The Kill

By

Kate Davison

The knife plunged into the belly, slicing through the thick hide and moving in a steady path toward the sternum. Two fingers eased into the opening, careful to guide the knife forward to decrease the risk of piercing the entrails. It was a bloodless ritual that enveloped Josh in the musky-sweet smell of death. Unbidden, images of kills past came to mind.

The serrated edge caught the ribcage. Josh felt the strain on his muscles as he sawed the breastbone in half. Progress up the body continued at a slower pace as he worked harder to advance to the underside of the skull. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his dirty hunting jacket. This trip had to be perfect; there could be no mistakes. His father would not approve of mistakes.

The gentle sounds of the forest were overcome by labored breathing and the echo of blood pounding in his ears as he worked. Adrenaline fled his system, unneeded now that the prey had been brought down, causing his hands to shake slightly on the knife handle. Only a few more moments and he could depart the site for good, leaving only a pile of organs for the greedy scavengers circling above the high ceiling of pines. Flies swarmed the open gut like vacationers at an all you can eat. He waved his hand in front of his face to disperse the unwanted diners.

Josh had hunted many times on his own, but never without feeling the specter of his father standing over him. The knife slipped slightly and he cursed. As a child, such a careless gesture would have earned him a cuff on the ear.

He inspected the hide to be sure he hadn’t nicked the organs and contaminated the meat. Such transgression would have been tantamount to trying to poison the family with arsenic - at least to the old man’s way of thinking. Bile burned the back of Josh’s throat at the memory of such hard-learned lessons.

Hunting trips to this part of Northern Michigan always reminded him of those painful, often bloody, lessons. Self-consciously, Josh fingered a long jagged scar that wound a path from behind his left ear to the corner of his nostril. Other scars crisscrossed in a roadmap of torture over the plane of his body, but this particular scar held more terror than all the rest. This injury had landed Josh in a trauma unit for four days. His mother sat vigil by his bedside, crying until her eyes were red and swollen, wondering aloud who could have done such a thing to her boy. Her capacity for denial had been enormous.

He lost consciousness on the transport to the clearing where the helicopter picked him up, and remembered nothing until he woke in the hospital days later. The only accident to Josh’s estimation had been the accident of his own birth.

Shaking off the painful thoughts, he slid his hand into the slick warm cavity purging the carcass of innards, spilling them onto the crackling leaves and rotting pine straw. He gave the wasted parts only a fleeting thought. He cut the trachea and esophagus loose and made a firm swipe of his hand to remove them in one motion. The heart and liver he placed in a bag. Let the predators take the other remains, these particular vitals were too important to leave behind.

His father had always believed the strength and power of the animal lived inside the heart and liver. To consume the organs would transfer animalistic attributes to the hunter. Josh looked to the bag and frowned. Over the years, he had cooked and eaten many a heart and liver, and never felt any stronger or wiser for the deed. Perhaps it was just another story meant to impress a young boy and make the father appear more glorified in the telling. Whatever the motivation, Josh continued the practice even now as a young man, too afraid to break the chain on the off chance his father would know.

His father always knew.

Josh fingered the scar again. He remembered with clarity the first time the bandages came off and he saw the ragged black sutures that held the left side of his face together. The depth of betrayal that insinuated itself into his heart had never quite healed - much like the scar.

Ghosts of the past tended to rear their ugly heads at moments when he least expected them. Sometimes he could smell a certain pipe tobacco and expect to see his father behind him. Other times he could be standing over his own son doing something benign like teaching him to tie his shoes and he would feel his father watching. Those cold, golden eyes haunted him always. He closed his own eyes against the pain.

When he finished disemboweling the kill, he walked around it a few times, studying the specimen from every angle. He’d never brought down game quite this large before while hunting alone, and now that he took a closer look at it, the prospect of dragging it through the woods to his truck held little appeal. He could always remove the legs and head, but the carcass would not fit easily into the sack.

The eastern sky began to dim as the sun inched towards its bed on the other side of the mountain. Soon darkness would entomb the forest, sending the temperatures to plummet. Josh hadn’t realized he’d been tracking so long. Sometimes it happened he lost an entire day so focused he became during the hunt. Single-minded intensity for the hunted had been drilled into his brain to the point of pain. He spent the day immersed in the mind of the prey, trying to anticipate every move before it was made, as a result he had moved farther into the woods than he first thought. He would need to drag the kill a good distance to get to the truck.

The temperature began to dip and the sweat on his skin to cool. A chill ran through him. He needed to get moving before it got too late and he was trying to find his way in the dark. He didn’t know these particular woods well enough to navigate them by instinct. There was nothing for it, he would have to try and carry the animal on his shoulders in order to make better time and reach the protection of the cabin before full night.

Josh bent down, wrapping his right arm around the deer’s hindquarters, his left he placed higher on the flank to support the burden and reinforce his grip. He pushed up from a squatting position. His thighs burned under the extra weight. Dressed out, the animal still weighed a good hundred pounds or more. If he could get the damn thing across his shoulders like some macabre fur stole it would be an easier burden to bear. For now, he hunched over slightly, stooping to distribute the weight more evenly.

The light sunk farther on the horizon, hiding behind the canopy of trees. Darkness threatened, coming at Josh from all sides, concealing the footprints he’d made while tracking the deer. Did he move southeast, or southwest? He didn’t remember - so he picked a direction that felt right and walked.

The weight of his burden bore him down, making his back ache. His heart pumped fiercely and his breath billowed out around him in hot clouds. His lungs burned more with each breath. Recriminations sounded in his head for not paying attention to the time and letting the daylight escape. He could almost hear the harsh rasp of his father’s voice as he began a diatribe on how stupid and worthless Josh was for getting lost in the woods at dusk. He shouldn’t be out in the forest at night alone. Bad things happened when one didn’t pay attention to the signals of the woods, or the position of the sun.

Many times he asked himself why he continued to hunt. It wasn’t that he liked the sport, or needed the meat to survive, though he always ate what he killed. It was more an annual need to prove he was not worthless, as his father had drilled into his head with cruel regularity. Josh vowed when his own boy got old enough to realize where his father disappeared to every year, he would hang up his bow for good. This would be the last trip. Tyler was already beginning to ask questions and begging to come along. No son of his would know the anger and humiliation that came from a trip into the woods. Josh’s own father had continued to hunt on his own long after Josh ran away from home.

A wry smile lifted the corner of his mouth. Ironic that his father would devote most of his life to hunting then die by an unlucky arrow shot from another hunter.

Like a manifestation of his father’s will, a violent sound of breaking brush came too late for Josh to avoid the impact made by the attack. Air purged from his lungs, lost in the dirt as his face smacked against the decayed leaves and pine straw of the forest floor. The deer landed on top of him then slid gracelessly off. As Josh struggled to regain his breath he rolled to the side, trying to move away from the kill, hoping the big cat would take the deer and leave him intact.

Movement caught the lion’s attention and it leapt, raking sharp claws down Josh’s face adding to the white cross-hatching of old scars already there then moved for his neck. Blood ran into his eyes and mouth, rolling up into his nose and down into his throat. A fleeting thought of drowning swam through his mind a moment before he choked, causing him to cough.

The lion was on him again. Fangs raked across his hand as he put his fist up in a defensive maneuver and punched the animal in the side of the head. His fist grazed the cat’s ear. The strike did not have the desired effect; it only made the animal angrier. A low growl vibrated through the big body. Ears flattened against the large head.

Josh and the lion stared at each other face to face. Golden eyes locked with blue. The air stilled around them, and Josh could swear in that moment he could smell his own fear pungent on the wind. Sharp hind claws raked into his legs, moving from knee to ankle, leaving a trail of gouged flesh in their wake. Hot blood ran onto the ground under him. Josh pulled back his fist and hit the cat again, this time striking true.

The lion backed off slightly readying for another attack. Josh had only a moment to stand before the cat came at him again, his injured shins not wanting to hold up his body. Snippets of unused knowledge shifted through his brain - he no longer remembered what to do for a lion attack. Desperate he reached for his knife and found the holder empty, lost when he hit the ground.

“Fuck!” The epitaph was not just for the lost knife but for the fact the lion sprang once more, landing on top of him and taking Josh down.

He fell on top of the disemboweled deer and the cat lunged for Josh’s throat. It was difficult to anticipate the lion’s moves in the darkness; only the feel of the animal’s muscles moving under his hands told Josh the direction the cat would strike. The soft quilt of his hunting jacket ripped open at the shoulder as claws pinned him to the deer’s hide. Skin and muscle burned under the assault. Pain flared hot behind his eyes. Josh balled up his fist and hit the predator in the side of the head again.

The sudden brutality caused the cat to back up from Josh, as if trying to reassess the prey. Moonlight filtered down from between a break in the trees. Golden eyes watched hungrily, waiting for another opportunity to attack. By all rights the cat should have retreated once Josh had separated himself from the deer carcass the first time, but the smell of the kill had been all over his coat and jeans. Quickly, Josh unbuttoned the jacket and threw it off, then stood and stepped back from the deer.

Slowly, he backed up, careful to remain facing forward so the big cat would not pursue a chase. Something on the ground slipped between the leaves and Josh’s foot, making him stumble slightly. The wavering walk was all the animal needed to sense a weakness and charge forward.

Josh braced for the impact.

The lion struck him full in the chest, tumbling him over backward. Arms and legs tangled with fore and hindquarters. Desperate fists battled with fierce paws as they rolled over again, each trying to gain victory over the other. Animal sounds, both man and feline, filtered up from the ground and shimmied along the trees. There was no one to hear the frantic sounds of battle, no one to rescue Josh from certain death. Just like before. There was no one to stumble upon the two combatants as they had the last time Josh fought for his life in the woods.

Fleeting images scrolled through his mind as he tried desperately to free himself of the lion’s hold. The sharp pain of a paw slap to the face sent Josh into a haze of fragmented thoughts, addling his brain. Fresh blood ran down his face as the wounds reopened. No, he wouldn’t die this way. His father hadn’t killed him despite repeated attempts, Josh would be damned if he would let an animal do the deed.

An accident. That’s what Josh’s father told the rangers that came upon them. The boy had always been clumsy, he explained. Worthless and clumsy - a total embarrassment to the manly sport of hunting. The rangers called for a medical team to airlift Josh out of the woods. There would be no rangers, no airlift, no white-coated medical team to help him now. Josh was alone.

Though he may regret doing it, he had no choice but to try and kill the lion to save himself. The old man had taught him the distinction between a killer and a hunter. The hunter ate what he killed. The killer did so for no other reason than the thrill. Josh had often seen the wild look of the killer in his father’s eyes as Josh cowered away from the vicious blows of fists.

“You won’t kill me, you bastard!”

Hot, fetid breath filled Josh’s nostrils as the lion opened threatening jaws for the death strike. Suddenly, Josh struck at the lion’s vulnerable neck, hitting it over and over crushing the animal’s windpipe under the force of repeated jabs. The angry growls were reduced to a series of pitiful wheezes as the lion tried desperately to take in air.

Stunned at his success, he pushed the animal from him and turned so he cradled it in his arms. Quietly, he rocked the cat back and forth as someone would a hurt child, until the last desperate breath eased out. The sides stilled.

He ran a shaking hand through the soft pelt. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t give me a choice.”

Time melted away as he sat there on the ground, his backside growing numb caught between cold earth and the weight of the dead lion’s body. The feel of the animal in his arms gave him strength. He was not like his father. The old man would have rejoiced in the kill, would have skinned the hide and brought it back as a trophy. Josh didn’t aspire to such gross vestiges of machismo; however, he would take the lion to his father’s grave and leave it as a peace offering - it was the least he could do, submit the lion’s remains as proof of manhood.