The Hunt.

The murk is most fowl. Scattered chicken remains haunt a gloomy underground passageway that gets ominously darker with each descending step into seemingly beak oblivion. The ground smells slippery and I worry I will fall long and hard into most certain doom. I dread the coming black and cast deadly woe onto myself for not having brought some form of light source as a companion. I did not fear this type of night so overwhelming in the heart of day, yet my legs are compelled to travel onwards, downwards.

I wait for it, because in the now almost sheer black my hearing is heightened. I expect at any moment to hear a howl, or a growl, or some form of predatory sound that will foreshadow me being devoured. I enlisted myself so proudly, so eager, driven by the joy in my fathers eyes I would unlock should I kill the beast that hunts our chicken coop so unrelentingly. Sounds begin and come into focus and they are not the sounds I bewared. They travel through the tunnel now, these young sounds, of pups not yet veteraned by the taste of animal blood. It seems in my haste to fight a monster in a den I have chased a mother to a home. But my feet do not slow, my grip on my fathers rifle does not lessen. With steps more wary than careful I approach sounds of hunger and longing. Adjusting to what had been before complete blindness, I make out a circle of baby foxes, mere babies.

I hesitate, but only from anticipation. I had committed myself to murder the second my gloved hands had touched rifle. Bullet sounds echo throughout the passage and soon the young sounds are gone. I run from the hole with a speed hastened by cold sweat. I rush headlong through snow untouched by other than boot and paw print. The world blurs and I awake as if from a dream sitting breathlessly in my kitchen. My mother doesn't realize there is a change in me and continues merrily cooking. I look down and expect to see my fathers gun but I am rifleless and gloveless, with a glass of tea in front of me.

For two days I do not sleep. I breathe under covers and inhale long and count sheep. I try sleeping in every possible position but it does not come, my heart too loud to let me shut out that most awful of noises. My parents are thrilled, as our chicken coop has been unattacked since my crime was committed. Yet despite my bravery, I can not bask in my act as savior. For now and for days, that horrible echo rings into my drums. Like a Banshee's wail, a fox yells endlessly and unrelentingly into the night. Both of us, dreamless.