Hyber-Nation

location: On the Comfy Couch

mood: Working

music: The Others in the background.

Prey

Written By Monica Valentinelli

A musky scent drifts lazily on stale, moonlit air. Alara knows this scent—fear—it holds little meaning to her. Her hawk’s eyes narrow as she circles above the cemetery searching for her dinner. Her gaze focuses on a small, brown mouse backed against a stone marker. The mouse spots her and freezes. Alara dives to strike.

Something hot hisses and sparks, burning her dinner to a blackened crisp. Alara leaps to the night air, squawking in alarm. She lifts higher caught by the smell of pungent, moldy earth and burning candle fat. Faint sounds penetrate the smells, syllables of monotonous droning interrupted by a harsh voice. Alara knows the voice—it belongs to her master.

Alara circles above the voices, her winged form thinly veiled by the moonlight’s smoke-filled mist. Syllables turn into well-formed sounds; Alara knows little of the language of men. Swooping again, her watchful eye catches white, wriggling worms breaking free from the ground before her master. Her body streams through the air, diving for her prey. Clamping down on the worm, she leaps to finish it off but the thing won’t let go.

Alara spits wriggling flesh out of her beak. A human hand rises from the ground and creeps forward. Her master’s mouth turns foul; blackened sparks of menace fly from his skinny lips. The more he speaks, the faster the unnatural thing turns over well-shoveled earth. Alara looks from her master to the rising form. Nothing here is safe to eat.

Carefully placed candles burn brighter than a midday sun. Alara shakes her foggy head, casting off a ravenous glare boring into her feathers. A naked hand grabs for her left wing and misses. Alara lifts gently above her attacker and dives, pecking. Fingers pry at her tail feathers, she screams out in pain and flings herself on her master. Bits of oily words coat her wings. She knows her own scent now—fear. A face appears before her, her master’s face, holding something sharp that glints in the moonlight. Inhuman eyes glow as he pulls back his knife. Alara juts forward, pecking blindly at whatever is in front of her.

Her master howls in pain, stopping the flow of menacing words. The candles’ light dims; Alara pecks her master again and again with wings outstretched. He swings the knife at her, his anger thick. She pushes herself off the ground and attacks his eyes. Black ooze seeps along the deep grooves in his face. Her master drops the blade and Alara forces herself up to a low hover. Sinewy arms and hands connected to a gaping maw fling themselves desperately at her. She feels corded muscles tighten around her. She cannot move, or fly, or breathe.

Alara opens her beak, gasping for precious air. Black ash swirls around her, stinging and twisting her body away from her master and his unnatural creation only to land softly on a patch of freshly laid grass.  Too exhausted to lift her head, Alara sleeps dreaming of her next meal.