verbal abuse and beat her.  Given that he was a bear of a man and well over six feet, and she was a petite thing with large scared eyes, it was hardly a fair match.  And so now, having discovered where the violent abuser worked, he hunted.

            He had almost laughed out loud when he discovered that his prey was a gardener in the local botanical park.  He had almost expected him to be a criminal or serial rapist or the like.  But to discover he was a tender of small flowers and orchards?  It was simply too much.  And so he walked barefoot through the park – he never wore shoes, he did not need to – until he saw his quarry in the Japanese section of the park.  Immediately, the look of the hunter was replaced with an artfully contrived look of shock.

            “Oh – my – god.  I can’t believe I’m meeting the man who designed the Japanese garden.”  He all but effused; mimicking the brainless effeminate articulation that he knew would get him noticed. 

            The man turned and straightened up, clearly confused by the girly queen who was now approaching him.  “What?”

            The hunter put his hands to his chest with fingers splayed as he grinned like an idiot.  “This is SUCH an honour. I mean, when I had to, like, decide on my thesis for landscape design, I came here, you know, for inspiration and there… it… was… my inspiration… oh – my – god!”  He pointed grandly at the plot in front of him.

            The man, clearly choosing to believe him, smiled and decided to let the homo gush.  After all, he barely got a nod from his supervisor, so to get a landscape architect major going off about his work, it generously stroked the pride within that usually went without.  And so he talked about his work, and the plants and how much effort he put into it and how unappreciated he was. 

            The hunter played along, stroking the other man’s ego like a surfer waxing his board.  It was so easy.  Mister Domestic Abuser was one of the little people who very much resented being at the bottom of the pile.  How pathetically predictable it was.  In truth, he could have been forgiven for it, but breaking a child’s rib simply because one was upset at the size of one's own penis was something that crossed the line.

            After about five minutes, he decided he had heard enough.  And so, he interrupted the man in mid-sentence and asked how his son was.  The abuser looked at him shocked.  He tried to say something several times but could not.  The fact that the Hunter had discarded his façade and now wore a look of implacable desire may have had something to do with it.

            “You are a maggot feasting on the fear of others.”  The Hunter informed him flatly.

            The abuser was not about to take this sort of insult from some girly poof, no matter how scary a look he could muster.  To that end, he stepped forward and swung a mighty punch.  If it had have connected, the Hunter guessed it would have been very impressive.  But he chose to not let it connect.

            With a blur of speed, he caught the abuser by the wrist and twisted.  The abuser crumpled with a strangled cry of pain and surprise.  It was a truly wretched spectacle.  Even when the abuser lashed out with the other hand, he was again quickly restrained and made to feel some of the pain he had caused.

            The abuser began blubbering like a child and pleading with the Hunter not to hurt him.  But it was too late.  He should have thought of the consequences before he had hurt a child.  And so, the Hunter bared his extended incisors and with a snarl of hunger, bit the man’s left wrist, directly above the vein.  The abuser’s look of pain was replaced by one of horrific confusion.  Having ones blood drained will certainly do that to a man.

            It took several minutes, but at last the Hunter let go and the now lifeless body dropped to the ground.  As planned, he took a small note from his pocket and laid it under the uninjured right wrist of his victim.  He was not concerned about his fingerprints being on the note; after all, he did not have any to worry about.  With a sigh of satisfaction, he walked away from the scene of a regrettable suicide.

            Several days later, he turned up on the doorstep of the woman and her son and handed over a large cheque that he informed her was her husbands’ life insurance.  He offered his condolences and walked away.  The life insurance story was a complete lie, the cheque, however, was very real.  He had barely stepped onto the street when he heard the delighted squeals of the now emancipated woman behind him.

The above excerpt is from a work written by Damien Timms and is protected by International Copyright lodged in Australia and the USA and may not be reproduced in part or whole without the written permission of the author.