The Hunt
A/n note, I want to dedicate this to my cat Luke, who kept me up all night meowing. Also this story is a little short.
I woke up hungry... no. I was starving. I had gone to sleep starving last night. Just like I had the night before, and the night before that.
I was getting desperate, so desperate that I had scanned the road for fresh road kill. Something I had promised myself that I would never do again. But I had come back to my tree empty-taloned.
Now I was hungry above and beyond what hunger that I had ever known before. My stomach churned and growled, seeming to taste my sides, wondering if they were good enough to chew on.
And I was very tired. My body didn't have the fuel it needed to go on. It was resorting to eat away at my own muscles to keep alive.
I should have morphed a human earlier and asked for a meal at Rachel's or dug through the dumpsites for scraps. I should have, could have.... But I didn't. I was too proud. Now I didn't have enough energy to fly far or to morph. I was going to die for my pride.
Unless of course I found food.
I looked around the empty field for a little bit and finding nothing as usual. The drought had been too hard, it had killed off all the mice and rats. At last I snapped at a nearby leaf that was in my way and fell into a restless sleep.
When I woke up the world seemed to be swaying around me. I groaned and the world seemed to groan around me. I knew what this was. I was becoming delirious in the grip of starvation. This was it, this was the end...
I heard a sound and saw something move in the grass. A mouse. I swooped down and landed on top of it. Then I brought my tearing beak down to feast.... But it bounced off.
My vision cleared and I realized that what I was grasping in my talons wasn't a mouse at all. It was a rock. It had looked so real, felt so real... But it wasn't real, now I had wasted a lot of energy on a stupid rock. I let go and flew up to a branch, a lower one this time because I couldn't make it any higher.
It was an hour until I spotted movement again. It was a cat, probably just as hungry as I. He was sniffing around, searching for prey.
My prey.
Could he be my prey? Could I actually try to kill and eat a cat or would he eat me? It was suicidal at best especially as weak as I was but... I was going to starve anyway and I wanted to go down fighting.
I gathered the last bits of my strength and swooped down once more. The cat didn't even notice me until it was to late. I latched onto its back and began to peck and claw for all I was worth.
The startled cat jumped, or tried to jump, into the air while yowling its head off. It was too late for the cat however, I found the spinal cord on the back of its neck and broke it. The cat died.
I set upon eating. God, it felt so good to have my stomach full again. To know I had a second chance at life. I ate and ate until I thought I could eat no more, then I started eating again.
Finally something caught my eye. It was a shiny tag attached to the cats collar. I felt a momentary rush of guilt, I was eating someone's pet.
What prompted me to read the tag I will never know. Maybe it was the universe's way of messing with my head. But when I flipped over the tag with my beak it only said one word.
DUDE.
Questions? Comments? Death Threats? Well e-mail 'em to me!