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Hunter

Dave Migman

    Here’s to the ride in the middle of the night. Here’s to the sullen shades of defeat that linger on street corners like the buckled ghosts of junky children. Here’s to the defeat of modernism... here’s to the fall...
    I stick in the key, the engine purrs gently, like a tiger. I release the handbrake and glide through the rain sodden streets. The dash is lit by the little displays. The radio is off, I don’t need music, I don’t want those vibes giving me haywire confusion. I need clear thoughts. I need to focus.
    Comfortable? I hope so. You don’t mind me mumbling away like this do you?
I have a lot on my mind. I really owe you some form of explanation, don’t I?
    The car is an extension, like any tool should be to any craftsman. You must assimilate; push out your senses and clothe the gleaming carapace with your own skin so that you can feel the rush of the chilly Glasgow night. Turn off the heater, the air conditioning, open the window, let the filthy polluted night in...
    Would it surprise you to learn that I have a good job? A warm office, a new computer, fax, printer and tiny cell phone. I have no girlfriend, I used to, but the last relationship ended a year ago and apart from the sex I can’t say I pine for her. Who the hell would pine for a company girl?
    Once I was a company boy. Then, one day, nigh on a year past, I woke up. Cilla had been gone three weeks, leaving me alone in my sterile pen. Even the pillow, still perfumed by her scent, failed to induce even the mildest stirrings of any emotion - no hatred, no loss.
    I realised then that I was drowning, submerged in a life of work with the single purpose of accumulating more and more material possessions that really had no use but to reflect my passionless, empty lifestyle. I filled my home with empty spaces: fringed wide rooms with stainless steel cupboards and severe utilities, stark aerodynamic chairs, glasses and plates of pastel frosted glass. I had become another lifeless furnishing, a walking talking, smiling automaton.
    I started going to the library, a place hitherto unexplored and alien to me. Being in the proximity of all those tomes had a redeeming effect upon my soul. As I wandered around the shelves by the historical section or the natural history encyclopaedias I could sense each book humming with Knowledge.
    It dawned on me, after several regular visits that I was searching for something: I was longing to tear off the plastic surround that kept me safe and detached. I wanted to tumble the walls of my sterile tomb, but I didn’t know how. I needed to learn, to develop my mind and elevate it above the confines with which I had imprisoned it.

    A big fat book on ancient history became my best friend. It revealed our hunter-gatherer past, the time before the settling. Over ten thousand years ago the ice sheets began to retreat. The tribes followed the great bison north. They skirted around the inland lakes, hunting the buffalo, elk and giant deer...they survived.... using all their senses - the senses we, in our laxity, have neglected. They lived a purer life, inhaled pristine air, ate unsoiled food, bartered perhaps, but weren’t owned by a token currency. The world was huge, the landscape mysterious, sacred, an aboriginal mythscape through which the nomad tribes moved.
    Somehow these memories still linger in the darker recesses of our minds and primal instincts still throb within our veins. Once we crept across the open savannas and the plains of central Europe the haft of the spear gripped tightly in our in gnarled tree root hands, towards the stirring Mammoth, hunger in our hearts. We killed but not one thing went to waste. Now we litter the land with our garbage, bury it, float it out to sea, fill the ocean, fill the countryside. We are filthy little creatures polluting our lives with soap operas, celebrity weddings, matching curtains for manicured minds.
    Surely each of us is filled with our own genetic history, those ancient codes stretching back to our forefathers, they breathe and pulse within us, but even when we sense them we hold out, stifled by conformity.
    I could hold out no longer!
    I thought I might take up hunting to induce some reality into my wretched shadow world. But the countryside around the city was as tamed as we; golf courses, neglected canals and beyond these cultivated lands of produce filled with domesticated crops, fenced in by rectangular rows of rusting wire, polluted streams turning white and lifeless - nothing natural, nothing untouched... all the real animals were gone. We turned them into Disney drones, we made them laughable, their only purpose our sickening entertainment.
    I sold virtually everything I had hitherto owned; entertainment system, bland furniture - I pawned the lot except my car and clothes (I dreamed of making my own from the produce of my kill - But kill? What exactly was I going to kill?)
    The wastelands, the tenements, industrial estates, housing estates, gloomy parks, lonely roads between zones of fallen industry, became my jungle.
    The hunting began.
    I began with cats. I bought myself a hefty crossbow and a large hunting knife. At first it seemed too easy, I had to frighten them first to derive any sense of enjoyment from the kill. They were still easy though. Same with dogs, though the latter has more meat on them and taste marginally better than cat flesh (to which you must add curry, spices - anything to take the bitter taste away from their stringy meat). To my surprise I discovered that I was not a bad shot. On one of my forays I came across an urban fox, but I couldn’t shoot it, it just didn’t seem right to kill something that still retained some of its wildness.
    My activities were virtually harmless and caused little stir, though several of my colleagues were intrigued at my growing collection of skulls and pelts.
    I needed the thrill of big game, and what better than to track and take another human. I know - I went through weeks of mental trauma, conflicts of conscience and doubt. I realised the biggest factor in not taking the life of a fellow human was the threat of retribution. A life sentence, stuck in a cell - there was no way – I would die first! As for the life I would take? Well, you know yourself, I mean, I had to set definite boundaries.
    I chose my target carefully. I watched his progress along the long open stretch of Grand Parade. The hood was drunk, dressed as cheap white trash always do. I knew his type, one of the chattering sports clad monkey packs, fucking and snarling and fighting, marking down their feeble territories with hissing tongues of silver or post office red. It was 4am, not a car to be seen. I collected my thoughts, breathed slowly, remembered what I was doing and why. He stopped at one point to spray paint a wall, marking his territory like a dog. I cruised real slow, almost silent. As I approached he turned round to give me some drunken lip, but his mouth fell open and his eyes bugged out as he saw the crossbow. He raised a shout but it was curtailed by a cry of shock as the head of the bolt thwacked into his larynx. He jerked spasmodically and slumped to the ground. I checked my mirrors, nothing coming. Good. I slipped out and dragged his body to the boot. I hefted him into the plastic sheet lined cavity and then slowly drove back home relishing the strangest of sensations.
    The city was mine now. I ruled it as a solipsist hunter, taking to the night streets to exercise his primal rights.

    I used most of the remains, but I really didn’t fancy eating the meat so I ground it to a fine mince and left it in plastic bags in back alleys for dogs.
    Though the satisfaction lasted some weeks I became restless again. I needed something else. The thug had hardly been any more difficult than a dog. The thrill of the hunt, that’s what I needed.
    I would capture someone; take them out to one of the most uninhabited part of Scotland. Give them a head start and I go after them. This was perfect because I would be on foot, exposed to the elements as much as my prey. I would have to utilise every facet of the primal hunter, use every skill that they used. It was perfect.
    I began to read about tracking and hunting in earnest, building on my personal library and testing out what I had learned in quite county parks and forest walks.
    So there, that’s the gist, you get the picture. That’s why you are here, bound and gagged on the floor of the back seat with a blanket on top of you. I picked you carefully, Mr. Wilson, CEO of a munitions company selling landmines to failed states. I think it’s a great opportunity for you. There is no certainty that I will catch you. You might survive - though I am going to plunge my knife into your leg (I need a little bit of help. This is my first).
    Don’t worry there. Yes, I know it’s a beautiful night; we’ll be there in approximately five hours. Now excuse me, I must concentrate, I must summon up my primal hunter. Here’s to the ride through the middle of the night.

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