The Hunt

I cranked this out after class let out early, it doesn't make much sense, may work as a mood piece, but I really enjoyed writing it, a nice change of pace from my second novel and the play that I'm working on...

The old man sits on a bench at night. He faces the lit window of a bar but does not look at it. The dancing figures, glamor girls and boys pretending to be men, reflect in his glasses like firelight. When they step outside, and the smoke from their cigarettes mingles with the steam rising from their limbs, they take little notice of him.
He sits hunched forward, in the manner of men who have been too tall all their lives, and his shoulders are bowed in, he is used to being too large for the spaces he occupies. It is an ancient reflex, one that no longer helps him, for he is withered and thin. His skin is hard and his gray hair straggles over his shoulders.
The man is not begging. Though he has a plastic cup full of coins and bills by his booted left foot when I tried to add to it the first time he stopped me.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said, “and if it is worth your while then you may pay me.” His hand rested lightly on my wrist but I could sense great power in it, or the memory of that power.
“Alright,” I said, “but I’m on the clock, will you be here at one?” one in the morning, because working in a restaurant shifts your day back eight hours or so.
“If you will be here to listen, I will be here to speak.” his voice was a deep bass that cut throw the chatter of intoxicated college students and the bleating of sirens cruising through downtown.
The kitchen was a mess, as always. Closing was a blur of bitching waitstaff and last minute orders.
“You realize you’re bringing this on yourself, right?” the bartender finally said to me as I skated between the grill and the one fryer I hadn’t yet shut off, “No one makes food this good and this late.”
I smiled at the complement and kept moving. He walked off shaking his head, “Alright, eleven thirty car bombs, who wants one?” I could hear him calling as he stalked the length of the bar, “This guy does, hey, you going to let him drink alone? Come on, it’s Thursday, drink up!”
A pile of sliders, a half dozen wings, and cheese fries for some poor bastard who didn’t know any better and I shut off the lights. I enjoyed closing in the dark, it was somehow a less overwhelming prospect when I could really only see one thing at a time.
It was not the most complicated of jobs, and I had been working there for months when I first met the old man. Despite the late night rush I was closed and out the door not much past one.

“There is a planet, far from here, orbiting a distant star.” the old man began talking without looking at me, as soon as I was within earshot. For all I knew he had been speaking the entire time and I was entering mid-story, but something in his tone held my ear and drew me in. I felt as though he were speaking to me alone.
“It has a name, but that name has long been forgotten. It is not a large planet, but it is a heavy one. Dense, rocky, with a solid core. The atmosphere is similar to that of Earth, but with much more sulfur, yellow hazes float through the air like cast off silks and dawn breaks to the smell of rotting eggs. Despite this you would not find it unlivable I think.
“There is very little in the way of highly advanced life on the planet, complex rock formations dot the landscape, worn by the harsh air into shapes that would bother the man who painted all those melting clocks. On these rocks cling lichens, grey and green and brown, spotted with tiny red flowers.
“The flowers are for the benefit of the planets primary predator. A little thing, no larger than half the fingernail on your pinkie it is a flying insect, and it too has a name, but that name is a matter of some contention, one person says they are Mitosales, and the other says they are a damned nuisance. Whatever they are called they pollinate the lichens when they can find nothing better, and take blood when they can get it.
“They have been observed fighting wars, great clouds of them clashing high overhead, wheeling and smashing like atoms, galaxies... It is a sight to behold, but much more often it is the aftermath that one comes across, for miles around after the wars end the ground will be covered in tiny black bodies.
“It is then that one can get a close look at the Mitosale. If you pick one up you can see the delicate filigree etched across their shell, pale silver lines on a background that, until that moment you thought was black...” he trailed off, removed his glasses and whips them on a free box sweatshirt so dirty that it could only have been a way to buy himself time.
“But it’s not black, it’s a rich iridescent hologram, depth and motion in the luster of the shell. a microcosm in and of itself. One could see the whole history of the universe there, if only you could find the right body, for they are all of them different.
“If they were the only things on that planet it would be a destination, for explorers, adventurers, tourists. But there are two others. A hunter, and the one eyed man.” he sighed and I could hear phlegm in the back of his throat.
“Why he runs is not for us to know, but he has always been hunted. The hunter is a young man, clear-eyed and haughty. He carries a revolver but his last bullet was fired eons ago, when the one eyed man was just old and worn, so now when he stops to rest and eat he whets his blade.
“The one-eyed man does not rest. He wears a long coat against the sulfur dust, and heavy boots, and a hat pulled low over his empty socket. His strides are long and easy, his gate rolling, he does not move quickly for he is in no hurry. There is no hunger in his eye, no pride, no fear. He needs little and wants less, he knows that he must simply continue to survive and so the rocks bear witness to his passage, and the Mitosale dance about him, and he touches two fingers to the dark side of each edifice he passes.
“Occasionally he smells a flower, but he does not eat.” the man smiled and I could see that his teeth were perfect.
“The hunter eats, constantly. He fries the bodies of bugs in oil from stamped lichens and spices from the equator that he rarely sees.
“The planet, you see, is not one of those so popular in science fiction, uniform from pole to pole. The desserts cover most of the area yes, but there are glaciers north and south and they have carved fjords. There is less water than here, and the seas are more like large lakes, but they are saltwater, fed by freshwater streams, and the equator is home to a twenty mile band of verdant green.
“The one eyed man avoids the equator for it is easier for the hunter to cut his sign, and he benefits little from the shade of cavernous tree bows and profuse fruits, while both these speed his pursuer.
“Sometimes he has little choice, and must cross the band or be caught against a sea, or mountains impassable to him. He has circled the world many times and knows the hazards, and may never take the same route twice.” the man broke off.
“It is said,” he continues in a voice less far away, “that should the hunter catch his prey, it would be the end of more than the world, that the two play a high stakes game for the sake of the universe. Also it is speculated that nothing of the kind would happen, that they would merely reverse roles and continue, and that this has happened many times in the course of history.
“Still others speculate that the same hunt is carried out everywhere, but that it is lost in the throb of humanity.
“Of course, what significance any of it has is purely theoretical. The hunt will never end...
“I grow tired, though it has been long since I felt otherwise. Now, was that worth something?”

That first time I said yes, and drove a freshly honed kitchen knife up, under his sternum and to his heart. He slumped back and his hair fell from his face and the place where his left eye should be spasmed and seized.
Other times he has caught me unawares, avoided the blow, or killed me first. And still he sits there, telling his stories.
Tonight I shall kill him again. Or at least I shall try.