Prey
He laid out his prize with solemn reverence, dropping it on the expanse of wax paper before him. He knelt, sharp twigs and discarded pieces of bark embedding into his scabbed knees, but he didn’t notice; his whole attention was on the small, prostrate form. He rubbed a stray hair out of the glassy, dead eyes; he needed to look in its eyes as he operated.
He glanced over his handiwork, smiling. He had stabbed three times, penetrating deeply; it crumpled to the ground before a cry could escape it. He covered the blood well there, then carried his prey in a tarp to this desolate location. Here he pulled out the large, sharp hunting knife that was his father’s; he smiled, thinking of the man.
He took a deep breath, then sunk the knife more gently into the belly than before, sawing with the serrated edge at the top of the blade until the body cavity split wide, pouring hot entrails onto the wax paper. He inhaled deeply, reveling in the singular odor of dead things, then watched the organs dripping viscous fluid onto the paper.
He packed the organs, carved out of the body, into another piece of wax paper; he dressed them as his father always said to dress meat for freezing, laying the neat package aside. He cut the largest muscle masses from his game; each he packaged as carefully and dropped in the pile.
Taking in a deep breath, he leaned back, wiping his perspiring brow with the back of one bloody hand. He laughed, a hollow sound, nudging the limp body. “It’s hard work, Papa says, but it pays off.” Papa loved to hunt; the meal he enjoyed most he slaughtered himself. Papa said he too had something the others didn’t: the taste for blood.
He leaned forward, restraining his thoughts, and began slowly sawing the body to pieces. He bagged the junk tightly in plain butcher paper, a thick twine holding the package secure. These pieces he would bury, to break down over time and return to earth; Papa had always approved of giving back.
He hefted the large canvas bag of limbs and, picking up his spade, began to distribute the pieces over the expansive woodland. He dug deep in the soft ground, enjoying the work for the perfume of overturned earth that filled his nose. Covering the holes with organic refuse obscured them from curious eyes; he was finishing up the last touches on the head when he heard a distant voice.
“Elli, Gene! Dinner!” The edgy voice was distant, but easily recognized.
The boy stood grudgingly, giving the unmarked grave of his younger brother’s head another sweep of leaves and dirt with his boot, then collected the sticky tools scattered at his feet and wrapped them in his little blue tarp to put in the garage. He would clean them later; free of Eugene’s constant presence for the first time in seven years, Elliot could breathe again.
