Vincent lay on his cot. The sun outside was bright, and the shadow of the maple tree on the canvas roof of his tent was sharp. He had not raised the fly off the roof vents, and the air in the tent was hot. He took another swig from the bottle of whiskey on the floor beside the cot. He should be out guarding the trophies, not getting drunk in his tent. God knew what kind of predators they had in this place.
He drank whiskey from the bottle when he was very happy or very sad. He did not know which it was this time. It had been a clean shot. When he got home they would mount the head on the wall of the lodge and Vincent would be a somebody. Even Sir Gradson had never shot a unicorn. That crazy witch doctor who brought them here knew what he was doing after all.
The creature had walked right into their camp. Sometimes animals did that. It had walked underneath the oak they had hung the carcasses from to drain, and stretched its neck down to sniff the blood on the ground. It hadn't noticed Vincent lying behind a clump of ferns not fifty yards away. The angle had been no good. Its neck had been in the way of its heart, and the Rigby .465 left holes that made taxidermists cry. There were mosquitoes in the shade under the ferns, and they had bitten his arms and face as he waited for the thing to lift its head.
"Daddy," he heard a little girl call from outside.
"Go 'way," Vincent muttered.
Brett thought the lodge was going to mount his gryphon over the fireplace, in the empty space to the left of Sir Gradson's tigers. When he and Molo returned from their hunt, he would see the unicorn stallion's carcass hanging from the oak tree and would know that his gryphon would never be mounted over the fireplace next to the tigers.
"Daddy!" the little girl screamed.
Vincent cursed, and took another drink. "Leave me 'lone!" he shouted. "You aren't real!"
The gryphon had also screamed, and kept screaming for a long time, after Brett gut-shot it. Brett always jerked the trigger. A loop of intestine had fallen out, and the thing had attacked it, yanking it out like a long, pink-purple earthworm. If it had flown off instead, they never would have found the body.
Now the little girl was sobbing. She sounded almost real.
"Honey," Vincent called hoarsely. "It wasn't Daddy's fault. Daddy didn't wanna leave you. Your mommy wanted a somebody." He rolled onto his back and stared at the patterns the maple leaves cast on the tent roof. "But 's gon' be okay," he slurred quietly. "Daddy's a somebody now."
The sobbing continued. "Daddy... Daddy... Oh, Daddy..."
Vincent staggered to his feet. He stumbled once on his way to the end of the tent. He was terrible with children, even when he was sober and they were real. "Hold on, honey," he said as he opened the tent flap. "Daddy's coming."
This is brilliant in a twisted way. Or maybe twisted in a brilliant way. One or the other.
I'm glad these stories are short, though.
This was inspired by Hemingway's "The Green Hills of Africa", in which Hemingway portrayed himself, perhaps unknowingly, as a creepy guy who roamed around Africa, killing anything he could kill but never enjoying it very much.
Writing in Hemingway's style is a lot like writing a script. You can't use interior monologue; the only way to show what a character feels is by showing what they do. I couldn't do that in a short-short. Not enough space. Nor did I want Vincent to be a Hemingway protagonist. Then he would be too manly to care.
I could've used a little more. Maybe the realization that the narrator was hunting and shooting sapient beings, maybe just seeing where the story went from here. Still, what you did do was quite good, in a chillingly dispassionate way.
I'm going to have to read some Hemingway.
470089
"Maybe the realization that the narrator was hunting and shooting sapient beings"
He'll realize it in 3... 2... 1...
Witchdoctor huh? That Zecora sure carries some grudges, boy howdy!
Be funny to see this from a Teddy Roosevelt side, where when he discovers they're sapient he's pissed....because that meant he could have challenged them to a brawl instead. "Coulda knocked'em clean outta their skin without damaging those fine pelts! "
The way I read this, he was hallucinating from being drunk, and the 'griffin' he shot was the little girl, who was bleeding out as she was saying 'Oh daddy, why?'.
Am I totally wrong?
1065259
Oh. Maybe I need to rewrite that somehow. What I meant to have happened was: He and his friend hired the witch doctor to take them to a land where they could shoot mythological beasts. The land is Equestria. The griffin and the unicorn are a griffin and a unicorn. He got drunk because he felt bad for killing a unicorn, but didn't understand why. The little girl is the unicorn's daughter.
474879 1066898 I suspected that was the case, but I wasn't quite sure. I think I liked it better when it was just barely ambiguous.
Of course, there is "The Most Dangerous Game"...
That particular hunter would have loved to kill every intelligent thing in Equestria. After all, magical creatures are a much greater challenge than humans with no powers.
Fortunately, he's dead now.
575963 What's up, bitches?
God DAMN it, Teddy! Get outta here!
He's like Bloody Mary: just saying his name is enough to call him.
3135756 That story creeped me out.
468931
Ah, Hemingway.
"Why did the chicken cross the road? To die. In the rain."
1066898 I figured that out after a bit of reread.
I almost expected the girl calling to mean that the ponies were now hunting him, using a foal's call as bait!