How does it feel to be hunted? Does it feel like someone’s watching you all the time? Do the hairs at the back of your neck stand up, as if in reception to somebody’s cruel intentions? Does it feel like you are being drawn into a trap, where you feel powerless?
How does it feel to be constantly on the edge? That razor-sharp edge, where your whole body is taut, muscles strained, senses finely tuned to anything that is not you!
Even as I contemplate this thought, I quickly scan the woods around me and re-assure myself. The jungle is thick around me. I have been walking through the day deeper and deeper into this green maze. The canopy above is thick in places, so now the jungle floor is lit in places and dark in some, as a result casting many shadows everywhere. Shadows, the keepers of darkness, the keepers of secrets, and the jungle holds many. Beyond the splatter of green is hidden a completely different world of violence and murder. Also hidden is that killer. The one they say, who kills but not for food. Then what? Some lust?
Where are you now? Where are you waiting now, crouched to make a kill?
The sun is now high in the sky, the canopy is getting lighter and it is getting very hot down here. Rivulets of sweat are running everywhere on my body. Even that damned bird somewhere ahead must be feeling hot and has stopped singing or is it something else?
I think it is something else. Ah yes, Prints, his prints. And they seem to be leading straight through those rocks. A path through nothing but high rocks on both sides and a perfect place to setup an ambush. He must have known I would have to pass through here. Smart bastard. Well not anymore.
He wouldn’t know of the other way which goes straight above those very rocks which overlook that passage.
That route is full of dying yellow grass, which stands a foot tall. I bend down maximum and slowly start creeping my way upwards, above those rocks. He could be anywhere. I have to be very careful. My heart is thumping madly as I near the top. I am completely flat on the ground and inching slowly so as to make no sound at all. The rocks are now beneath me. I can see them; I can see the path passing through them. But where are you?
I gather courage and peer a little over the edge and get the shock of my life. He is exactly below me and looking the other way, over the path. Waiting for me.
But it is game over for him now. I wish I could ask him his exact sentiments when he sees my black and yellow striped form come down heavily upon him, paw that metal thing from his hands and my teeth go for that scrawny little neck of his beneath that hat-thing.
How does it feel to be hunted I wish to ask? I guess that answer would have to wait for now.
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