Captive Ape

Fiction

Hunting Trip

By Jens

Don drank coffee from a red plastic cup, and I ate some Fun Size Snickers Bars. The truck’s heater was on high, but the cab was cold because rust had eaten a hole through the floor. I poked at the hole with my foot, and it became a bit larger as parts of the rusted floor fell to the snow beneath the truck. Don glanced down at my probing foot, and scowled. I stopped, scooted back on the seat so my feet didn’t touch the floor, and ate another Snickers Bar.

We didn’t see the deer until it lept out of the ditch on the passenger side of the truck, only a few feet in front of the bumper. It bound away toward a small grove a few hundred yards down a shallow valley. Don swore, and lunged to open his door. Coffee spilled out of Don’s cup, burning his hands. Don swore again, and grabbed his gun out of the bed of the pickup. He struggled with the sheath, but managed to free the gun. The deer was getting closer to the cover of the trees. Don pulled the gun up to his shoulder, closed one eye, and fired. The deer spun in the air. It landed facing toward us, away from the trees.

Don ran down to the corpse, laughing, and I ran behind him. When I got there, the deer’s eyes were already cloudy. Don was kneeling over it with his knife hovering just above the buck’s groin. Don slid the knife in, and jerked the blade up a few times, splitting the skin up to the rib cage. Steam rose from the red slit, and I turned away. In the grove, the tops of the trees swayed in the wind. The only sounds were the ripping of deer flesh, the cracking of deer bones, and Don’s laughter.