Splurge

by Summer Goldspring

  I asked the elder woman when her husband would be returning home, but she told me that he would not come home for long hours, sometimes until he brought back something to eat.

  The thought of food reminded me that I needed to feed.

  The elder woman got up to go to the kitchen, and I followed her.

  She talked on and on about her life, but at that point, I did not care enough to listen. I got closer to her back, and she asked me if I was alright.

  Suddenly, I had sunk—my fangs into her neck before she could turn around, and look at me. I did not want to see the look on her face. I really didn’t have a choice. I was starving, and my vampire instincts had gotten the best of me.

  The elder woman collapsed in front of me, and I fell into a deep trance. I found myself naked in a green forest. I was on soft green leaves, with the sun shining through the forest mist.

  A man appeared out of the mist. He was topless, fit, and walked towards me. He touched my body, and started to kiss me all over.

  Suddenly, it started to storm, and the rain soon turned into blood. The man and I were soaked in blood, making love in the bloody storm. I finally awoke.

  I was on the kitchen floor with the elder woman who was dead next to me. I decided to clean up before the elder man came home. I hid her body in a nearby closet, and covered her up with blankets.

  I had planned to leave before the elder man came home, since I didn’t want to harm him.

  Eventually, night came, and the elder man never came home, so I decided to leave, and that was a decision, that I was actually proud of. I was glad it was the elder woman’s life that I took, and not the elder man.

  Chapter 3

  I roamed the dark forest. I found a dark cave in the forest, that I decided to stay in until the next night. I thought long and hard about my other life. When I was eleven years old, my father used to take me hunting out in the forest near our farm. My mother never liked my father taking me out to go hunting. I was the son my father never had.

  One cloudy day, my father took me to the forest to go hunting for deer.

  My father was dressed in his green camouflage hunting jacket, and was wearing his worn out blue jeans. He brought his hunting knife, machete, and rifle with scope attached.

  He also had rounds of bullets strapped across his body from shoulder to hip, like Rambo.

  My father had the greatest brown beard, and wore his green camouflage hunting cap on his head. He was really serious about his hunting trips.

  As for me, I had my good blue jeans, green camouflage rain jacket that my father always wanted me to wear, and I carried a backpack full of food, and supplies, just in case.

  We made our way deep into the dark forest. We heard weird noises.

  My dad explained to me practically everything there is to know about hunting deer. I thought my father was so crazy sometimes.

  He called me Ninnie. I always thought it was embarrassing, but I guess that’s what he got used to, since the day I was born. My mother still called me Annie.

  My father wanted me to try deer blood—but I laughed! “There’s nothing funny about it Ninnie. They say once you kill that deer, you drink as much of that dead deer’s blood as you can while it’s still warm.

  Once you do that, your life will never be the same. Do you understand me? Something in you will change.” He said.

  I looked at my father like I never looked at him before. It was as if he wasn’t my father when we were out hunting. I looked at him like I didn’t know who he was.

  “What will change father?” I said. “Your soul will change.” He said.

  My father and I walked deeper into the dark forest. I was a little nervous after my father had told me that thing about my soul changing.

  I didn’t want my soul to change. I was a little frightened, but I still trusted and loved my father, and would have done anything for him.

  I was anxious to find the deer and kill it. I hoped to be the one to kill the deer. All I wanted to do was impress my father, and make him so proud of me.

  My father put his arm around me as we walked throughout the forest. He was anxious too.

  My father found a spot in the forest for us to stay at. We waited for hours in the same area. He insisted the deer would come.

  Then suddenly it rained, and then it stormed.

  My father was too proud to leave, and I already knew that we were here to stay, until a deer was dead by one of our hands.

  By nightfall, my father had built a big fire after he gathered wood from thick branches, off the forest trees with his razor sharp machete.

  We cooked sausages over the fire. The sausages were hooked on wooden skewer sticks my father had made, and sharpened up with his hunting knife. The sausages slowly sizzled over the fire.

  My father entertained me with his stories by the fire.

  He told me a story about one of his hunting trips ten years earlier. “Ninnie, when you were just a baby, I used to hunt more often.

  I wasn’t just hunting for deer.” he said. My father went out hunting one cloudy day.

  He sported the same beard, same traditional green camouflage outfit as he always wore. He carried the same hunting rifle, trusty hunting knife, and machete.

  He was out with one of his hunting buddies. His buddy went by the name of Hector, who was one of my father’s farm workers back in the day, when business was good.

  Hector supervised the other farm workers.

  My father favoured Hector over all the other farmers. My father kept to himself, but he liked to spend time with Hector. Hector was different from the other farmers.

  Hector always had a few days worth of facial hair, short, and had a deep Spanish accent. He was one of my father’s finest farmers.

  The rest of the men that worked for my father were just a number to my father.

  My father saw something in Hector that made him happy to have him as more than just a farm worker. Hector was a good friend.

  As my father and Hector walked through the forest searching for deer, they came to a halt, and found a place to settle until the deer came to be killed by them.

  They waited in the forest for hours, and listened to the mysterious forest sounds.

  After a while they started to hear crackles. A deer approached. My father and Hector looked at each other, and smiled, because they knew all that wait time was about to pay off for them.

  The deer was slowly approaching, not far away from my father and Hector. The deer was across from my father’s hunting rifle scope.

  Hector was also pointing his rifle at the deer. The deer did not suspect a thing.

  The deer stood in one place looking around, and it even looked in my father’s direction, but did not suspect that it was being hunted.

  My father had the rifle pointed at the deer. He slowly pulled the rifles trigger back, back, then a POP.

  The deer dropped—in a second after he shot it with his rifle. Hector went to check out the deer as my father took his time to check his rifle.

  Hector approached the deer.

  My father maintained his rifle, as he watched Hector check up on the deer from across. Hector was at the deer and evaluated it, and gave my father thumbs up that it was dead.

  My father was done maintaining his rifle. He used his scope to check up on Hector from across the forest where the dead deer was.

  Hector was collecting a container of blood from the deer to drink, when suddenly a strange man came toward Hector.

  My father observed the strange man who was dressed in a brown robe, with a hood covering most of his face.

  The strange man pointed at Hector, and Hector stood up, and suddenly, the strange man through himself at Hector with great speed. Hector screamed.

  My father witnessed the strange man bent toward Hectors neck.

  My father aimed his rifle, pulled the trigger back, back, but nothing! The rifle was jammed.

  The strange man stopped suddenly, and dropped Hector.

 
; My father stared at the strange man through his rifle scope, and the strange man looked right at my father’s eye through his scope.

  It was eerie, an evil looking red eye staring right at my father’s blue eye, all through the eye of the rifle scope.

  My father did not hesitate, he pulled the rifle trigger and shot clean at his intended target, but when my father took a second look, the strange man seemed to have vanished, as if he was never there in the first place.

  My father looked again. “HECTOR!” he yelled. He ran towards Hector pointing his rifle at every direction, to make sure he was not followed. Hector was face down beside the deer. My father turned Hector over.

  Hector was alive! He was bleeding from the main artery in his neck.

  He had two big holes pierced in his neck. My father tried to cover the wound to Hectors neck with a piece of clothing that he cut from his shirt, but it did not help.

  Hector attempted to speak with his deep Spanish accent. “It...it...was...devil.” he gasped. Hector choked on his own blood, and died with his eyes open. My father closed Hectors eyes with his hands.

  I never thought I would have ever heard of this, but, my father suddenly cried. He mourned Hector for hours, and was leaning on the deer beside Hector.

  Eventually, my father carried Hector back to the farm on his back.

  He spent all night digging up a grave for Hector. A storm arrived that night.

  Heavy winds and rain cursed the night. My father finally buried Hector with a wooden cross on top with Hectors name carved in and the words “Gone to Heaven” carved under Hectors name.

  My father stayed beside Hectors grave all night, even though the stormed almost seemed to turn into a hurricane.

  He drank heavily that night. Whiskey was his weapon of choice. He was a heavy drinker, even before the passing of Hector.

  He stormed off into the night with his whisky bottle half full. He wandered into the dark forest where Hector was killed.

  He didn’t care anymore. He welcomed death even more when Hector was gone. My father told me, “When you look for death, it will hide from you, if death wants you, it will get you.” he said. He was out for death.

  He wanted death, but he was too proud to kill himself.

  He wanted death to find him, whether it was lightning striking him to death, a wild bear, or even that strange man that killed Hector.

  Death was hiding from my father that stormy night. My father was so drunk that death would have been too easy.

  Suffering would not have been a problem with all that alcohol in my father’s body, since he wouldn’t have felt that much pain.

  My father roamed the forest all night. Finally, he walked so deep into the forest; he came to a waterfall at the edge of the forest. He wanted to jump. He looked around the forest, and saw darkness.

  Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck, and he looked across from him to see the strange man standing across from him. The strange man eyes lit up bright red with the lightning that lit up the forest.

  Even though my father was drunk as shit, he was startled!

  He dropped his whiskey bottle which was shattered on rocks on the ground, where my father was standing on the edge of the forest.

  In a heartbeat the strange man latched onto my father, but my father had the courage to take his fist and knock off the strange man.

  Suddenly, after the punch had separated my father from the strange man, my father fell backwards into the extremely the deep waterfall, into the darkness.

  Morning had arrived, sun shining the forest, blazing up the forest mist.

  My father was face down on the muddy shore. He had the sunshine warming his back up for a few hours.

  He was lucky. He fell in a way that did not injure him, or maybe he was so drunk that the alcohol numbed the pain.

  He managed to get up and walk away from that fall, with just a few scratches, bruises, and a sore neck.

  The strange man had not hurt my father, since he was able to knock the strange man off him before he was able to hurt him.

  My father made his way back to the farm. He took a hot shower and rested outside in the warm sun by Hectors grave.

  He was still drinking bottles of whiskey since he had plenty to spare, and needed it.

  He was outside most of the day, just staring into the blue clear skies, and soaked up the sun. By the end of the afternoon my father was sunburnt, but he didn’t care at all.

  That was the least of his worries.

  He headed to his shed to have a look at his arsenal. My father kept all kinds of neat stuff in his shed. He called it his office. He was the only one aloud in his office.

  To him it was all business. I once snuck in his office when he wasn’t around. I admired all of his stuff. They were like toys to me.

  He had a collection of cross bows, rifles, machetes, hunting knives, boxes of bullets.

  Sometimes I thought my father was trying to start a war. I used to pick up his weapons, but I never actually shot, or really used any of them.

  I just liked to touch them. I knew playing with them was off limits. I wasn’t even supposed to be in my father’s office.

  If he had ever caught me in there, I wondered what he would have done to punish me. He loved me too much to do anything bad.

  My mother wasn’t even aloud in my father’s office. Once she told me when I play outside to stay out of daddies shed.

  Telling me to stay out of somewhere was just going to make me want to go out and sneak in. It was like putting my whole hand deep into the cookie jar. I just had to have it; I wanted to play with my father’s toys.

  My father would sometimes be in his office day and night, because I could see the light of his office during the night, and would never see much of him during the day.

  I knew he was in and out of his office, but I couldn’t go in there, not even around it. I guess it was for my own safety to keep me out of that area.

  My father wanted me to use weapons, but my mother would not allow it, obviously my mom just wanted me to stick with playing with Barbie dolls.

  I was after all the son my father never had, and wanted to always impress my father.

  I hoped to impress him, and show him that even a girl can do things a guy could do, but better. I just wanted to be everything my father wanted me to be, and a lot more.

  My mother would have gone nuts if she knew I was sneaking into my father’s office playing around with his toys, and I would never hear the end of it that was for sure.

  I was going in and out of my father’s office every day, since I had nothing better to do with my time, I was more like my father than my mother.

  Morning had finally arrived, and my father and I had fallen asleep, after a long night of storytelling by the fire.

  The morning air was cool and fresh, but the sky was grey with no sunshine in sight. My father started a fire to warm us up.

  That morning we only had sausages to eat. My father was quite that morning, and he asked if I had slept well, and if I was enjoying myself.

  I actually slept pretty good considering I didn’t have a nice cozy bed to sleep in. I was spoiled back at the farm, but out in the forest, I was free, comfortable, and did not have a care in the world.

  I loved spending quality time with my father.

  The forest brought my father and me together. At the farm I was distant from him, and we seemed to have kept to ourselves.

  I was closer to my mother on the farm, but in the forest there was magic happening between my father and me.

  It was special and meant a lot to me. I know it meant a lot my father also, and I looked forward to our next outing after this was over.

  We waited in our spot for the deer to come. The day grew longer, as we waited and waited.

  My father reminisced about another deer hunt. This hunt was without Hector. After Hector was killed, my father only went hunting on his own.

  This was an unusual deer hunt for my father.

  It was th
e first time since Hector died, since my father went deer hunting again. Hector would have wanted him to move on, be happy, and deer hunt.

  It was a sunny Sunday morning, my father was up early for his deer hunting trip, but I had a feeling he was looking for more than just a deer.

  He beefed up his arsenal, with an extra sharp machete sharpened up two days earlier, more bullets, and a bigger hunting knife.

  It was as if he was getting ready for war. It seemed after packing, he left the farm at the crack of dawn.

  My father told me he would always give me a kiss goodbye before he left, but I was just a baby, and couldn’t remember any of that, even though I wished that I had. He walked away from the farm, and made his way to the forest.

  It was just bad luck that my father was always deer hunting during a thunderstorm. Maybe, it was possible the forest was cursed.

  There was something about the mysterious forest that would always bring bad weather. Maybe Mother Nature was upset that my father was hunting.

  He walked in the forest as the rain poured on him, and the thunder roared. It was really dark as if night had already approached.

  My father made his way to the spot, where he liked to wait for deer.

  He started a fire nearby to warm up. The stormy weather did not give in, so he stayed by the fire longer to keep dry.

  He eventually settled in his spot and waited for the deer.

  The sky was grey and the forest trees made it seem like evening. My father had his bottle of whiskey as he waited for the deer.

  He would take a big gulp from his whiskey bottle every half hour to keep him patient.

  A deer approached. My father scoped the deer out with his hunting rifle.