The Birth of a Hunter

This acts as a prologue in my inchoate novel titled Wolf.

The small snowflakes began to feel as though they had clung to my eyelashes like parasites, making them grow heavier each time I decided to blink. I’d looked up at the threateningly tall trees for far too long, thinking quite ridiculously that a squirrel may scamper out of the mounds of snow that sat on the branches. Quite the normal assumption for an eight-year old. Upon finding nothing, I’d even tried to find small creatures on ground level with whom I could chat with during this hunting excursion, but there was only the thick whiteness everywhere  I glanced. Only the snow and the trees. The thought was frightening when I focused on the isolation for too long of a time, but I knew that with my father, or perhaps the rifle, I was secure. I knew that at least with his weapon, we were not at the bottom of some extensive food chain I had created inside of my rambling thoughts.

    The sounds of the bullets ricocheted off some unseen force and kept me from greeting snow with my tired young flesh. The weapon had always fascinated me, it was what always compelled me to beg my father to let me tag along, and it was always what made my father a phenomenal man in my eyes. Out here, amongst only he, myself, and nature, he would unknowingly transform into his inner-self. It was a side of Franklin Walters that only I and the trees had seen, it was the bold man that settled underneath the quiet gentleman during normal days. Watching the way this  man’s fingers coalesced with the trigger at a mere sign of life was almost like observing art in the making. And this, the hunting, was his art form. My father was, indeed, quite the talented artist. I felt proud to be apart of him. I was proud to be included in the creator’s corner.

After another whopping bang from the rifle, there came a soft thump that sounded as if something heavy had abruptly fallen. I looked up slowly at my father’s content face with feigned happiness, as though I too believed the thump was a great sign. On the inside, I had no actual idea what he looked so stupidly pleased with. Without even exchanging a glance, he treaded over to the hearth of the light sound and looked down at a large, dark mass that lay still in the snow. Blood painted its surroundings and created the most beautiful of hues. I trotted over to where he and the mass shared a sacred moment, and stared into the eyes of what I now saw was a deer. My father still had the content grin on his face. This was weird to me, and I would never get to hear the explanation of this moment. Why was killing something as soulless as the deer even slightly fulfilling? It wasn’t as if the beast fought for his life or experienced any emotional struggle as he lay dying. The poor fellow just let it happen. He accepted his death. What a painfully easy way to go.

As I looked up to my father’s eyes which were glaring with some burning passion, I imagined what accomplishment he might feel if he had dominated something that would’ve struggled, or something that would have resented his face while he watched it perish into a state of nothingness.Oh well, guess I’ll never know. That same day, after hauling the large, cumbersome animal back to his pickup, he returned with a different rifle and a wooden stool. He parked the stool into the snow and silently grinned at my bemused face as I watched him drink whatever inhabited his thermos. Which, judging by what happened next, must have been some sort of alcohol. He laid the rifle idly against my side, but I only focused on his face. Which was still smiling. I’m not sure, but I feel as though I was becoming angry. The more I stared, the more I felt something begin to pile up inside of me. Quickly and a bit fearfully, I grabbed the weapon. He still said nothing and only glared into my eyes and through my soul.

“Well” he uttered under his breath, the heat radiating from his mouth.

    He stood from the stool and, very kindly, adjusted the gun to the proper angle over my shoulder and prepared it for me to fire. I looked through the narrow scope on the top of the rifle, and its glossed exterior seemed to become one with my glove. This wasn’t because of the frigid conditions, but because I nervous. I didn’t remember how the weapon operated, even though I only had to pull the trigger. I’d watched my father’s gunning procedures enough to memorize the steps, yet I was dumbfound. I felt as if I had let him down. What was wrong with me?

“The rabbit” he said.

That small, white target would one day be an essential reminder of where the hunting began, even though I obviously didn’t realize it yet. As I aimed the center of the scope towards the rabbit that sat idle in the snow, a sudden nausea entered my body. My head began to ache, my knees began to shake, and it was obvious that something was wrong. Something was missing. I couldn’t find any satisfaction in killing something even smaller than the deer, but I had to prove that I was worthy of becoming even better than my father had been. I needed guidance. Time for my father to become my instructor.

“Is that a clear shot, young blood?”

“I think so daddy, I do” I replied with some amusement, which completely contradicted the surging pain inside of me.

Unsurely, I removed the thick wool cap that covered my head, revealing a messy ruffle of auburn mess. I thought it would help me find something up there, or maybe it would help me clear something which blocked my ability to shoot the darn rabbit. I imagined the blood-stained snow that lay around the deer’s corpse. The flawless mixture of the light with the impurity of the beast. As if the darkness of the blood hid itself in the white of the snow, I had seen it as a disguise.

My father had quite the horrible disguise. And if he would have been here, like the snow, it wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

“Shoot.” was the only thing I heard before my finger tightened. I anxiously awaited what would happen next.

Author's Note

How is the flow of the paragraph as a whole? Is their anything that sounds awkward in the writing, opposed to the narrator being an awkward person? Does this sound COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS? Is it utterly mind-bendingly boring? Leave any remarks or concerns you feel you need to.