Smart Prey
by Fatu Pombor
The wind pierces her skin as her feet slip outwards onto the wet cool leaves. She is running, running somewhere, running nowhere, her mind doesn’t seem to know as she gets deeper into the woods. It’s dark, though the midnight sky is filled with swirls of lilac, sapphire, and amber. Only lit by the glow of the moon that drips its light onto the cold hard surface, leaving soft flickers of kisses against her warm alabaster skin. The air is sticky and filled with steam. It’s only a matter of time before he comes for me, she thinks to herself. She decides to run faster. The cold night air shocks her throat as she inhales quickly. Her heart beats frantically as each foot hits the surface, pain shooting up from each ankle to knee. As she moves through the fog, she soon hears the faint whisper of shouting and then a loud roar. And in a moment of weakness, she turns her head and looks behind to see a silhouette of a man appearing in the distance and another of a dog.
The man in the shadows goes by many names, but for her, he decided to go by Victor. My victims usually aren’t as persistent as this one, he thinks to himself as he gradually follows her into the woods. From his experience, he noticed that they usually give up within a mile, tired of twinges and thorns gnawing at their feet, or they try to make some desperate attempt to hide and think that he won’t find them, but he always does. Or Axel manages to catch up to them before he can finish them off, with a blade that he has placed gently in his right pocket. Sometimes he lets Axel in on the fun if he gets bored and his victims don’t seem like much of a challenge, or if they start to stray far beyond the path. But he knows that there’s no fun in that because Axel just rips them apart limb by limb. Cause for him he likes the hunt. To make his victims squirm, begging for mercy. But this one, she’s different. She doesn’t give up, he observes. She’s been running for miles now and has yet to get tired. Maybe that’s what attracted
him to her in the first place–he could tell that she was a fighter. Or maybe, it was her bright blue eyes and dark long hair that caught his attention–the way it did with the others. But this one is different, he didn’t have to work hard to find. She appeared on his doorstep like a gift neatly wrapped and sent for him to open. He notices that she is running too far for his liking and, quite frankly, he’s a bit tired himself. He didn’t expect for this to take this long.
“Go get her boy,” he encourages Axel, and he willingly complies.
Surging forward, the dog leaps from the ground as he uses the power from his hind legs to push off the terrain. Victor hopes that he doesn’t tear her apart as badly as he did the last one. See in the beginning, Axel’s only job was to stop them and to hold them off before he could get there. But in a way he feels, like himself, Axel too has developed a taste for blood. A taste for the hunt, a taste to kill. He continues to gradually make his way through the trees using the flashlight in his right hand to light his way, without exerting too much energy because he knows that she won’t make it that far. They never do.
She continues to run vigorously and soon begins to hear the sound of small thumps hitting the surface behind her. Curiosity once again gets the best of her and she decides to look back. She gets a good look at the beast and her heart stops, vaulting from her chest to the base of her throat. She runs faster. She knows that if there is any possibility of survival, she must move quickly. She also realizes that there is no possible way of her outrunning a German Shepard, but she sprints as if there is a slight chance she can, taking each step with caution. But as she runs further the sounds of its vicious howls seems to get closer. She turns her head once more to get a quick peek. But the fog is thicker now, which obscures her eyes from the pending danger charging towards her. She squints them, trying to look past the abyss. Her breath catches as she sees the savage beast drawing closer. It’s eyes wild and untamed. Saliva splurging out uncontrollably from its mouth, while it spews out wicked snarls from the pits of its belly. It’s warm hot breath blares out heavily from its nostrils as it hits the frigid air.
She is then up on her toes ready to strike the ground as hard as she possibly can. Her heart pounds ferociously against the frame of her ribs. Her panicked breath is like thunder in her ears, while her thighs burn and lungs scorch as she continues to run faster. The sound of its growls gets closer. The adrenaline
feels like it’s going to burst through her skin as she increases her speed, trying to escape. Her eyes are wide with fear. She tries to scream for help, but it’s locked in her throat not wanting to break free. The sound gets closer and there is no escaping it.
She blares out a chilling scream as its fangs sinks into the flesh of her Achilles heel. Thud. She hits the surface hard, pain firing off like synapses throughout her knees, as the stones from the dirt brush against them. She kneels there trying to drag air back into her lungs as tears escape the corners of her eyes. Small broken sobs depart from her lips and the pain from her leg radiates throughout her body. She looks up only to see a vicious large dog barking only inches from her face.
“At a boy Axel!” he cheers in the distance. A smile tugs at his lips as his arousal grows with each step he takes. The anticipation is almost palpable that he can taste the blood. But he wishes to himself that he had somewhat more of a challenge. They always let Axel catch them and they never fight back, he thinks. They are all weak just like her. And he expected her to be different because she lasted longer than rest of them. He shrugs at the thought.
But as he begins to gain some ground, she thinks to herself that she can’t let him get her, I’ve come too far to have it end like this, she bargains, and begins to collect her thoughts. She looks at her surroundings and scans the surface for something to use. The dog continues to eye her down anticipating her movements. She then spots a fairly large stick only inches from her, and in a burst of courage, she leaps forward, grasping it firmly into her hand. The dog snaps quickly but before it can attack again, she swings, and it leaps back in fear of getting struck. She struggles to stand on her feet but manages to do so. She holds the stick in front of her and swings every time it places its paw forward. Its eyes grow angrier with clear irritation. She’s knows she’s making it mad. Its head sways with the stick, following it attentively as if anticipating her next move. And in an instant, it lurches forward clamping on the tip with its teeth, biting down firmly. Its actions startle her, and bile begins to rise in her throat, but she proceeds to grasp the end tightly. It whips its head from side to side trying to wring the stick from her hand. Panic arises as she hears Victor’s shouts become clearer. He’s not too far behind.
She thinks fast, spotting a rock with a fine sharp edge. She crouches down and stretches out her free hand, while the other struggles to hold on. It’s just out of reach. Its ridged edges brush against the tips of her fingernails. Inch by inch she stretches further and further till the palm of her hand grazes over it. He’s getting closer. She grabs it and without hesitation she strikes the first blow. Smack! She hits it right at the peak of its scalp. It releases its grip as it falls to the ground. A loud wail escapes from its mouth as it whimpers in agony. She falls to her knees to get a better angle. Smack! She hits an inch lower, blood squirts out from the wound, painting the rock red. It cries out a wail louder than before, as he writhes in a pool of misery.
The sound piques Victor’s curiosity. He’s never made that sound before, he thinks to himself and he soon becomes a bit anxious for the wellbeing of his friend. His leisurely stroll soon turns into haste and begins to quicken his speed. She is too far from his sight to see what has transpired and he tries to use his light to get a better view, but he can see nothing but the darkness around him.
Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! The smell of metallic copper fills her nose as thick beads of crimson drip down her face and arms, etching red streaks into the palms of her fist. Smack! She hears the cracking of his skull as blood flows down between his eyes like tears of wine, seeping to his jaw. Strains of brown fur cling to the rock with each punch, as his whimpers turn to silence. The feeling of his insides absorbing into her skin feels hot and sticky, she grimaces. Smack! She strikes one final blow and his body goes still.
Once she realizes that it can no longer hurt her, she releases the rock letting it thump to the floor. Her breathing is ragged and raspy, she takes slow deep breaths to try and regain her composure. The adrenaline then begins to gradually slip from her system and is soon aware of the open gash at the base of her left leg. But she has no time to sob, no time to wallow in self-pity. She hears rustling of leaves crumple in the distance. He’s close. She quickly thinks of what to do next, she knows that there is no way of out running him–not with a hole in her leg. So she looks around and, across from her, she finds a large bush beside a tree. She quickly hoists herself up and staggers her way to the other side of the path. Sparks of pain shoot up her leg as she applies a little pressure to it. She grits her teeth as she dives in. She
positions herself so that she is hidden well and uses the side of the tree to support my back, gripping her wound tightly. She is quiet.
In the distance, she sees flashes of light pierce the air and ricochet off the branches and the leaves, as the sounds of heavy footsteps draw near. She moves further back, praying that she won’t be found, and as she looks through the thorns, she sees a dark figure dance between the trees as the light flickers about. A wide devilish grins creep upon its face, laughing, mocking, taunting her as if she were a mouse struggling to pry open the claws of measly house cat. For a moment, her mind drifts to thoughts of him. Why is he like this? Has there been others? Who has he hurt before her?
He didn’t seem out of sorts, she reflects, when she knocked on the door of his cabin and he kindly gave her directions because she had lost her way, hiking through these woods. She then silently promises herself that to never to go on afternoon hikes alone if she manages to survive this. He didn’t seem like danger for she knew she could spot it a mile away. But she did not see it in his charming looks, in his dark brown eyes, or even in the way his lips lifted upward and showed that one dimple on the crook of his mouth. She did not see it in the way he casually asked her if she wanted to come inside to get a drink of water or in their long conversation they had about what she does for a living because he smiled occasionally, which told her mind that it was okay.
She didn’t see danger until it was too late. Until the door was locked, the blinds were shut, and her freedom was gone. She didn’t see it until he took her out back, her body gently pressed up against his blade. As he leaned in, his lips caressing the rim of her earlobe, telling her to run.
The pain in her leg interrupts her thoughts. She doesn’t see but rather feels the blood start to trickle its way out of her body. It oozes between the space between her tightly knotted fingers as she covers it with a shaky hand. She wants to cry out, but she knows that if she does, he will find her. So, she grits further down on her teeth to distract her mind from the pain. He’s here.
He huddles around the mess that she made of his companion. His eyes are blank because he can’t grasp what lies at his feet.
“She killed him,” he quietly whispers to himself.
Anger begins to surge its way through his veins because he realizes she took away the one thing he knew he truly loved and that loved him back. With Axel he didn’t have to hide who he was or what he craved. They both shared an unspoken bond, a bond that she has now torn apart with the edge of a stone. He begins to think awful thoughts of ripping her apart. Slowly peeling the skin off her back. Driving nails into the soft spots of her head and knee caps. Shredding her face with the tip of his blade and drowning her in a pool of her own blood. He then pauses for a moment and realizes his devilish thoughts. He hadn’t thought this dark since his first kill. Since her. But she deserved it, he justifies to himself. Since birth, that woman was a menace to him. She never truly loved him but only what was at the end of a bottle. He sneers at the images that pass through his mind. Of him at nine years old finding her slumped on the floor in a pool of her own vomit or at six, when she decided to give him a bath, not realizing that she was holding him too long underwater because she was too drunk to pay attention. Him at ten when he was playing in the kitchen too close to the stove, that had on it a pot of boiling hot water, and she decided to pour a little upon his arm so that he would learn to be obedient.
She deserved it because she was weak and pathetic, a waste of fresh air, he defends. He felt it was an insult for him to ever refer to her as his mother because no actual mother would do such things to a child that she had done. When he became much older, he made sure that she would never hurt him again. She wasn’t much of a survivor anyway.
He quickly clears his mind of her and continues to stare at his feet. He then slowly begins to laugh and scans the area with his light. His laughter sends eerie chills along her spine as she continues to watch him.
“Man, you really did a number on him,” he says aloud, hoping that she is listening, not knowing that she is silently watching him close by. “I have to commend you, it was a good move, a smart move”, he confesses.
In the back of his mind he’s a bit surprised because he didn’t think she had it in her. Maybe she is different, he reasons.
“But your times running out, I know Axel got you and you’re not going to survive out here for long, not in the state you’re in. But maybe that’s a good thing, hopefully you succumb to your injuries because if I find, you it’s not going to be pretty. You hear me!” He raises his voice a little louder than before. “And I will find you, I always do”
His voice is harsh. Anxiety rushes back in her mind and her breathing begins to quicken. She soon finds it to become difficult to stay quiet, so she slowly places one hand over her mouth to suppress the noise. At the pit of her stomach she feels the looming feeling of nausea because she knows that he is right ⎯⎯ she won’t last long.
After looking around he concludes that she is probably not in the area, so he decides to move on. Maybe I was wrong, maybe she isn’t in such bad shape and has made her way deeper into the woods, he thinks to himself. He begins to walk and make his way further into the forest. This relaxes her and she gradually takes her hand away from her lips, placing it beside her.
Snap! A branch that she fails to realize snaps under the pressure of her hand. She closes her eyes tightly and says a silent prayer, pleading to the heavens for mercy, as her body begins to quiver with fear. Victor quickly turns around flashing his light every which way to discover where the sound had come from. Silence takes over as he searches the night for answers, but he gets nothing. Moments go by and still nothing. He gives up and rationalizes that it might have been some animal, but deep down he knows he’s wrong. He leaves anyway and continues down the path keeping a close eye for anything that moves.
She doesn’t see but hears the shuffling of leaves pass by. She opens her eyes to find that his body has disappeared, which causes her to let out the breath that she had been holding for some time now. She continues to stay in her position, too scared to move an inch in fear that he might be near. She decides to let some time go by, before she decides to once again begin her journey. I need time to recover, she suggests to herself. Her wound now throbs with pain sending flashes of agony to every nerve of her brain, burning of a hot smothering fire. She applies more pressure.
Light seeps down from the trees when she decides to continue again. She’s decides to go in a different direction, away from where he traveled. She stumbles along the path trying place one foot in
front of the other, but not applying too much weight to her injured leg. Thistles of twigs and thorns occasionally snag at the opens folds of her skin. The pain becomes too much to bare and she finds herself falling to the ground, her back pressed against the soiled earth, looking up to where the trees meet the clouds. She lies there for a moment not wanting to get up. And it is in that moment that she realizes that her spirit is truly broken. She doesn’t quite know where to go from here. To her it seems as if she is following an endless path to nowhere, hoping that it will take her somewhere. To freedom. But she knows that it is only an illusion, for freedom is nowhere to be found. She has been walking for miles and has yet to see safety anywhere. A stray tear escapes from the corner of her left eye leaving a cool narrow path along her cheek.
“Help me,” she whimpers softly to the trees, but she knows her pleas are a single prayer to an empty sky. There is no God, there never was, she confesses to herself. Because she believes that if God were real, he would not let her suffer like this. But then a sound catches her attention. The sound of hope. The sound of rushing water in the distance. She quickly gathers herself to her feet and tries to investigate even further, to see if the sound is real, that her ears are not deceiving her. Or if it’s all just an illusion. If there is water there must be people, she resolves. She hobbles on one foot slowly inching closer to the noise. Each hop breathes new life within her broken spirit. Inch by inch, the sound roars even louder and she knows that her ears are not merely spilling false truths. For a moment she finds herself smiling, but it’s a smile that shortly fades into fear.
A loud voice carries over, shouting in the distance. He has found her. She then looks behind and sees the same silhouette that she had seen once before. Like a ghost, his body glides over, levitating above the foliage, running full speed in her direction. A devilish grin spreads upon his face, all too excited that all hope is not lost and that he has found his prey.
But instinct begins to settle in, and her brain registers that danger is quickly approaching. Adrenaline spikes and it demands her to run. She takes off instantly, punching away into the soft morning light, hurling for what lies just ahead. Sprinting through the leaves she pushes back the nagging sensation of pain at the backside of her leg. But the feeling seems to be etched into her mind and it is all that she
can think about. Her feet begin to slip, and she almost tumbles over, but evens herself out. Because she knows falling is not a luxury that she can afford.
In the distance, he notices her little slip up and knows that she won’t make it far, so he relaxes a little, but then too hears the sound of rushing water and a sense of realization hits. He knows that he must act now, to stop her before she discovers where that sound leads, because he knows that he will lose her for good. He runs faster.
She continues to stay ahead of him but for a moment she feels her legs are going to give in, but she wills them not to. His taunts grow louder while she tries desperately to outrun them. He will not catch me, he will not catch me. She repeats this mantra over and over in her mind because if he does, she knows her fate will be far worse than death. She begins can hear his heavy footsteps pounding away at the dirt.
He narrows in thinks, I’ve got her. He then plucks his knife out from his side pocket watching and waiting to strike. She bobs her head backwards to take a quick glance. A scream screeches through her scorched throat as she discovers that he is within a couple feet from her. He smiles and wields out his blade, anticipating the feeling of the first jab through her pale smooth skin. She swings her head forward and digs her feet deeper into the soil, hoping for an answer to her cries. But she soon comes to realize that there is no hope because in the distance she sees that she is running out of ground. She has no clue what lies beyond that edge. She thinks to herself, it could be water or that I could be falling to my death in a pile of rubble and stone. She doesn’t care. She rather dies in that way then give him any satisfaction of killing her himself.
But he knows what lies just beyond the edge. He runs faster and she is almost within his reach, his outstretched blade is only within inches. She feels the warmth of his presence almost press upon the width of her back. Snatching at the air, she begs to the sky to help her keep her balance just for a couple more seconds. She quickly reaches the edge of the forest and without looking or hesitation, she jumps. But as she does his knife cuts a clean line down her right shoulder. She cries out, closing her eyes and listing the names of her sins for penance.
Cold frigid water rushes over her, muffling her screams. The river shocks her system, pinching the surface of her skin. She gasps for air as she returns to the surface. She then begins to drift helplessly along with the current. She frantically looks around and surveys her elements and manages to swing her body so that she can look from where she jumped, hoping he didn’t come with her. She looks up to the edge of the cliff a see him looming over the ridge.
He stands there with his hands gripped at his sides, his right clutching the blade deeper into his skin. He’s angry. Angry at the fact that he let her beat him, angry that he didn’t get to do the one thing he craved. Angry that he was too scared to jump, but then again, he didn’t think that she would either. He watches her intently as she gradually drifts further and further away. A smile slowly spreads across his face as hers starts to disappear. She is different, he confirms to himself and vaguely attempts to remember the name that she had told him.
“Joanna,” he softly mutters to himself. He won’t forget this one.
He shakes his head once she is no longer in sight and heads back the way he came. He decides that he might go to Wisconsin this time.
They won’t find him there.
