Beast

By

Randy Streu

The beast walks on two legs, crouched, stalking.  Its prey, survival instincts dulled by thousands of years of domestication, goes on unhurried, oblivious.

Slender, the prey.  Weak.  Perhaps able to defend itself, if it would but turn around and notice the thing behind, lagging back, hiding in shadows.  Or if not defend, run.  Escape.  Hide.  But it does not.  It will be an easy kill for the thing.  Its prey neither quickening nor slowing its pace.  Showing no signs of registering the danger behind it.

The beast — blood flowing faster, heart rate becoming rapid, like its breath — crouches in the shadows to uncover its weapon.  A glint of moonlight from the curved claw.  The breath through the covering on the thing’s face becoming more labored.  The heart beat faster to make up for the lack in oxygen.  It must attack soon, or pass out from the excitement.

A clatter from behind.  Another animal on the hunt.  The beast pays no mind, its attention focused.  But the prey.  Eyes darting, the heartbeat quickening, with its breath.  It doesn’t know it, but the prey’s and the beast’s pulses are in time — the beast reacts to the prey, while the prey reacts to the noise in the alley.  To the animal.

The prey quickens its pace, its heels clack-clack-clacking on the ground as it resists the urge to run.  The beast stays in the shadows.  Understands the dark; the way the light is shielded by brick and by metal.  The beast begins to drool.  The beast — its face hidden in shadow and woven cloth — smiles.

The beast’s sweat, mingled with its bloodlust, mixes with the prey’s fear and takes to the air; a scent which intoxicates something in the dark.  Something paces behind the beast.  The animal snarls, and the prey, beginning to fully understand the danger it is now in, turns and trips.  The beast sees its opportunity now.  Steps from the shadow to tower over its prey.  Watches for that moment — the moment it always looks for before the strike — where the prey understands its fate.  The prey won’t bare its throat like a trapped dog, but there is something resigned in the eyes.  Something that tells the beast it is willing, now, to give itself to the superior creature.

And the beast takes another step and in the prey the stark terror gives way to peace — for but a second.  The eyes widen again, just as the beast is about to strike, and gives the beast pause.  The prey opens its mouth and screams: high, loud, long.  The beast hesitates, and stares into the eyes of its prey, trying to understand.

And when the animal leaps out of the darkness to grip the throat of the beast, its eyes linger still on those of its prey.  Confusion gives way to pain.  Pain to anger.  Anger, at last, to resignation and then to death.

There is a wet tear as the beast’s throat is separated from its cooling shell.  And then a howl.

And in the night, stillness, punctuated by the sounds of quiet weeping.