Father and son.

The wind shook the tree branches creating a sound that had the same deafening tone as rain. 

    “Windy day out,” The man claiming to be my father said, desperate to make some sort of conversation. 

    “Sure,” I replied, unwilling to even offer him a look in the eyes. I don’t know why I’d agreed to go on this hunting trip with him. Nothing was forcing me to say yes, he just showed up out of the blue one day after being gone for twenty-three years. 

    “Do you hate me?” he asked. 

    “Yes,’ I replied coldly. He looked down with pathetic eyes and a mouth that was trying to quiver its way open to cry. He looked away not wanting to seem pathetic to his only son, even though it was far too late for that. He kept staring through his glasses into the distance to the point where I wondered what he was looking at. I Peeked over his shoulder to see a pattern of depressions in the mud. 

    “Tracks,” He cried, “Finally we’ve found game,” He looked back at me with a forced grin and misery in his eyes. I had already deduced that this man had never gone hunting before by the way he tried to sound like he knew what he was talking about when it was obvious he was repeating what he had most likely read on the web the night before. I took it upon myself to examine the tracks and determine what game we had come across. The tracks were monstrously huge and looked like a bear had left them behind. It looked like something out of a Stephen King Novel more than any living animal. 

    “What the hell,” I said instinctually, without realizing I had just given the man a way to relate to me, something I knew he would annoyingly latch on to. 

    “Y-yeah, never seen anything quite like this before,” He said as vaguely as possible to not hint at any lack of knowledge. I looked ahead at the trail of tracks. They lead down a hill deeper into the woods.

    “Alright, that’s as far as we’re going,” I said firmly. 

    “What? Why? We’ve just found something,” my father cried. 

    “You’ve never been hunting before, and this,” I said, motioning down to the massive tracks in the mud. “This changes everything.” I finished. Right as he was about to protest a dry scraping noise screeched out from a few yards beyond the tree. My father instinctually started to raise back but held out my hand to stop him. He looked at me quizzically as I mimicked the motion of someone walking slowly with my fingers.

We both carefully trotted our way to a nearby bush as the scraping sound grew louder and more violent. Finally, we made it behind the bush with just enough visibility to see out the small specs of light that waltzed with the shivering leaves.

Tremendous thumps shook the leaves on the ground as the massive beast dragged its meal on the hill. The hulking grizzly bear pulled up the corpse of a full-grown moose by the antlers and laid it on the ground. The bear was at least 5 feet tall at the shoulder with scarlet stains on its brown fur. For a moment all the sounds of the wind stopped as the bear took several mighty breaths. Its breathing suddenly stopped as I heard a sound I dreaded even more.

“What do we do?” He asked as quietly as possible. The bear lifted its head from the ground and looked straight at the bush we were hiding behind. It took a huge step forward as my father’s breathing got faster and faster, I went to shush before realizing how fast I was breathing. I turned my head forward to see it a few steps away from us. As it came ever so slightly closer to us we each burst up from behind the bush and bolted away from the bear in different directions. 

I panicked as I heard it racing behind me. The howling of its breaths and thumping of its feet grew closer and closer to me. A large paw shoved me to the ground with its claws slashing open the surface of my skin. My face was pushed into a mass of dry leaves and small twigs. The bear stood on top of me pressing its weight down on my back as I struggled to breathe. The heat of its breath pelted the back of my neck as it stood over me, lowering its head down to mine. 

All I could think was to look as unthreatening as possible, so I lay there in the leaves and twigs. A few mind-numbingly tense minutes went by as the bear sniffed my neck and back before finally backing off. Its large paws crunching the leaves grew quieter and quieter as I slowly began to pull myself up. An agonizing stinging erupted in my chest as I sat fully up. A scream of pain tried to burst out of my mouth; I held my mouth shut in fear that it would come back to finish the job. I was forced to temper my breathing to not feel a constant stabbing pain. 

    “Son, are you gonna be alright?” I heard my father say as dry leaves were tossed aside from the stomping of his boots. I looked up at him to see a reflection of myself in his crooked glasses. In the glossy frame, I saw blood running down my mouth and nose. 

    “I don’t know,” I said gingerly. His eyes began to water as tears rushed down his tender cheeks. 

    “Dammit, I’m so sorry,” He said falling to his knees, tears flooding out from his eyes. “I-if I hadn’t,” He said through uncontrolled sobs. My pained face changed to a face of spiteful contempt. His sobs stopped abruptly as the back of my hand struck the side of his face. 

    “Aren’t you supposed to be my dad?” I asked. He looked back with a shocked and confused expression before cautiously nodding his head. “Then start acting like it, I’ve been the parent here this entire time now it’s-” I said until being cut off by a sharp pain in my chest. I clenched the area of the pain as I fell over on my side. 

    “Son!” He yelled. He looked down at me with a confused scramble in his shaking eyes. I tried to say something but only felt a warm ooze spill onto my cheek. He blinked a few times each time his eyes looked progressively more focused. Finally, he took a deep breath and took my hand in his. His arm carried mine up and over his shoulder; we slowly took a few steps forward little by little making our way back to the road. 

Every step was just as bad as the last, It felt like the bones of my soles were pushing outward, trying to dig past the muscle and skin. Slowly but surely we braved the forest. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to sit with someone. I patted his shoulder and pointed at a nearby tree. He nodded and lead me there, slowly letting me down to rest. 

We waited there for a few minutes surveying my surroundings for the first time since the injury. The ground was much darker than the sky as if an invisible blanket was draped over the trees. It wasn’t quite night but the moon still hung high in the sky providing a small shine of light to the earth. The silence was strangely familiar; it felt like a dreadful calm waiting for a tragedy to happen. As if on cue a horrifying thudding pounded against the ground slowly coming closer with every step. 

I saw it moments later. Its fur looking like thorns protruding out from its skin in the darkness. The bear marched its way forward, its mouth hung open revealing crooked fangs and slobbering lips. As it came closer he raced forward putting himself in front of me and the bear. It looked, for just a moment, startled at him. The bear came up to him sniffing his face as he stood there completely still. Eventually, it turned back and wandered away again. 

    “C’mon we gotta get out of here,” He said as he lifted my arm and helped me to walk forward. At this point the adrenaline outweighed the aching soreness I felt all over my body. Finally there it was the road with my sedan parked off to the side of it. A few more steps and we were at the gates of salvation. I crashed into the back seat of the car bracing my ankles and chest. 

    “I need the keys,” He said holding out his hands. I handed them to him and watched him race to the driver's seat. As the angelic sound of the purring engine rang out I looked at my father. His once confused desperate expression melted away to a focused, driven stare. 

    “Hey dad,” I spoke. He looked back at me with curious eyes. “I’m not ready to say I love you but you’re more than I thought you were,” I said. He tried to hold back an overwhelmingly joyful grin in an attempt to stay stoic-faced. 

    “Thank you,” He said before turning his head and pressing on the gas.