The Beast

   When the man also known as The Beast was caught, everyone was relieved. He had escaped every single police force along his path, as he killed innocent people, and he had finally committed was small mistake. The police had noticed his liking for a certain candy and it was a wrapper they found at a gas station that lead them directly to him. He was found torturing his latest victim on marsh. Fortunately, she was still alive. He had to be shot several times in the legs and spine in order to immobilize him. The police remembered that they couldn’t kill him, no matter how much they wanted revenge for what he had done before. He had killed several people, not only women but children and men too. Besides, the way he did it earned him the nickname Beast from every force chasing him.

 Finally in a prison cell, doctor that checked him upon arrival were surprised to see that the damage done by the bullets to his body was minimal. He could still walk and had only a slight limp on his left leg. He was transferred to a maximum-security prison that same day, where he was able to wait for his trial. This offended many of the victims’ families, because they didn’t thought such an animal had the right to a trial. But the law was the law and he was at least entitled to tell the people how he had done it and why. The trial, after all, was also useful as a way to explain everything that had happened and shed a light on such a monstrous behavior. If it ever happened again, authorities and society needed to know why.

 For everyone, it was a very hard time. The pictures, the police videos, the details by coroners… It was awful to hear how every body was dumped, how some of them were raped and how he tortured every single one of them. He had no real proceeding; it wasn’t like he just raped the women or something like that. He was erratic and that was proven by the first two weeks of the trial. People had asked for only a week to show evidence and so on but the judge had to change that as he had to cut short every day, because at least one person would get physically sick of all the details of the murders. He knew it was asking too much of every single person to sit there and stand such truths.

 At least five of the jurors had to be excused. They all decided to leave the trial as they realized they weren’t fit to stand all those gruesome details that they knew had to come out to the light. They were replaced as they left, and some information had to be repeated for the new jurors in order for them to understand the whole process. That week was the most difficult time in the lives of the family member, more than the moment when they had been notified that their loved ones were dead. Everything hurt up to that point and most of them just wanted it all to finish with the dead of the Beast, they needed to see how his body stopped breathing.

 The second week of the trial it was all about the Beast. Bringing him to the courthouse proved difficult, as demonstrators were always there throwing things at him. The authorities didn’t really mind but they just couldn’t allow something worst to happen. It was rumored that some of the family members were planning to kill the Beast and that had to be stopped. The police started bringing him through the back door of the courthouse and they also made a couple of arrests to make people understand that they needed to trust justice and what it stood for. It was understandable that they were angry, very angry for what happened but they had to let justice do what she needs to do. They needed closure and that couldn’t be found by killing a human being. They shouldn’t become him to prove their love.

 The first couple of days, he was cooperating so much. But by the third day, he started speaking, saying incoherent things. After the opposing lawyer confronted him, the man attempted to attack him and had to be restrained and tied to the chair he was sitting on. The lawyer asked for the trial not be cancelled for this incident and he used this event to demonstrate to the people why the murderer was called the Beast. He then read a psychiatrist’s report, where he stated that the Beast suffered a very rare syndrome were his brain thought everything and everyone was a danger to his existence. It was the only explanation they could give to killing so many people. But why torture them, they asked? No response.

 The next day, it was a very long one. Again, pictures and videos of crime scenes were shown but this time in order to provoke a reaction of the Beast. His lawyer, who was trying to get him life instead of the death penalty, had not spoken much with his own client because he had become very quiet and still. He had to go through all the evidence to, at least, prove the man he was defending was insane and that he belonged to an asylum. He repeated this over and over again during the trial, without little to no positive response from the jury. They were all disgusted by what they had seen and had no space in their hearts or their heads to consider the Beast as only a crazy guy that happens to kill people.

 By the end of the week, they finally got some words out of the Beast. He said that he had to kill them all because he was afraid. But when asked if he had any reasons to torture any of them, he was quiet for a while. By the end of the session, he stood up and said that he fought against the forces of the devil and that it had been God himself who had told him what to do and how to do it. This was a low blow for everyone in the courtroom and for everyone in the city, to be honest. Blaming God was ridiculous but it was a step towards that insanity plea and it was hard to fight it because his time on the trials ended just after that.

 The following days a couple of family members gave their statements. It was, again, a difficult thing to see and hear. Most of the people in the room cried at some point and how not too, when the details of someone’s death were being given by their wives, husbands, mothers, fathers… The jury was thankful that those statements only lasted for a couple of days. After that, the judge gave the jury four days to decide about this man’s faith. Of course, they didn’t need so much time. The following day every single person had being summoned to hear the verdict: the Beast was going to die by lethal injection. Many of the families were relieved but none of them were happy or anything close to that. They just needed to close that door in their lives, once and for all.

 The execution was programmed a month after the trial had ended. Some people complained that it should have been done faster, but they couldn’t get everyone that needed to be there at an earlier date. The governor wanted to be there, as well as at least one member from every family that the Beast had destroyed. They even looked for his parents or relatives and found and old woman that denied the invitation to see a family member die. She said he had not seen him in years and that he had always been “one of those weird kids”. Television crews stationed themselves very early the day of the executions, as well as many people that supported the families. Strangely enough, there were also protesters against the death penalty. Not their best showing.

 The lethal injection process was very simple and some people complained, again, that it was too humane for such an animal. But the state had no other way of killing inmates. Firing squads were a thing of the past, there were no electric chairs anymore and communities had successfully avoided the implementation of death by gas. So everyone gathered in very small room and just watched as the man they hated so much was brought from his cell. As they saw the people from prison tie him down, many thought that the last ting their loved ones had seen was probably the face of that man. And that made them so much angrier.

 The liquids that went into his body were lowered slowly, one by one. As they saw him closing his eyes and his vital signs going away, they felt their hearts even more broke than before because it was the end of the road and they had gone through all of it together. They pronounced him dead and the governor started to applause but soon stopped. Everyone else looked at him with disgust. Somehow, people were still disgusted by the fact that people had to be killed to teach a lesson, a lesson that maybe no one was really hearing or understanding. Somewhere in the region, another person was being killed. Because the evil inside humans doesn’t stop and it has many layers and faces. The only way is to keep fighting.

Nightmares

   I woke up breathing heavily but without screaming or doing any more noises. I had no clothes on but I could feel my body drenched in sweat, as if I had been running for quite a while. I grabbed my phone, which I had left by the bed, and checked the time: only a half hour had passed since I had fallen asleep. I was trembling and stayed there, sitting on my bed looking at the bedspread, not thinking at all. Then, I tried to remember what it was that I had dreamt off and I could just remember a few images, a few horrible images of creatures and scary situations. But the most awful thing was that I had felt paralyzed for a while. I mean, I had thought I was awake but I wasn’t and I felt and heard a sound coming at me from behind.

 I think I was paralyzed like that for at least three minutes but even such little time felt like an eternity. It felt like that being or that person behind me was going to be successful at attacking me, probably wanting to kill me for some reason. In that moment, I wanted to scream for help but I couldn’t, my mouth wouldn’t open and my eyes were frozen open. It was the worst kind of torture I could have thought of. I woke up just after that and thanked my body for helping me in that dire moment of need. As I stood up, walking to the kitchen for some water, I realized that the temperature outside had dropped even more in those thirty minutes I had been asleep. The cold was harsh so early in the morning so I decided to drink fast and put on some clothes to sleep.

 I didn’t fall asleep right away. To be honest, I was afraid I would keep dreaming those awful things so I just thought about other things. But the paralysis I had suffered earlier came back to me and I felt scared, more than before.  It had happened before and that was probably why I was so nervous about it. What was the reason of that? Why did it happen to me and why like that? It was a mystery I’d rather not explore but that’s how things were and I hated it. I didn’t want any more things in my mind right now, less of all a dream night were every single part looked like the perfect kind of torture. Was my mind just telling me that I was going insane?

 Hours later, at work, I didn’t mention my dreams to anyone. I tried to behave as I always did, crazy free. I even engaged in the typical lunch conversations, which was odd, as I preferred to listen and not to talk. That was because what I said was almost always perceived as “too much” or radical in some way, so I stopped talking at that time. But that day I must have forgotten my own rule because I talked and talked like a parrot and the fun thing was that some of the people agreed on why I said and other seemed to agree but didn’t want the rest to think they were as “radical” as me. That day in the office was good and, after lunch, I didn’t remember a single thing about my nightmares.

 They didn’t come back to me until late at night, when I was surprised to remember an especially gruesome part of my earlier nightmares. Apparently I had dreamt that I was some kind of murderer. I had never witnessed such things in real life and did not understand how my mind was able to replicate that situation, but there I was. It was clear to me now that I had walked amongst corpses, on a floor were every single centimeter was covered in blood. And that wasn’t the most shocking part. I was carrying a chainsaw in one hand and had my body covered in blood too, stepping on it as I walked through the room. I believe that was just a dream fragment, I don’t think there was more. But it had been enough to make me avoid sleeping at all that night? What was going on with me?

 The next day, more than one person asked me if I had slept at all. Apparently my eyes were pretty scary and my face looked horribly pale. I washed it at least twice but it didn’t make a change. I still looked like someone out of a horror movie. That day, I went back to not participating in conversations. I decided to skip lunch altogether, preferring to have some chocolate on a park bench nearby. The sugar made me feel alive and with enough energy to withstand the day. Maybe I had to do something special to avoid these dreams or at least to stop the memories of them coming in my head. I just wanted to go back to before, when I never had any kind of dreams, not even the typical ones people have.

 Suddenly, someone sat besides me on the bench and I realized it was this guy I liked from the office. He had arrived to work with us very recently and I felt he liked me back. I asked him what he was doing there and he told me that he had followed me. I must have opened my mouth very wide because he laughed and said that he had actually come out of a nearby restaurant and happened to se me alone so he just wanted to check on me. I asked why and he said I seemed distracted. He also mentioned the sleeping part. We stayed there for the remainder of lunchtime and when we went back, we had decided to meet in my house that night in order to watch a movie and have some take out.

 As it was Friday, many people were going dancing or drinking but we had decided to share a movie and we hadn’t done that ever before. It had been the first time we decided to meet outside of work so I was nervous about it. When I got home, I decided to check my computer for the best movies I had around. I chose three so we could see them all or he could chose his favorite. We could order anything and I changed my clothes to something less work related. I wanted everything to look good and on point, to look as if I worried about everything been clean and nice. Normally my place was a mess but I managed to make it presentable in short time.

 Then, the memories kicked in again. I wasn’t paralyzed or a butcher anymore. But I was tied to the floor with a metal chain and I was trying to release myself from it. I pulled with the little strength I still had but it was useless, the chain wouldn’t break. Then someone came in, someone whose face I never saw and he started to kick me and punch me and then… And then he did something I can’t even process, something… Something I didn’t understand when I realized I was remembering another part of that awful dream. Why was it happening now? Why did it keep coming back? This time I was drenched in sweat again but I had no time to change or to clean myself as the doorman called to tell me that my buddy from work had arrived. I wasn’t excited about it anymore.

 My legs shook as I got near the door and waited to open the door. I couldn’t just send him back to his house so I was just going to have a nice evening and tried to forget what I had just seen. I clean the sweat of my face with my sleeve and opened just as he had pressed the doorbell. He was surprised I opened that fast but he just laughed and we hugged as we greeted each other. I took him to my sofa and offered him a beverage but as I poured the two glasses of wine, my hands shook like crazy but he was talking about something so he didn’t really notice. We talked fro some minutes before I told him which movies I had picked and he said he liked them all so we could just try to watch them all that evening. I agreed so I asked him to put some popcorn in the microwave as I set up the movie.

 Minutes later, we had turned off the light, on his request, and were side by side eating popcorn and trying to concentrate on the movie. The truth was that I wanted to focus on him but couldn’t. I was still too shaken by what I had seen. I was been wondering if going to a shrink was the best idea. I needed someone else to know and to tell me I was just being crazy and that nothing from my nightmares could attack me, ever. I knew that maybe that was obvious but I needed to hear it from someone else. Then, I got scared and almost threw the popcorn bowl to the floor as he touched my hand. I was so ashamed I stopped the movie and just told him.

 I explained my nightmares, my fears and why I had been acting so weird. I told him because I needed someone to know, I needed to share those feeling with someone else. When I finished, he took my hands on his own and pressed them gently. He told me that I wasn’t a bad person for having nightmares and that maybe my imagination was too active or I had eaten before going to bed. It was common to have horrible nightmares sometimes and maybe I was just scared that what happened in them could actually happen some day. He assured me, with the confidence of a doctor, that I would never be that person in my dreams.

 I hugged him, we shared a kiss and, surprisingly, we watched two whole movies before we decided it was too late. He asked me to call him a taxi but I never dialed. I came in from behind and hugged him. I think I scared him. The thing is, he stayed the night and I never had those nightmares again. I’m not saying it was because of him but maybe my mind needed to focus on something else and what better than a nice, intelligent prospect? But sometimes I remember the nightmares and I wonder who I am and why I am.

Fire & Chaos

   That day, Marina had to stay all night as a party was going to take place in the upstairs room, were normally all the clients would go to see their moves. The space could easily be converted into a large room for parties and so on and that day it happened to be the launching party of a new sex toy. You see, Marina worked in a sex shop but not just any sex shop. It was the biggest in the city and simply the most complete one in the world. It was a very large store filled with toys, movies, costumes and many other things people could use to pleasure themselves or others. Marina had applied for the job only a few months ago but she had settled in nicely as she didn’t make the clients uncomfortable, which was the most important thing for the job.

 The store was deserted but, as the party took place, it remained opened for any person that wanted to check in late at night, looking for some fun. She knew that the party may move there because they had warned her to dress sexy and she had with a plunging cleavage but she felt very silly wearing such a thing because she was a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl. Wearing that red blouse and mini skirt felt like putting on a costume for a party, which she technically did. Marina had gotten there at 8PM and by 10 PM she was already bored out of her mind. No one, from the party or otherwise, had come into the store and dressed like that she felt defenseless if anyone came in. It just wasn’t her.

 Finally, the party people came down and her boss told her to give them a tour, as he talked with the head of the sex toy company who could give them a great deal for his next toy line. She did as he said and tried to put on her best smile in order to parade the people all around the store. She showed them every aisle of the movie section and the various toys they had, some even imported from Asia were they had many other sex toys that weren’t available in the country and several other areas. She was actually relieved she had to do that because at least it kept her awake. The people of the group weren’t really listening, choosing instead to make out with others or drink their glasses of wine or cocktails.

 Then, a resounding sound was hears and the glasses of the store broke into pieces. Everyone got to the ground and the screaming and running begun. M Marina, however, stayed down covering her head, her hands trembling. She wasn’t crying but she felt close to do that. The sound of the explosion had caused her ears to hurt very badly and she had hurt a knee when stumbling down to the floor. When she finally looked around, most of the people had run out of the store and were standing outside, looking at something. She was somewhat weak, and scared, but got to walk to were the glass stood. She crossed the one carefully not to cut her feet and walked towards the crowd. Many others had joined them then and then she let out a scream.

Marina realized what they were looking at. Half a building, maybe two blocks from there down the street, had been blown up to pieces. Walking towards it, she could easily see how half of it still stood there but the rest was on the street or had destroyed parts of nearby buildings. Then, she heard the screams of people asking for help. She ran towards the building and saw that there were bodies on the ground and people were still up there, unable to come down. She just couldn’t believe everything that was happening and then she started feeling a bit tipsy because of all the smoke and noise. She sat down on the sidewalk, people running by her and then she felt even dizzier. Eventually, she just passed out.

 When she woke up, she realized she was home, in her small apartment. But she had no recollection of walking there or of someone helping her getting there. She had been lying on her sofa in the dark and she felt scared. Was it all a dream? A nightmare? But it couldn’t be. She was wearing her skimpy outfit and her knee was still sore. She stood up and decided to go to her room. There she undressed and changed into something more comfortable, something she could fall asleep with, which she didn’t think she could do soon. She was still shaken from the visions of dead corpses and people screaming. Marina thought it was best to just turn on the TV and follow the news.

 But when she got to the living room she realized she wasn’t alone. Another woman was there, in the dark. She hadn’t seen here there before. Marina looked for something to grab and hit the other woman but she couldn’t find anything. The woman smiled and only said “No need”. Marina asked her what did she want and the woman told her she was just visiting after a long time. She explained to Marina how this apartment had been hers and how she had felt the urge to come in and just see it once again before she left. She seemed adamant to say she was leaving, because she said again, telling Marina that she shouldn’t feel threatened or afraid. The woman slowly stood up and showed her she didn’t have any weapons on her.

 The young woman walked towards the woman and asker to live and the woman said that she would do so in a few minutes. As she drew closer to the woman, Marina realized one of her legs was bleeding from a big cut she had. It seemed as if a glass or something had cut her deep. But she didn’t offer any help. She just stared at the blood and then the woman asked for a glass of water. Marina complied, preferring to make time go faster instead of just standing there. As she poured water into a glass, the woman told her a strange phrase that resonated in Marina’s head: “When you have nothing else to burn, you have to put yourself on fire”. She handed the glass to the woman who was very calm. She had a sip of water and then, the glass broke.

 Marina checked on her and the woman was dead. She wasn’t breathing, through mouth or nose, and she couldn’t hear her heartbeat.  After such a crazy night, a woman had just died in her living room, just there, in front of her and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Marina was scared and looked around, as if the solution was about to appear out of thin air. But, of course, no solution showed up. So she decided to check for the corridor outside of her apartment and after seeing no one was out, she pulled the woman and dragged her outside. It was difficult as dead bodies, she had heard, were heavier than living ones. But somehow, after some time, Marina managed to dragged the body to the elevator and then drop her next to the dumpster that was in front of the building.

 She just left the body and ran up to her home, where she felt safe. She locked the door and suddenly Marina felt guilty after putting some woman’s corpse in the cold night, as if was nothing. She turned on the TV and tried to take her mind away of what had just happened but it just got worse. They were showing images of the explosion and footage of firemen trying to put down several fires caused by the explosion. For a moment, she was able to see her boss and some other people being pushed away from the area. Apparently, they had reasons to believe that it wasn’t a terrorist attack but an unfortunate accident.

 Marina tried to lie down but she couldn’t. She had experienced so much and lived many lives in one night and she just couldn’t bare it all. But she couldn’t fall asleep either because all the memories rushed to her brain. All the corpses, the screams and the feeling of falling into a deep, fuzzy slumber. The she opened her arms and realized she had finally fallen asleep without even realizing it. It was early and she decided to open every window and try to make I feel normal but the day wasn’t helping as it was raining. She realized the TV had been on all night so she decided to turn it off but she refrained from doing so when she saw her face in the screen. They were looking for her. Or that’s what she thought at first.

 They then showed footage of a store across the building that had exploded. It showed the glasses shatter and the chaos but then it showed her walking towards the building. Then, she was visibly dizzy and had sat down in the sidewalk before collapsing. The commentator said they suspected gas had made Marina faint but then they showed a dark figure making Marina stand up and walk with her off camera. They didn’t think she was missing, they just thought she had been saved because the building exploded again some minutes afterward. The camera’s footage was interrupted then. So the woman had saved her from death and she had just walked with her, dizzy and confused.

 Marina decided to make herself a cup of coffee, then shower and after that she would call the police and tell them what had happened and why she had put the body by the dumpster. But there was no need. Because the body was not there anymore. Someone had taken it and was about to burn it. Because that’s what the woman had asked her friend just when she had decided to kill her husband and his lover with a gas explosion. As she had said: if you have nothing else to burn…

The hunter

   The arrow passed just a few centimeters away from the rabbit’s head. It wasn’t the day to die for him. But a wild turkey and a pheasant had not been so lucky. They hanged on one side of Karl’s waist, dangling around as he marched through the woods looking for more game. But he didn’t find anything else to bring back to his shack so he stopped wandering around and went straight back to his place. It was a small cottage in the woods, just a few steps away from the lake. He had built it there so no floods could reach it but close enough to the water to get his everyday ration to cook and bathe.

 As he entered the house, he left the dead animals in a rough wood table. He took off his clothes fast and, with the sun setting in the distance; he came out naked of his house and walked to the lake. He didn’t even hesitate to jump into the cold water. He plunged deep and then resurfaced, scrubbing his skin with his hands. There was no soap and soap would contaminate the lake anyway so he just scrubbed hard, sometimes with a scourer but he only used that some times a week. He submerged many times, looking at the distance, to the sun, which was now glowing orange. As he cleaned his beard and every hair he had on his body, he thought about that decision he had taken a long time ago, the decision that had changed his life by putting him there instead of in the city, in a job with a family and so on.

 He didn’t regret he hadn’t decided to stay with his family or just make a family of his own. It haunted him but he was sure he didn’t wanted to be one of those family men. He didn’t have what it takes to be one and he didn’t wanted to be one. He had always wanted to be free, as free as any human could be and this was the way he had found to be true to his desires. His family had not thoroughly understood but now that didn’t really matter. It had been three years now since he had decided to live in the forest and he knew it had been one of the best decisions he had taken in his life. Here, among animals and plants and fresh water, there was nothing that bothered him or made him feel like there was something wrong. Everything here felt fair and well done, because it was.

 He had always hated the competition, the killing that people submitted themselves to in the “real” world. People used to use those words together to describe to him were their lives happened, as if hid daily life wasn’t real, just a figment of his imagination. Hunting was more real than any bank job he could think off. Swimming naked in a beautiful lake was more real than worrying every day if someone was going to hurt you or your loved ones in any given moment. His world was very real and he had chosen it because he couldn’t take what the world was anymore. It had been a done deal the day he was attacked on the street, mugged and stabbed. He had become disenchanted with the world so he decided to leave it for good and there was not a single day in which he regretted that.

 In any case, it wasn’t as if he never talked or chatted with another human anymore. Many people came to the forest, in spring or summer, and the park rangers had designated him as an official guide. He got paid a small salary but that wasn’t the important thing, it was the fact that he got to share his experiences and knowledge with visitors which was the best part of the job. He would take them hiking or trekking for hours, compensating them with beautiful vistas, information about every plant and animal living in the park and would usually end up with a small “party” by the shore of the lake. Those who wanted could swim but they would all celebrate with a local meal.

 He came out of the water and waited to dry off for a half hour by the shore. As the water dripped away, he threw small stones to the water, trying to make them skip. But he had never managed to do I correctly. Time passed so he walked up his cabin, showered by the orange light of sunset. Inside the house he cleaned up his feet and put on some warm clothes to feel some heat after his swim in the cold water. He decided to eat first and then skin his animals to be put away with salt to be preserved. He had no electric device, except a portable stove, so it was best to consume everything before it went bad. He would eat the pheasant in the morning and the turkey could last a little longer if he treated it well. He ate some vegetables he had cooked earlier and it was then when he heard the sound. He wasn’t sure he had heard it but there it was again.

 The hunter walked up to the window and stayed there. It was already dark outside and he had turned on a gas lamp he had but he decided to turn it off and wait for the sound to come back again. There it was… It was like a moan or a scream that was silenced. He was worried as there was no one else for the next ten kilometers. Maybe he was imagining things, maybe it was an animal or maybe some people had just decided to come into the park and get busy. It wouldn’t be the first time. He decided to stop worrying and walked away from the window but then there was a scream, a piercing sound that broke the silence of the woods in two.

 The scream came from deep in the woods, in the opposite direction of the lake. He didn’t know very well, but he though the scream was from a male. He decided to take his bow and arrow, a rope and his best boots. That person could be trapped between rocks, in the formations that existed in the park in that direction. Or maybe some animal had attacked him and he needed assistance before bleeding to death. There were a few wolfs and they could be very violent, as well as black bears who roamed around the forest for food. Once he was ready, the hunter came out of the cabin and started marching rather fast in the direction he had heard the scream.

 He walked and walked but he didn’t seem to get anywhere. He didn’t usually come out so late at night and his senses were not as accurate in the dark than in the light. But he was sure where he was going and pressed on, worried for the person that had yelled earlier. After some twenty minutes, he finally arrived to a rocky formation and he noticed, with his solar flashlight, that the rocks were tainted with what appeared to be blood. He turned off his light and decided to be still and hear. There were no screams, only crickets and other animals making sounds. But then, he heard panting and someone else, breathing heavily. He ran towards the sound and, without thinking, jumped right onto one of the persons there.

 Apparently he had done correctly, because the voice that had screamed earlier was begin for him to help him. Somehow, his voice felt strange, as if it had changed in less than an hour. But the hunter was a strong man and he was able to submit the man he was fighting with ease. Once he turned on the flashlight again, he gave it to the victim, who happened to be a young man, covered in blood. He was trembling but was able to hold steady long enough for the hunter to use the rope to tie the hands of the other guy, an older man who had his nose broken and seemed to be in a fit of rage. He wasn’t fighting anymore but his eyes were filled with hatred, filled with blood and pure rage. The hunter made him stand up and he told the young man to follow him, so they could call the rangers who would then call the police of whoever had to be in charge of this.

 It wasn’t long before they stepped into the hunter’s house. The tie man was sat in the hunter’s bed and the boy sat in one of the big chair by the only table. The hunter looked for the walkie-talkie he rarely used during this time of year and started talking into it, to no response. As he waited, he asked the young guy to tell him what had happened but the guy refused at the other one seemed to be preparing for another assault. When one of the rangers finally answered, he couldn’t hear a word because the kid had jumped from his chair, with a knife the hunter had not seen, and stabbed the man in the chest. The man screamed and the hunter realized it was him who had screamed earlier.

 He attempted to grab the young guy from behind but now he flung his knife towards him, cutting the surface of his chest. He took advantage of this to turn around and finish off the man in the bed, who bled out just there, looking at the kid with horror. The hunter avoided the kid’s next attack and just punched him hard in the head. The kid was groggy for a minute, time the hunter used to grab his bow and arrow. He told the kid the rangers would come soon, as they never received communications from here and they would be worried to know if there was something wrong. He suggested him to surrender and let him tie his hands.

 But the kid launched himself at him and he just let go of the arrow that pierced his chest deep. He fell to the ground, where the hunter grabbed him and tried to understand what he was saying. Because as he spitted blood, he tried to say something but it wasn’t clear. Then the hunter lowered his head and he understood a couple of words: “got revenge”. Then he died and the hunter never knew what those words meant.