White Deer

The hunter has a deer in his sights, gun drawn and aimed steady towards the heart of the animal. He takes a breath in, holds it, and pulls the trigger.

The first thing he hears is the resounding gunshot that rings through the forest. The next thing he hears is the sound of frantic hooves staggering through the underbrush. As the deer quickly runs out of his view, he realizes he missed the heart and hit the shoulder instead.

A trail of dark blood and disturbed leaves is left on the ground, but the hunter doesn’t follow it. It’s too much effort to track a deer after a bad shot; he only takes home the ones that he drops on the spot. While he’s waiting for a new deer to wander by, he doesn’t think too much about where the injured deer go or what happens to them afterward. It isn’t important.

He stands still as a stone, idle hands awaiting another chance to pull the trigger.

After the sky begins to darken, another deer eventually emerges.

It’s a strange deer, though, unlike any he’s seen before. With a pure white coat that glistens like the moon, it stands out starkly against the trees. Once it comes to a stop, it’s almost entirely still, no sniffing nose or twitching ears like he sees on the others.

The deer nearly seems to glow under the dim light of dusk. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he vaguely recalls tales of a mystic white deer, a simple story his father told him when he was younger. The hunter is enamored for a moment.

Still, though, it’s only a moment. He figures his father had just been spooked by an albino deer once and misconstrued it as something more special in his mind.

He raises his gun, trains it on the chest like he would for any other creature, and slides his finger over the trigger. An animal is an animal. He won’t miss this time.

The deer turns its head and looks him in the eyes.

He shoots.

The bullet pierces right where he was aiming, and the deer drops to the ground just as he’d planned. After it collapses with a thud, he runs up and kneels by the body of his kill. He doesn’t care much for the taste of venison, but its one-of-a-kind head would certainly look good mounted on a wall.

He looks back at the deer lying in front of him, blood seeping into its white fur from the bullet wound. He grabs his flask out of his front pocket.

“Don’t you worry your little head,” he taunts the corpse, taking a swig of whiskey. “This will be quick.”

With that, he pulls a knife from his bag and starts skinning. In between strokes of his knife, he intermittently takes swigs from his flask, not bothering to clean his hands of the blood.

Eventually, he manages to separate the head from its body. He wipes his hands and picks it up by the antlers, holding the deer’s face to his own. The fur is soft against his hands.

“Look at you. Just as pretty as when you were still alive.”

“Merciless fool.” An unfamiliar voice cuts through the silence. The hunter recoils and drops the deer’s head into the dirt.

“Who’s there?” He quickly turns, searching for the source of the voice, but finds nobody.

“So different you are from your forefathers. You have left many of my kind to wander bleeding and die slowly after you fumble your shots. It is a hunter’s duty to be quick."

He freezes and looks back toward the head on the floor. He swears that it’s looking back.

“Why do you kill?” The voice pulses in his skull until it starts to hurt. “Is it for pride?”

Pained, he attacks what he thinks is the source of the voice. He smashes the deer’s head under his boot, fur and skin slipping beneath the force of his sole.

“You are lost, dear hunter.”

He picks it up by the antlers once more and hurls it out of sight. Wiping his hands on his pants and taking a deep breath, he tries to regain his composure.

“Maybe I drank too much,” he reasons with himself. “I’ve been out here too long.”

He couldn’t mount the head anymore. It would be a waste to go through all this trouble without getting anything back from it, though. If he could just recoup his losses by selling the hide, that would be good enough. Surely, even the skin of a white deer is worth a lot.

He skins the deer, packs up his belongings, and starts his trek back home. As soon as he got there, he would flesh it and wash it and prep it to be sold. He just needs to find his way back home.

It’s dark, though. He can’t even see the moon. The canopy of leaves barely lets any light into the forest.

Being out this late is never a good idea. He finds that all the trees begin to look the same. He can no longer make out any paths or landmarks, and he doesn’t remember which direction he came from in the first place.

He walks and walks, talking to himself quietly about how it will only be a little while longer before he finds his way back home. His legs are getting tired.

He gathers up dry leaves, sticks, wood, anything he can to make a fire. He finds enough to make the flames last a good couple of hours, then finally lays down on the forest floor. Before falling asleep, he tells himself that it will be easier to navigate once the sun rises again.

When he wakes up after a dreamless sleep, the fire has gone out. It’s just as dark as before.

It should be morning by now, he reasons. He gets back on his feet as soon as he can and wanders, only to find that he’s still hopelessly directionless. He keeps walking anyway.

Nothing has changed. The forest is still and cold and quiet, with not even the sound of crickets to break the silence. The air is dead. He repeats the process of making a fire and falling asleep, only to wake up in darkness again. Eventually, he stops making the fires at all and simply falls asleep in the dirt.

Sobered by hunger and exhaustion, he wanders until he has no more strength to keep going and he collapses like a wounded animal.

“You are lost,” he hears the voice speak at the edge of his awareness. “You are lost.”

He nods as he finally loses consciousness.