I am Toast's brother, and this is a story I just finished. He wanted me to post this on the forum, so here I go.
The Deceivers
As the sunlight beamed into the dining room of his log cabin, the Hunter savored the reward from his most recent kill. He sat at his oaken table, marveling how he now enjoyed it. When he had started hunting the deceivers, he thought of their meat as foul. After all, the only reason he had begun hunting them hadn’t been because he was hungry, nor even for the sport of it. They needed to be put out of their misery.
They were just animals. They belonged in the wild, nothing more or less. Unfortunately, no one else had seen their destructive nature. People would feed them, shelter them, and even love them. They were humanizing the beasts.
He couldn’t blame them, though, because it truly wasn’t their fault. These creatures had an aura of innocence about them, and when coupled with an appearance that many found appealing, people were easily duped into believing that these creatures belonged with them. These animals were deceivers.
Only he had seen the truth. Everyone else had been taken in by the deception. He had wanted so desperately to shake them out of their trance, to remove the blindfold the deceivers had placed over their eyes, but every time he had tried, they had pushed him away, accusing him of insanity for not seeing what they saw. They had even threatened to put him in jail! Now he only had one option left to him. As an invasive species is exterminated, so would he exterminate this invasive species; for the greater good he had taken this burden upon himself, for it was a decision that no other could make.
This decision had weighed so heavily on him that the first time he had harvested one, he had not wished to partake in its meat, but it was there that his morality drew the line. If the creature were wasted in such a way, he felt that he would be no better than a murderer. So it had been with great reluctance that he had taken the meat and prepared it. It had been quite a shock to him when, instead revulsion, he had felt…enjoyment when he had place the small morsel of the meat into his mouth. That same enjoyment came to his now as he ate his most recent harvest for supper. Already, he was craving to go out again and bring back more of this wonderfully tender flesh. But every time that that craving came, he would beat it down with a thought to his original purpose. That had to remain his main focus for his hunt.
By the time he had cleared his plate, the antique clock on the wall chimed six o’clock, and the time had come; he had to go out again before the sun set. The particular animal he had been shadowing was never let out of the house after dusk. The Hunter sighed. By the time he prepped and got out to his blind, he might have an hour at most. Not a lot of time to hunt, but he had to take every opportunity he was presented.
So, having decided his course of action, he stood up out of his seat, turned around, went over to the door in the left corner. He opened it and went down the narrow hallway, wooden plank floor creaking the whole way, to his bedroom to get his gear.
Immediately the Hunter went to the worn out armoire across from the unmade double bed he slept in, and removed the lightweight camouflage clothing, which would cover his entire body, and laid it out on the bed. The summer heat made wearing the camouflage nearly unbearable, but he had to wear it so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone. Sacrifices had to be made.
As he began to undress, his eyes drifted towards his prize trophy hanging on the wall to the left of the bed: the front half of a black bear. In the entire log cabin, this was the one thing he prized most. The remains of his greatest foe. The one who had changed his life forever.
As he began to clothe himself in the camouflage, his mind went back to younger days. He had only known his father; his mother had been taken away when he was very young, and his father wouldn’t let him see her. He had told him that she had done horrific things, and that she didn’t care about either of them.
They had lived in this log cabin together, just the two of them. His father didn’t let him associate with too many people. Their community was the farm and the wilderness around them. They had spent their time hunting, fishing, even foraging for berries. They got their bread from their own farmland, and got their water from a well. His father earned a living with the farm. On the odd occasion they went to a town when they needed new clothing or other things they couldn’t make themselves. In the midst of this he had taught him everything from Math to English. He had been dependent on his father for everything. And then, one day, everything changed.
The Hunter had recently become an adult, and like many other days, he and his father had gone out hunting. In the middle of the woods, they came across a black bear. As soon it spotted them, it charged them and tackled his father. As it mauled him, and his father screamed, the Hunter at first had been paralyzed by fear, but then felt something boiling in his veins he had never felt before. Rage. Quickly, he leveled his rifle at the bear, and uttered a primeval scream as he fired his clip of eight 30-06 bullets into it. In the instant, it was dead. However, it was too late. When he looked at his father’s torn up body, the Hunter knew immediately that he was dead.
He had learned enough to take care of himself from his father, so with him dead and buried, the Hunter had thrown himself into the work to get his mind off of it. But no matter what he did, he could never forget. He had had the bear stuffed and put into his room, because he had thought that the trophy might bring him satisfaction, but every time he had gone in there, the sight of it would cause him to boil over with rage and beat the thing with his fists until they turned raw. There were several times that he had knocked it off the wall.
One day a year later, he was lying in bed staring the bear down, when he realized just how burnt out he was from the rage. He needed a reason for…everything. He laid there, struggling with the rage, with his father’s death, until finally it all came to him. He thought about the reason why the bear had attacked, and realized that it had been for reasons of nature. Either the bear had felt threatened or it had been hungry, but either way, he realized, it had not been the bear’s fault. And it was in that moment that he could no longer hold that bear responsible for his father’s death. His father had been taken, but as a result, the Hunter had become self-sufficient, so perhaps there even was a good reason for that.
So now, dressed in his full-body camouflage, he looked upon the bear that had changed him. The being that had both brought out his rage, and allowed him to defeat it. After grabbing his old scoped 30.06 rifle, and two eight-round clips, he headed for the door. But before he went out he had to say one thing to the great bear. “Thank you.”
He came out the front screen door and headed straight for his black Willis Jeep (it was the old army style), looking back and forth admiring his land along the way. His log cabin was at least 400 yards away from the woods, in the middle of the field he farmed. The wheat was still growing, (it would be a few months before it could be harvested), and it was flowing in the breeze. There was beauty here. His only connection with the rest of the world was the gravel driveway that led from his house to the county road. Just the way he liked it.
Snapping out of his thoughts, he came up to the back of the jeep and opened the back. Inside lay his solid black gun case. Opening the plastic case, he placed the gun inside and closed it, locking the latches into place. He put both of his magazines in his pants pocket (gun and ammo had to be separate during travel), then shut the back and came around to the driver’s side door, which he opened and crawled into the cushioned driver’s seat. Taking the keys out of his pocket, he deftly stuck them in the ignition and started the vehicle. Speedily he turned the car around, and set off down the driveway to the road.
After traveling down some gravel back roads, he arrived at his destination. Turning off the car, he opened the door and climbed out, examining the landscape around the road. Both sides were completely covered in trees, providing perfect cover all the way to his hunting area. The only difficulty that might come up was the marsh in between. Because of recent rain, it had become waterlogged and would definitely slow him down, but taking any other way would either risk being found out (after all, this was not his land) or getting to the location after dark. He’d just have to deal with getting wet if he wanted to have a chance of being successful tonight.
Satisfied with his decision, he closed his door, and went to the back of the jeep to open it up and get out his gun out of the case. The first thing he did was get one of the magazines out of his pocket and fit it into place in front of the trigger, then pulling the action back and letting it shoot forward to chamber a round.
The next thing he had to do was something he despised, but knew had to be done. From his pocket opposite the one with the magazine, he produced a homemade silencer made from a clear plastic bottle, and placed on the end of the barrel. It made him feel wrong having to use it (it reminded him of what others would think of what he was doing), but without it, every time that he fired a shot he would draw unwanted attention. It would be like throwing a corpse out for the vultures. Then he dug into his pocket and produced his polyester camouflage facemask which would cover his whole head except for his eyes. He slid this over his head, pulling the bands on the sides of the eyehole over his head to secure it.
And so, fully covered in camouflage, he walked into the forest. For about a half a mile, the soaked ground, with all its dead leaves, pulled at his boots as if trying to drag him down into a muddy abyss, but each time the Hunter was able to remove his feet from the muck, producing a most disgusting sucking sound. Then, finally, he got to the pine tree-covered rise he’d been walking toward. He built a blind of sort at the top of that rise hidden in the low-hanging branches of one of the evergreens, looking down the other side towards a house. It was the house where his prey was being kept.
All the way up, he was hunched over like Quasimodo, and head hanging down so that he did not step on fallen twigs or branches. He did not want to give himself away to anything. In not too much time he was on top, and slinking over to his blind in the trees, which amounted to pine limbs he had cut down and laid out in a square with the tree trunk taking up the back side. The Hunter stepped over the branches into the center of the square, and then lowered himself into a sitting position (his knees cracking as he came down), and rested his back on the tree. It occurred to him then that he had brought no earplugs, but he shrugged it off. The silencer would bring the noise down to the level of a door slam. His ears could handle that one shot. And so, with about an hour left of daylight, he waited.
His eyes were studying the scene in front of him. Through an opening in the branches, he could see his prey’s home. Most of what was visible was the backyard, empty except for green grass and the whitewashed fence. Probably meant to keep the beast from running off. Off to the left stood the bright yellow house that was home to the deceiver. He shook his head at the color of the house. How could anyone stand a house so gaudily colored? ‘The price must have been right,’ thought the Hunter to himself.
As he stared at that house, his thoughts drifted to the family residing inside. A man and his wife (plus the deceiver). From what he had seen of them, they were happy. They had everything that they wanted from life and were enjoying it. The Hunter felt sad for them. If they hadn’t been duped by the deceiver into taking it in as a pet, he wouldn’t be here now, and they would not have to feel the loss he was about to inflict upon them. He imagined them, weeping over the disappearance of the beast. The image so affected him that his resolve wavered. What right did he have to do this? Wasn’t their decision to make, their mistake to live through? If they were so attached to the beast, let them go on living with it. Eventually they would pay for it when its animal nature was revealed, but they had made the decision to take it in. Let them learn from it.
He found however, that he could not be that cruel to them. He knew that at some point, the beast would ruin the couple. He could not live with himself if he did not do something about it. It might hurt them now, yes, but it would keep them from being devastated later on. He had to do this for their sakes.
Suddenly, he was torn back to reality when the sliding glass door in the back of the house opened. The deceiver came out.
Before anything, he looked to see if it was being followed or being watched. The door slid shut behind it, and he could see that there was nothing behind it. The couple had let the creature out to play in the yard. This was the moment.
Heart pounding in his ears, he focused on the creature as it charged across the yard like the animal it was, chasing a bright orange butterfly. It was probably trying to eat it. Slowly, he brought the rifle up to his shoulder, and through the scope spied the creature. He twisted the dial that was around the scope, zooming in on the beast. It was about 100 yards away. Perfect. Adrenaline coursed through him, the excitement of the hunt weighing down on him. It was facing him from the side. He wanted it to be facing him when he fired. He waited, completely still. It kept chasing the butterfly. Eventually, the butterfly changed course and flew in his direction, and the beast followed. This was it. His finger went to the safety on the trigger guard, pushing it off. It went into the trigger guard, onto the trigger. He began squeezing it.
Suddenly, a stick cracked off to his right. Instinctually, he spun his head around. There was a group of men walking towards him. They were armed, with pistols out. He immediately brought the rifle to bear on them and fired off three shots, causing them to dive for cover, and the Hunter’s ears to ring. Immediately he dove behind his tree. As the men returned fire, and the sound resounded off the trees, the Hunter panicked. They had found him out! They had come to stop him! He screamed at them from behind cover, “What is wrong with you?! You blind, stupid fools, I’m doing this for you!” Their response tore into the tree he was hiding behind, sending wood chips flying.
The Hunter leaned out of cover, firing his remaining five rounds at them, sending them back to cover, and he ducked back into his as they fired back. Even as he ejected the spent cartridge and replaced it with his spare, he knew that it was over. Yet he felt no regrets. He had done all he could to save them, and now was going to be martyred for it. So he stood up and out of the cover, prepared to go down fighting, but when he came out, one of the men was already out, aiming at him. He saw the pistol flash, and felt a red hot poker go in through his forehead. That was the last thing he felt.
The FBI Agent stayed where he was; even as the Hunter crumpled to the ground, he kept his recently fired pistol pointed at him. After several moments, the body stopped twitching and lay completely still. The other agents began to move towards him, weapons kept up. The agent moved forward ahead of them, bent down and checked for a pulse on the neck. Nothing. The agent called out, “He’s dead,” to the others and holstered his weapon. He got on his radio. “The suspect is down. We need the morgue to come out for the body.” Receiving confirmation, he took his hand off from the radio piece in his ear, and made sure the perimeter was secure. Finally, he looked out to the home the hunter was watching. By the house, the “beast” stood in his grassed stained clothing cowering between his parents.
