Hunter

The magazine slides firmly into place with a loud, echoing click that reverberated down the long dark tunnel ahead of him. Mildew nearly choked him with every shuttering breath he took to calm himself down in vein. His father's hunting rifle felt heavier in his hands then it ever did before when they went out on their hunting trips. Its weathered wooden grip eats into his skin as he holds onto it so tightly his hands shake. It could have been the terror and dread ripping his soul apart from the inside as well, but the thought wouldn't enter his head. He wouldn't allow it. He couldn't.

"Be brave, my boy." Jackson's trembling whisper muttered out as streaks of something wet rolled down his cheeks, remembering something their dad once said.

The inky blackness around him was as cold as ice, as the deafening silence stripped his soul naked and bare for it to witness. He could feel his nose burning while frantically combing his chest for the old military flashlight that was clipped to their jacket's front pocket. Another, quieter click is followed by a dim yellow beam of light that cut into the cave's bleak darkness. It could barely reach out to touch a few feet beyond the bent rusted pipes running along the walls beside him. Jackson's frosted breaths flow out and whisped into the air, reminding him of the bone-chilling frozen hell his life has become now. Still kneeling to prepare himself to march further, a loud CRACK rang out from somewhere deeper in the cylindrical concrete cave, followed by a gross fleshy gnashing he heard in vivid detail.

It shook him, but it was hardly the first, nor the worst thing that did today. 3:38am blinking on his alarm clock was the first thing he saw when he heard his mother's blood-curdling scream of agony that morning. All of it was so fast. The rush to grab his revolver from out of the dresser drawer. The race down his family's cabin stairs with it in hand. The sickly stench of copper that filled the air as he took a turn around the corner into the living room where he saw a twisted bony maw tearing a piece of flesh from his mom's-

A surge of vomit nearly escaping Jackson's mouth suddenly pulls him back into the moment, as he chokes the stinging bile back down his throat. His ears are ringing and all he could hear now was his heart. Fear makes it skip a beat as he pauses for a moment to think about how long he was lost in that memory. Shuttering breaths strain through his clenched teeth, pressed together so tight he could feel the bleeding slash across his jaw flare up in pain again. Snap out of it! 'Pull yourself together you pansy!' His father's voice rung in his burning ears, making him flinch for a moment at the thought it wasn't just in his head.

One final deep breath echos down the decaying concrete walls before he took slow steps further in. This far into the tunnel, the fading orange daylight of the entrance behind him was now a distant speck. Only the shaky yellow light cast from his chest guided him, making the trail of blood he followed faintly shimmer. The gravel beneath his feet slowly turned to dry dirt, and his steps became muffled. Like he rehearsed throughout his life, each foot is carefully placed in front of the other just like out in the forest so many times before. Nothing could be done about their trembling shallow breaths though, much like the icy pit of dread pooling in his stomach with every inch he took towards the abomination. Wherever it may be in the sea of featureless black surrounding him. All he could do was follow the trail it left behind. Five shots to the face, one in the eye. He remembered that. It picked up his mother's corpse like a limp doll and smashed through the front door after he emptied his revolver into it.

Daylight came and nearly went while following it deep, deep into the woods, deeper then he had ever gone before. The sun was setting behind him by the time he found it's trail leading into the maw of this tunnel. Thankfully the frigid autumn air made his body numb to the mind-shattering pain that would have normally broken him by now. Not one waking moment was wasted avoiding the hunt until now, not even one to consider the bleeding gash on his left forearm pooling crimson red around the front of the rifle where he gripped it.

Step after step. Slowly creeping forward. He bent his knees as low as they could go while allowing him to inch forward. The vivd scent of copper and sulfer starts to fill the air as he got closer, hearing another loud CRACK cut through the cold, dead darkness. He could feel his cheeks getting wet again. His vision is blurred before blinking his eyes and treading forward still. Quickly, he covers the flashlight's lense with his hand once the light grazed the rim of a jagged hole in the wall, surrounded by shattered concrete rubble.

Flashes of that morning hit him like freight train as he inched towards the lip of the hole... and peered around the corner.

Torn skin stretched across a bony skeleton swayed with the monster's methodic, unnatural movements while hunched over his mother's body in the corner. Streaks of black liquid oozes out of the holes along its neck and head, including the sockets where its eyes once were. Though stood on two legs like a man, its skull was looked like a deer's, jutting forward out of the torn remains of what was once his dad's face. The long fingers it had grown were caked in crimson red, stabbing into the corpse's stomach to spear chunks of intestine and dragging it towards its mouth mindlessly. Not even opening its jagged blood-stained maw to stuff the viscera down its exposed esophagus, mashing the flesh through its teeth.

That brief glance into it's hellish den was more then he ever wanted to see for the rest of his lifetime. He uncovered the flashlight, and grabbed hold of the barrel, focusing entirely on lining up the shot like so many times before...

Click, clack. The hunting rifle's pump grip slides back, then forward firmly.

Tears. They were tears rolling down his cheeks as he wailed and pulled the trigger. It's eyeless gaze locked with his, down the sights of the barrel before shattering into liquidy explosion of splintering bone and black blood. A crevasse of tendon and skin connected to the lower jaw was all that was left, flying backwards and slamming the monster's body against the wall behind it. A fine black mist lingers in the air where the head once was, before vanishing.

He didn't dare to glance at what became of mom. He saw enough. It was more then he ever wanted to see for the rest of his lifetime. He was never brave enough to endure after this.

Propping himself against a corner of the wall, he fits the smoking barrel's tip against the roof of his mouth, and pulls the trigger.