Prey and Mercy

IX. Pray for Him

"You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself."

- Dejan Stojanovic, (The Sun Watches the Sun)

_____________________________________________________________

P R E Y

She doesn't know me.

Those searching eyes of hers are always digging and probing for truths that don't exist. And when she looks at me I can't explain the feeling in my chest. Like something lost and something recovered but burned and scarred too deep for thread to patch up.

Her voice makes something dark and malicious break through me. It rips me open and then she's gone. The malefactor that believes she's got the world figured out. No. No, she never takes the fault of having whatever once of goodness left in side of me shattered.

Loathing.

That's all I feel as I stalk through the tall grass. Not nostalgia for whatever wicked crimes we committed among the trees or hope for a future based off dead memories. All I can think about it death and all I can feel is burning desire for it to end.

I know she hates the world, more than she probably realizes.

But she's the one that spent a whole summer when we were nine convincing me this is just the way things are. I don't want to buy into it but I do. We are gods and we are monsters. It's our innate desire to kill for power. And my body, my soul, holds all the power she could ever need.

A bird takes flight from a tree overhead, rustling leaves and become the catalyst to a symphony of cherrups and fluttering wings.

I learned not to flinch as such distractions years ago. My grandfather would grab the back of my neck, hold me still until it stopped with his fingernails pinching into my skin.

When it comes to tracking I need to be vigilant.

"Hold your axe steady. Keep your eyes on the doe, make sure if you can get a shot in, boy, that it's broadside." His meaty fingers would dig into my shoulders, breath like curled milk. "She's your shooter..." Only something about the way he talked always had me imagining that it was Mercy he saw through those sharp eyes.

It was Mercy he was training me to kill. The reason I had to master my aim.

I listen for the sound twigs snapping, an absence in the underbrush where the animals don't scurry, footprints, her scent...

I've dreamed it since I was a kid, since the dreams were forced upon me. Convinced that even if we were on opposite sides of the world I could find her. Because not only can I feel her like a subtle itch somewhere on my skin, I can smell her.

Her scent is rain and thunder. It's the hot heat of anger and a buried sweetness. When we were little it was lavender and used books but like me...things change.

I swat a leaf from an overhanging tree, step lightly over a moss covered log. Marjorie would say I'm insane for doing this.

I should just kill Mercy the easy way. Backstabbing. Corner her. Stalking. Not trampling through a forest where she could attack at any moment. Though I don't fear her, not anymore.

She's a scared little girl without any dreams of the future. Mercy fights for her life and then fights again but without any incentive to actually live.

I think...that Samuel would say otherwise. He likes the hunt, the chase. More than he probably should.

There is no reason for me not to kill her, I have to remind myself. We're not friends, we haven't been for a long time. I know she hates me, blames me for Harper's death. The Mercy I tried so hard to protect as a kid no longer exists.