(Rivetra week day 8 prompt: madness.)
The day was sizzling. It was nearly audibly hot, and the air vibrated in rebellion against the sun's oppressive rays. The forest took this in its stride: the enormous footprint the Amazonian vegetation made in South America.
He was, as the forest, relaxed in his attitude: taking the atmosphere in, knowing that there was nothing to be done.
"Don't be stupid, Pet." He said, seeing his wife carry her rifle.
"Of course, Lev." She responded, hating the abbreviation of her name, but heeding the advice. She slung the rifle, the armament nearly as tall as her, around her back, and sauntered off for a day's hunting.
"Be back by noon."
"Will do." Smiling and planting a brief kiss on his lips, the lady turned and exited.
Keeping an eye on the clock, the man busied himself in his own labour. He tended to the kitchen, he saw to the clothes and checked on the small garden he stole from nature.
He considered his wife, a protégé in hunting: she was out alone in the woods since she was seven and caught some of the nearby town's best birds. She was young, of course, not yet a mother, though Levi had wanted to remedy that. She did not experience much, merely marriage and what Levi hoped was love, but was too insecure to be sure. She was very innocent. Relative to most in the town, she was known not to do the locally grown drugs or drink more than society required. It was this beauty in her eyes combined with the grace of her ways that Levi hoped he would attain and hoped even more that he would preserve in her.
Reflecting on the few hunts he had accompanied, he guessed she would have reached the field by now. Anybody hunting in the town knew the field: nature's concession to open space where trees and undergrowth gave way to a few blades of grass and let the sun reach the ground.
The local hunting was sparse. Most people planted because the wildlife required Godly patience. Birds flew randomly and bullets had to be saved. Shots rarely rang out as hunters knew that some birds took flight faster than the deadly rocks pelted at them reached.
The pondered the rifle, boredom sinking in, the Saint-Etienne calibre-16 that Petra got as a gift from her father. Her father insisted that the hunting ran in the family. He was evidence, having been the town-respected best hunter in his time. The Ral family had been that way for generations according to old Peter Ral.
Yet, it was simple for an overconfident hunter to trip. Miss a hidden root and fire an accidental shot, maybe lose a leg, heaven forbid the loss of life.
It was terrible for Levi to think on this as he had, since childhood, suffered from occasional hallucinations. It was labelled as an over-active imagination as the town did not have resources to support his condition and neither he nor his guardians had the resources to go elsewhere.
At this point, he inevitably hallucinated Petra's death: it was his anxiety, his care and his love that compelled his imagination.
A shot rang out.
Levi triangulated it to be quite nearby, not too far from the field. "The old rifle." He mused, reassuring himself with a few more chores.
A while later, he checked the clock and found it to be noon. He grunted, half having expected Petra to be late. She was usually too engrossed in the hunt.
He forced thoughts of untimely death away as he tried to focus on chores. His mind was splitting itself between his rational control and irrational concern.
After half an hour's struggle, Levi considered the shot. It was one shot, and one shot quite a while ago. There were no other sounds, no other attempts. And it had been at least half an hour, if not more. It was as if-
Levi ran out of the house. Without considering a hat or a machete, he fled towards the field.
He looked about, stopping in the extraneous grass. He looked around, turning to cover all the angles and all the tangled paths out of the field. "Petra!" He called.
Nature detained a reply. He called once more, pacing about the clearing's circumference. Still silence rang out after each of his calls.
He reached a path – a new one, recently developed by Petra herself. He called, stepping into the wood slowly. There he found a body. Slumped against a tree, the orange tip gave the cadaver's identity away.
He was consumed instantly by urges. The urge to cry out, to let the local birds flee his pain in fearful flight, the urge to scream his throat dead, to be mute forever, to not bow to nature and deign to label the corpse with her name, to hide it, to feel that that was not her, merely some unfortunate stranger. "Petra." He admitted.
He slumped onto his knees considering how a twenty year old woman was lying against a tree, looking up towards her beloved birds, staring innocently at the sky and how he let her become that way.
Then a rustle overcame the small funereal. Levi's heart was denied peace in its death, because in the figure that rounded the corner, it was denied death. There she walked and quickly he labelled: "Petra?"
"Levi?" She gasped, switching from composure to guilty apology. "I'm sorry, I know I said I would be back-"
"I was so worried."
"I know, I'm sorry."
"Did you catch anything?" Petra grinned as always, happily presenting a dead bird.
The day was glorious, coloured by the anxiety and redeemed in normality. It was a mix and the emotional storm had cleared, leaving the usual rainbow. After all, a panicked Levi would have hallucinated a dead Petra, he already had many times. The day was not lost.
It was that night, when Peter Ral attended dinner, that he realized his son-in-law was truly insane. Worse, this son of his would be unable to regain sanity, for insanity was where he had Petra and in sanity, she was against the tree, still looking for her favourite bird. Peter wished he too were insane.
(I think, for some scenes, abstaining from a summary would be the best to avoid spoiling the plot (because they're usually short any way and a sentence takes away the magic of discovery).
I hope you liked this. It is based heavily on Horacio Quiroga's El Hijo - in fact, it practically is the same story.
Have fun!)