A Hunting Trip

In the soft, pale dirt were two sets of prints: one deep-soled hiking boots and the other animal. Speckled in the dirt, red against brown, was a dotted trail of blood. A man of domineering stature looked closely at the path ahead. He stood tall and still and silent, the only movement coming from the soft rise and fall of his chest. In the middle of the forest, he stood, hunting rifle in hand and the brim of his hat shadowing his face. A stone statue, frozen, slowly growing moss for millennia.

The animal he was tracking wasn't something he's seen before. From the prints he first began following, he assumed it was a coyote, but the closer he got, the more dusk gave way to dawn, the more he grew confused. There were gaps in the tracks. Gaps where paw prints vanished and fresh dirt was swept over the path. The coyote was hiding its trail. But that made no sense. Of all the deer, elk, coyotes, and foxes he hunted, none ever hid their trail.

Closing his eyes, a shudder rippling through his body, the man fought the urge to turn to the side and vomit. Memories of catching up to the coyote—no, the creature—were seared to his brain like charred flesh to a burning car.

He had finally caught up to the coyote in a small clearing, and laying in the center was a dead bear. Dead for a while. Flies buzzed above its exposed ribcage, the bone stark white against the dark pinks and muddy browns of its inner organs. Its coarse, brown hair was matted, with blood or dirt the man didn't know. All he was focused on was the lone coyote tearing into the leftover meat. At last, he had found it.

But by the time he shouldered his rifle, aligned the scope, and cocked the trigger in the manner of practiced seconds the coyote was gone. No. Not gone. It was still there, pressed against the carcass. Except...it was changing—dissolving. Scraps of matted flesh melted off of its body, falling to the ground in clumps of copper and brown and red. Its fur came away, peeling off its body in bits and pieces, leaving behind a lump of muscle covered in a gleaming, shining, layer of blood. The lump stretched, extended in every which way. Bones crunched. Joints popped. Muscles snapped. Finally, after the echo of splintering limbs, like that of bones fracturing in a fire, died away the thing stood.

The thing was human.

Standing on two legs, hands at the base of its hips, it leaned back then forward then side to side, stretching each and every limb. Hair, as dark as wet pools of blood in pale dirt, fell in matted waves down its back. Its skin would have been the brown of tea-stained paper if not for the sheen of blood covering its body. Long and thin, it crouched down, once again level with the bear carcass. With bony fingers, it reached towards—

Snap!

The man flinched and looked down in horror. In his disturbed captivation of the creature, he had lost all awareness of his surroundings. There, underneath his left knee, was a small stick broken under the weight of his leg. Realizing his mistake, he glanced up.

His heart dropped.

Staring at him with wide, black, beady eyes was the creature. A woman. Her body still faced the carcass, her hands busy removing the skin from muscle and bone, but her head was turned completely around to stare straight at him. The skin of her neck was stretched at its seams, pulled taught, ready to tear. The whites of her eyes were gone, consumed by milky blackness. But her teeth were white. Gleaming. Like bleached bone. Even from here, the man could see bits of fur and flesh stuck between her teeth as she grinned at him wide. Too wide.

Finger on the trigger, no hesitation, the man shot her, the bullet going straight through her left shoulder. He had missed her heart, his true target, the trembling of his hands throwing his aim. The woman screeched. A high, grating sound, like metal on metal. Her head snapped back around, and she hurtled into the forest before her, tugging the dead, decaying bearskin she managed to wrench from the carcass snug around her shoulders.

The man couldn't move. Hands shaking, legs trembling, he stayed kneeling in the dirt. But his eyes followed her. She ran northwest, clutching her shoulder as she stumbled on two legs. Right before she left his sight, the man saw her figure shudder. Her legs buckled and she collapsed on the ground. Her silhouette warped, joints moving out of sockets, muscles distorting, bones contorting in inhuman ways. After one last shudder, she stood. In her place was a massive grizzly bear, a bullet lodged in its left shoulder. The man stared at the bear, even as it lumbered away, the trees swallowing it, hiding it from sight.

The distant sound of several wing beats and frightened crows drew that man's attention from his memories. The echo of a rumbling growl danced through the forest, brushing through the leaves and prancing over the undergrowth.

The bear was near.

The man pushed himself forward, stone and moss casing splintering and crumbling away as he put himself in motion. He trekked up the mountain, his boots leaving imprints in the pale, bloodstained earth. Soft footfalls and the thump, thump, thump of his beating heart filled the silence that gently blanketed the forest surrounding him. Taking a deep breath, he noticed the smell of crisp pine was now tainted by the scent of blood. Faint. Metallic. Fresh.

Minutes...hours...days seemed to go by. Any semblance of time was lost in the cacophony of the man's mind and the acrid, bitter taste of fear that filled his mouth. It was vile. Sour. Like the traces of bile that lines one's lips after vomiting all the contents of their stomach and more. Disgusting. The man swallowed the taste, fighting back the urge to gag. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to focus, to force his thoughts, his fears, aside and make way for clarity. His mind was calm. He could do this. He opened his eyes and blinked.

Standing no more than 10 feet away from him was the creature.

Still in the shape of a grizzly bear, it stood still, swaying slightly, a bullet lodge in its left shoulder. Patches of fur showed decay, rotting away to show the muscle and bone underneath. A pungent odor permeated from the living, breathing, yet decomposing creature. A smell that made its way into the man's nostrils, pried its way into his mouth and crawled down his throat. It coated everything.

Despite the way the repulsive smell made him gag, made his muscles coil, and his body ripple in disgust, he shouldered his rifle. The only way he made his previous shot was by catching the creature by surprise. Now, after catching it totally unaware, he knew he could make it. He could kill the creature.

Aim the scope. Finger to trigger. Inhale. Exhale. Cock the trigger.

Click-click.

At the sound of the cocked rifle, the creature stiffened. It turned its head, the same way the woman did: body still, skin stretched, taught, ready to tear. Eyes as black and beady as before, the only thing consistent between all three forms, bored straight into the man.

It smiled.

A shudder ran through the man. Black and pink gums peeled back to reveal long canines, no longer pristine white, but stained a yellow-brown. A fierce grin. One that held the whispers of a threat, of a promise. Cold certainty grabbed the man by the neck and shoved him into frozen water, watched as he struggled for air, and then pulled him up to breathe. Realization flooded the man's veins. He could not kill the creature.

But the creature could kill the man.

The man turned and ran down the mountain, abandoning his rifle. Desperate. His heart echoed in the chambers of his ears. Thump. Thump. Thump. His legs shook, kneecaps barely holding him up. Barreling down the mountain he paid no attention to his surroundings. Branches reached out for him, their long spindly limbs nicking him in the face. They called to him, crooning sweet words into his ears. Slow down. There's no hope. Give up.

Die.

The creature let out an eerily human laugh, a cross between a cackle and a chuckle. A dry sound. The perfect kindling to set its bloodlust ablaze. The man felt more than saw the creature take off after him. Its large paws shook the trees, the earth, the man's entire being. He glanced behind him and his heart dropped from his ears to his stomach.

Its black eyes seemed to glow red as the setting sun dyed the horizon in warm, burning hues. A wildfire in the sky. It loped after him, its broad-shouldered, rotting body tenses and taught with the thrill of the chase. With each bounding stride, it got closer. And closer. And closer. Long talons in each paw clawed up the dirt. The man imagined those talons ripping into him. Tearing him to pieces. Leaving him dead, disemboweled, intestines spilling out of his carcass for the ravens and coyotes to fight over.

The man turned back forward too late. One second earlier and he may have seen the small patch of undergrowth in his way. Two seconds earlier and he may have avoided it. Three seconds earlier and he may have survived.

Time slowed as his foot caught in the underbrush, launching him forwards into the pale, blood-speckled dirt. Something snapped in his ankle, and hot, searing pain flared up his leg. The bone had splintered into two, protruding through the skin. He screamed. It was a harsh sound, rough around the edges. It grated at his ears and tore at the soft tissue of his throat, bloodying his mouth. Yet, despite the way his scream spilled out from his mouth and filled the empty spaces between the leaves of the trees and the crevices in their bark, it did not cover the dull thud, thud, thud, of the creature getting closer and closer.

Gritting his teeth, the man pushed himself to his knees, but any pressure he put on his ankle made it buckle. Again and again and again he tried. Tried until tears streamed from his eyes. Tried until his palms were caked in blood. Tried until hot, stinking breath coated the back of his neck and the sound of harsh panting broke through the pounding in his head.

It was too late.

The man turned his head and came face to face with the gaping maw of the creature. Yellow-brown teeth seemed to travel on for ages as the man's vision warped. Twisting and distorting what he saw until it seemed as if the pink tongue slithered out of its cave and wrapped around his neck, strangling him. The pungent scent of decaying flesh and disemboweled organs wafted from its mouth in waves, coating the man. Soon he would join the smells.

Disemboweled. Decaying. Dead.

The man blinked, but before he could even open his eyes he was gone. A single hard swipe to the head and he was dead. Collapsed on his side, bleeding from his temple. One second there, the next gone.

———

The creature turned the hunter onto his back, his lifeless corpse limp and gradually losing warmth. Shoving its muzzle against the body, it nosed the hunter, making sure he was well and truly dead. Triumphant, the creature set to work. With one long talon, the creature slit the hunter's skin from the top of the throat to the base of the navel.

The creature took a step back and shuddered, pain rippling through its skeleton, muscles, every nerve, and every cell. Its skin burned, bubbling under the surface as it shed its brown fur. The top layer of skin and fur melted away in clumps, as the muscles contorted and the bone splintered only to mend together smaller. Its gums bled crimson as yellow-brown teeth fell out to make way for pristine, white, human teeth. After a few minutes passed and soft pained groans quieted, the creature gave one last shuddering breath before it stood—once again in the form of a woman with tea-stained skin and dark matted hair.

Eagerly, she went back to finish her task. Hands caked in dirt and fingernails crusted in dried blood, she dug into the warm, wet stomach of the hunter. Roughly, she tugged out his organs and tossed them to the sides. Now she could start the most important part of the process. Tenderly, she slipped a finger in between the skin and the skeleton, gently pulling it back from the cumbersome bones and muscles. Time passed. The setting sun gave way to midnight stars and a full moon when the sweet song of dawn swept over the horizon, the woman had finished. The hunter's skin lay separated from his skeleton in perfect condition.

"Beautiful," the woman sighed, the word a soft, chaste kiss on her lips.

The woman tried her best to dampen her excitement as she slipped into the hunter's skin. Feet first. Then arms. Watch out for the shoulder. Then finally, the face. Secured snug and comfortable inside, the woman felt her body ripple. The changes weren't as harsh and extreme as usual. A few bones shifted out of place and a few muscles extended until she could fully fill out the hunter's skin. Finally.

Standing, the woman admired her new form, content with her choice. She started deeper into the forest, her body hungry and tired. All the shifting and the chasing had worn her out. But, in the end, it was worth it. She glanced back at the mess of brown fur and flesh and admired the way the morning light showed on the bones. Then, she did what she never fails to do in each and every one of her forms.

She smiled.