An Inhuman Condition

At last-light on an autumn evening, a hunter advanced to within forty yards of his hopeful prey. The man stalked through the thick brush toward the sizable silhouette of what could only be a black bear. He readied his rifle from its sling and took a few steps forward. The animal clacked its teeth as a warning, and the hunter knew he had found his intended game. He struggled to target the creature through the thick flora and was forced to creep ever closer. The bear backed up a foot and stood to growl on its hind legs as a last warning to would-be predators that attack was imminent. The hunter, determined in his goal, stepped in again to find a better shot. As the bear fell forward to move in, the man hastily targeted for its head. He exhaled slowly and fired only to graze the fur far from the dark bulk of its center.

The massive animal charged, unfazed by the wound to its shoulder, and closed the distance between them in what felt like an instant. Its first blow landed on the hunter’s chest nearly expelling the wind from his piston-pumping lungs, and the second hit wrested the man’s ear and cheek clean off his face like the peeling of soup skin. The impact knocked the man to the ground with brutal, brain-bouncing force causing him to lose a few seconds of consciousness, and the bear wasted no time mouthing his leg and dragging the now-limp body into some nearby brush. The fast offense left him regaining his senses only to begin scrambling and flailing to find the gun sitting just a few feet away in the leaves.

With his upper body pinned under an immense weight, the man couldn’t wiggle away for his weapon. His flannel was shredded apart, and the animal gouged through bits of his chest. The claws dug out skin and meat, through innards, with intent to feast on the offal. The bear rent the intestines and liver from an ever-growing cavity pooling with a thick, clotty-deep red. The shaking shivers of shock had set in; the hunter’s hand no longer grasped futilely for his rifle. His pieces were simply gut-screaming, gasping with fluid-filled lungs and gargling on rusty, bitter blood. The blackness of the forest furthered his slip into nothingness: his end a welcome relinquishment of being and relief of all pain.

As if to add insult to deadly injury, the bear’s canines ripped the hunter’s scrotum like the sharp corner of a tin can tearing through a trash bag and the repeated crushing of many molars ground his testicular innards with sloppy precision akin to machinery mashing chicken-bits for McNuggets. It bit out large chunks of beer-weight, thigh fat leaving gaping shrapenalesque holes while it gulped the meat down barely chewing. With a few quick swallows reminiscent of snakes snacking on whole rodents, the beast had whittled the man’s left leg down to bones and a few sinewy snippets of flesh.

As humanity paved ever-thus into the wild, the natural lust and hunger of the world bit back at every corner until equilibrium or extinction were attained. If one personified the creature, this ursus americanus might have seemed smugly satisfied with his meaty treat. The lucky catch saved some time he would have spent scouring for shoots and roots preparing for hibernation. One might even had exclaimed when it awoke in April that the semblance of a snicker could still be seen on its visage.

Sic semper Sapiens, and happy hunting.