Slave Hunt

by J. A. Rock

  “You know Miles?”

  “Heard of him.”

  “That’s my boyfriend.”

  “Yeah.” She stepped daintily over a fallen branch. “There’s a hunter who really wants to catch him.”

  Her right leg. She favored her right leg.

  I forced myself to stop watching her and actually absorb what she’d said. “Who?”

  “Dorian.”

  It took me a second. “You mean Bowser?” I remembered Miles telling me that Bowser’s scene name was DorianGreat—“Bowser” was a nickname that had caught on once someone pointed out his laugh sounded just like the Mario villain’s.

  “Maybe?”

  “Big? Basically a Viking?”

  “Yeah.”

  Part of me wanted to let her go and then find Miles. Assure myself nobody had captured him. Stay by his side so nobody else could claim him. I wasn’t normally possessive, but I was feeling ungenerous today.

  We reached the edge of the woods and stepped out into the meadow. A weak sun was out, and the scene before me was a very adult variation on some of my favorite childhood memories: showing up for T-ball practice in the field behind the YMCA. My family’s neighbors, who’d had acres of property my friends and I could play on.

  There was no looming deposition, no uncertainty about my future with Miles, no concern about Bowser. There was just this moment, where I gave thanks to the world for its beauty and its strangeness.

  I led Farrah to the posts and cuffed her. Spent a few minutes using a leather-and-fur paddle on her while she danced and begged, and then told her I had to get back to hunting. I handed off the paddle to a man who was waiting in line, and when I left, Farrah and the man were laughing together and negotiating, so I didn’t feel bad about leaving. I scanned the posts one more time. Still no sign of Miles.

  I returned to the woods and cut a brisk course straight ahead. Dodged some nettles and climbed over a fallen tree until I was in a relatively clear section where a muddy trough had formed in the earth. Several different shoe prints here. If I were a slave, I might hide around the outskirts of this clearing—I’d be able to see hunters coming, and it would be easier to stay oriented than it would if you hid deep in the woods.

  I walked along the trough, following a trail of prints into a cluster of oaks bulging with fungus. It was only a few minutes before I heard someone nearby. I readied my gun, but the man who walked among the shadows was familiar, and definitely not prey.

  D.

  He spotted me and nodded silently.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He glanced around, then approached, moving so soundlessly he might have been an apparition. “Hello.” He had what looked like charcoal on his fingers, and a small notebook was sticking out of his pod belt.

  “Caught anyone yet?”

  “I am seeking David and only David. So far I have not found him.”

  I hoisted my rifle. “So it’s personal?”

  He wiped his charcoal-stained fingers on his jeans. “David took issue with my belief that he is not cut out for this sort of event. I then decided to train him in woodland survival so that I could compete against my own protégé.”

  “Interesting. I’ve been hoping to see Miles. Just so I can check in with him. I won’t capture him. More gift cards if we both win.”

  D grunted. “He was captured.”

  What? “By who? I was just at the post, and I didn’t see—”

  “The sturdy lumberjack.”

  Bowser.

  All at once, I didn’t want to thank the world for its beauty and strangeness. I just wanted to see my boyfriend. Hear his voice. Talk with him—the way we used to talk, before parenthood and new jobs and money worries had forced us to spend more time listening to our fears and doubts than to each other. “Figures,” I muttered. “It just figures.”

  D looked me over with impassive blue eyes behind thick goggles. “I have never seen you agitated. If the woods are in danger of claiming your sanity, you may wish to return to camp.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. Well. Miles and I are . . . fine.”

  “Has someone suggested otherwise?”

  “No. I’m just . . .” Why had I even brought this up? With D of all people?

  He was still watching me.

  “I’m being stupid.”

  “In what way?”

  I tightened my ponytail. “I feel like things with Miles have stalled a little. I mean, we’re both busy, and he’s a father, and of course I shouldn’t ask for any more of his life force than he’s willing to share with me.”

  D’s forehead furrowed very slightly. “Of course.”

  “I just . . . I guess I’d like an indication he sees us as permanent.”

  D coughed into his elbow without taking his eyes off me. “You doubt his commitment?”

  “Not really. But it’s been two years. And I still don’t live with them. And I’d like to.”

  He was silent a long time. Then he said, “When I met David, something changed inside me. When he was not there, I wished he would come back. One night, I played a sad song.”

  “Because you missed him?”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. “Perhaps, like me, Miles has trouble describing this feeling.” His eyes flashed open again. “And that is why he has not yet brought up living together.”

  “Miles is very articulate.”

  D shrugged. “Then perhaps he does not wish to make this particular commitment.”

  “Thanks. That’s comforting.”

  He stared into the middle distance. “I am led to believe that David wishes I would declare my love more frequently.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because the sentiment is more important than the words. I do not wish to cheapen it with a banality.”

  “I doubt Dave would see ‘I love you’ as a banality.”

  His hand flexed, and his eyes shifted behind the goggles. A short gold hair glinted on the shoulder of his sweater—too light to be his own. “I should go back to the hunt.”

  “Hold on.”

  He faced me again.

  “You should tell him.”

  Two long strides, and he was right in front of me. I sensed the spike in his energy—the way it pushed against mine, just for a second, as though he were afraid or angry. “I try. You think I don’t try?”

  “What do you mean, tr—”

  “He could have anyone.” It was the fastest I’d ever heard D speak. “Someone far more attractive. Kinder, funnier. Younger. He could have anyone.”

  For a second I could only stand there, tongue pressed to the tip of one of my filed teeth. D worried about Dave leaving him? “You think you’re not good enough for him?”

  He stepped back, like he was snapping out of a trance. Shook his head. “Most of the time, no.” His mustache twitched as he gave a quick sniff. “But I open my mouth to tell him, and I suddenly imagine that he sees a fool.”

  Perhaps I was giving myself too much credit, but I really did think I was the only person to ever hear D say this. “I’m sure he doesn’t.”

  He adjusted his goggles. “I dislike words.”

  I laughed. “Yeah? Well, you dislike salad. But I’ve seen you eat it sometimes, for Dave.”

  He nodded slowly. “And what about you? When will you tell Miles what he needs to hear?”

  “Uhhh. I’m waiting for him to tell me what I need to hear.”

  “‘I have acted fearlessly and independent, and I never will regret my course.’”

  “What?”

  “Davy Crockett. Be proactive. From what I understand about Miles, he sometimes responds quite well to directness.”

  It was true, and easy to forget. Miles was so intelligent, so organized, so . . . outwardly certain, that confrontation never seemed like the tack to take with him. But the few times I had told him This is what I need; this is how I think things should be had been highly successful. “You might have a point.”

  “If you leave
now, you might reach camp before his time on the post is done.” D tipped an imaginary hat to me. “Think about it.”

  He continued on.

  I grabbed the hot sauce and waited for the bullet. Or the wolf or whatever lurky-ass motherfucker was in the bushes. It bummed me out that I was paralyzed with fear, ’cause I’d always figured if I got into a dangerous situation, I’d barrel-roll out of it. But there wasn’t really time for a barrel roll.

  Except the chick who came out of the bushes didn’t even point her gun at me. She was short, but not, like, Ryan short, and she had dark-brown skin and kinda buzzed-ish black hair and the greatest eyebrows in history. She went “Ah-ha!” as she emerged, but then stopped when she saw me.

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Kamen. Is this your hot sauce?”

  She scoped the hot sauce. “Uh, yeah, actually. I was trying to set a trap for my girlfriend.”

  Her girlfriend sounded like the best.

  She still hadn’t asked me to surrender, so maybe I could keep her talking, and then barrel-roll when the moment was right. “Do you and her have a grope-pact?”

  “A what?”

  “Like, are you supposed to catch her on purpose so you can get real with her on the whipping post?”

  “No, uh . . . I mean, yes, I want to catch her.”

  “And grope her?”

  “Of course. She loves hot sauce and hates the woods, so I thought if I hung around here, near the field—”

  “Me too! I mean, I don’t mind the woods. Dave’s the one who hates the woods. But I love hot sauce.”

  She nodded with her eyebrows up a little. “I can see that.”

  “Are you gonna shoot me?”

  One side of her mouth kinda twisted. “What’s your bounty?”

  “I compose a ballad about my captor’s heroics.”

  She checked her watch. “Uhhhh . . . no, probably not. I’m gonna stick around here and see if my girlfriend shows up.”

  “I feel like I need to meet your girlfriend. If she loves hot sauce this much.”

  “Oh jeez. It’s hot sauce on everything—even mac ’n’ cheese.”

  “She hot macs?” I would’ve seriously married this woman’s girlfriend if I didn’t already have the tiniest, gropiest miracle of a boyfriend God had ever launched onto this planet.

  “Yep. I can’t believe we get along as well as we do. Between the hot sauce and the Perfume Genius fixation and the constant reality TV.”

  “Oh my God. Does she watch Space Camp?”

  “Yes! That’s the only one I’ll watch with her.”

  “Dude, good for you.” Space Camp was literally the greatest reality show of all time. “Hey, the new season, right?”

  “Caleb is getting on my nerves already.”

  “Ohhh!” I high-fived her. “He’s gonna get sent home quick. Stacey’s got staying power, but she blew ass at the one-sixth-gravity chair.”

  “You like Stacey?”

  I psshhh-ed. “I didn’t say I liked her. I just said she’s got staying power.”

  We shot the shit for a few minutes about Space Camp and the hunt and stuff, and it was so fun. She said her name was Darcy and she was a stand-up comic and a librarian, so she won everything. I told her about a recipe for garlic chicken that would change her life, and her girlfriend’s life, especially if they sauced that shit good and hot. Finally she said maybe I should get out of there before someone hunted me, and I was like, good point.

  I asked if I could give her a hug, and she was down, so I squeezed her pretty firm. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me. Ryan—he’s my boyfriend—he wants to be the one who captures me so he can grope me all over town basically. And then Dave was like, ‘Don’t touch that hot sauce; it’s a trap.’ But I didn’t listen.”

  “Okay. Well, you’re welcome.”

  She let me go without shooting me.

  That was how life worked for me sometimes. Doors opening everywhere for K-Powers.

  I was walking away when I thought of something. I turned back to her and held up the hot sauce. “Do you want your—”

  “Keep it.” She gave one final nod of blessing.

  See? Dave should’ve stuck around. Because freedom and hot sauce.

  Thinking of Dave made me remember that he was alone, and that he was scared of the woods. Plus we were supposed to be an alliance. So then I felt terrible.

  I had to be a goddamn hero and find him.

  I headed toward the dark part of the woods, where he’d run. When I was safely away from Darcy, I dropped and barrel-rolled. Except it was hard to do with hot sauce and I mostly just ended up hurting my shoulder and getting covered in leaves.

  As I was getting up from my roll, I got like a sixth sense of danger.

  I was real close to a huge tree, so I dove behind that old Barkface McBranches and got covered in leaves again.

  A second later, a green paintball exploded on the ground near my foot.

  I scrambled up and looked around, kinda panicked, because where the fuck had that come from?

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  And that was when a voice said, “Surrender.”

  I decided not to keep the poor muffin in agony for too long—though a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.

  “Hello, Kamen,” I said from my concealed perch, affecting a rasp in my tone.

  He fled away from the tree, then looked around like Wilbur hearing Charlotte’s voice for the first time. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Where are you?”

  I kept rasping. “I’m your worst nightmare. I’m—” I choked on my own spit. “Fuck.”

  “Maya?” He sounded deeply confused.

  I hacked into my elbow for a moment. “The one and only,” I finally croaked.

  “Why are you up there? Do you have a gun?”

  I leaned back into the crook of two branches and let my leg dangle. “I do, baby.” I fired at a nearby bird, missing by a few inches, then blew on the barrel of my rifle. I actually wasn’t a bad shot. My very conservative papa had taught me guns years ago, and while I hated his politics, I’d loved the free trips to the shooting range.

  “How?” Kamen was still frantically trying to see me.

  This little boo-bat needed someone by his side. I hopped down from the tree and hitched up my jumpsuit. “I happened upon two hunters fucking in the woods. They’d left their guns by a rock, so I took one.”

  “Why were you in a tree?”

  I pulled my water bottle out of my hip holster and uncapped it. “So I could shoot paintballs at random people and watch them get really confused. Obviously.” And because I’m goddamn Katniss.

  “Ohhh.”

  I took a few gulps, then twisted the cap back on. “What are you up to?”

  “Looking for Dave.”

  “Dave?”

  “But also for Ryan.”

  “Isn’t Ryan a hunter?” I placed the bottle back in my holster. “You might be doing this wrong, sweet pea.”

  “Yeah, but we wanna get real on the whipping post. So we were supposed to stage a capture.”

  “Okay, so why are you looking for Dave?”

  “We had an alliance. Then I abandoned him by accident. He’s scared of the woods, and now he’s out there alone. And all because I didn’t wanna leave the hot sauce.” He held up a bottle of ghost pepper sauce.

  I thought about asking him to elaborate, but oddly, I felt like I understood exactly what had happened. “Oh, you adorable little fart-puff. Whatever you’ve done, I’m sure it’s fixable.”

  He explained what he’d done, and it was adorable. It was like the Meerkat Manor of minor treasons.

  “So it sounds to me,” I said, “like Dave abandoned you.”

  My squishy darling took that in for a moment. “Yeah. I guess he did.”

  “So maybe it’s lucky you’re with me instead of that traitor.”

  His forehead got scrunchy. “Do we have an alliance now?”<
br />
  “If you want. I mean, I do have a gun.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah!”

  There you go. Who’s a good boy? You want the ball? Who wants the ball? “So what do you say we go find Ryan?”

  His face fell slightly. “If he hasn’t given up on me.”

  I reached way up to clap a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to find him.”

  We started walking. It was about three minutes before he started to sing:

  “Oh we’re lost in the woods;

  “We wander ’mid trees.

  “Nothing but our wits,

  “And the cool spring breeze—”

  “Okay,” I interrupted. “We’re not lost. I know exactly where we are.”

  “Our bodies are weary.

  “Our bones are like ice.

  “But Maya’s a hero—

  “So hot, strong, and nice . . .”

  This was all a little “Brave Sir Robin” for me. “Yo, bard?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re gonna attract every hunter within a mile’s radius if you keep singing.”

  “I can sing quieter.” He continued in a near-whisper:

  “She’s basically Katniss,

  “But with way cooler hair.

  “Whenever I need her,

  “She’s always right there . . .”

  I sighed. This was a grown man. A grown. Man. Like, honest to God, I didn’t know how any of the guys except Miles had survived into their late twenties. Though to tell the truth, I didn’t think Kamen was anywhere near as dopey as he pretended to be. He had a mind—not like a steel trap, but maybe like those snappy things at the ends of dog leashes? He could hook a little somethin’-somethin’, just not, you know, a bear.

  As we wandered along, I thought about my issue of wanting to fuck everyone. I mean, not fuck, exactly. But have sensual experiences with all the Earth’s people. Seriously, I looked at Miles and Drix, and I was like, Yeah, I want someone to choke me and staple me and make me bleed. Then I looked at those pups, and I was like, Hey, maybe I just want someone to pet me and lead me around on a leash and make me drink out of a bowl. And then I saw Kel, and I wanted to face-plant into her cleavage and have my tongue be all over those tits for a solid fortnight. But then I got together with Fucktopus, and I was like, Maybe this is love. Because I adored how he used lots of different dildos on me and called them tentacles. But he wasn’t quite right for me.