Stripes Run Red

They always hunted on moonlit nights.

It eliminated the need for flashlights, which would act like flares in the open, Maharashtra plains. They slowly prowled through the thick, lush undergrowth, using the moon’s glow to guide them to the waterhole where they’d laid their trap the previous night.

“Are you ready?” Falan asked softly, hauling a thick duffel bag onto his broad shoulders. Moonlight bathed his figure, highlighting the taunt muscles protruding from his back. “We’re almost there.”

Amol Patel exhaled, surveying the untamed wilderness with a deadly precision. “Yes,” he finally responded, his voice firm. He’d fought relentlessly for this opportunity, and he refused to let his nerves betray him. 

A tiger pelt sold for over twelve hundred thousand Indian rupees. He’d be lucky to make a hundred from this hunt—but even that would feed and clothe his family for months.

Slowly, they emerged from the undergrowth, keeping their footfalls soft lest they startle the skittish nightlife. Amol exhaled approvingly. Even in his predatorial state, he couldn’t help but appreciate the untamed beauty before him. Couldn’t help but marvel at how the moonlight illuminated the waterhole’s stagnant surface, and the way the dragonflies danced atop the translucent water.

But it was so quiet—unnaturally so. As if every rodent and critter had taken refuge for the night, knowing that an apex predator lurked in their presence. Whether that predator was Falan and himself—or something far more powerful, more sinister—Amol couldn’t be certain.

But he quickly found out.

Amol squinted towards where they’d planted their trap, his eyes widening as they discovered a limp figure splayed in the mud by the water’s shore. It was large, and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could discern paws as large as dinner plates, and a fierce blend of orange and black hues—

“We’ve got one!” Falan exclaimed suddenly, shattering the silence. The older man’s pace quickened as he hurried towards the trap. Amol followed hesitantly behind him, struck by the magnitude of the feline. She must’ve been double his size, with a boldly striped coat and a lithesome, strong body.

Her eyes were closed, but he could tell from the soft rise and fall of her pelt that she was still alive—at least, barely. It was obvious from the crimson spooling at her chest, soaking her pelt red, that she’d lost an excessive amount of blood from the steel-jawed trap tightly clamped to her paw. It gleamed menacingly, biting into her soft coat like a wild dog devouring its bleeding prey.

As if sensing his presence, the tiger’s eyes opened, as golden and round as the rupee he would gain from her death. Amol took a hesitant step backward; despite her shallow breathing and mangled paw, he felt as if she could still down him with one hit of her mighty paws. There was something about the tiger, a poem of liberty in its genes, a sense that it was born to roam and dominate for all its days and nights.

Falan shoved a stone-tipped spear into his hands, and Amol looked at it dumbly.

“What’s this?” he asked in confusion, surveying the spear’s malicious, gleaming tip.

“She’s not dead yet,” Falan replied simply, motioning to the golden eyes which were still pointedly assessing him. Falan unzipped the duffel bag to reveal an array of silver scalpels and knives, and Amol blanched. “Just give it one thrust down the throat—and whatever you do, don’t pierce the pelt.” The spear became lead in his fingers as Amol realised what Falan intended.

“B—but, I’ve never done it before. I—I’ll get it wrong.”

Falan shot him a sympathetic smile, mistaking his horrified stutter for nervousness.

“This is how you become a man,” Falan insisted, grasping the spear and firmly wrapping Amol’s frail hands around it. Amol glanced into Falan’s black eyes, finding not only encouragement—but a threat. If Amol couldn’t do this, there would be repercussions not only for himself, but his entire family. He couldn’t let that happen. With sudden conviction, Amol gripped the spear, his knuckles white.

He raised the spear’s tip to the tiger’s maw and made the mistake of meeting her eyes for the final time. Where he’d expected to see pain and desperation, all he found was a keen sense of understanding and intelligence. As if this tiger knew that just as she was trapped—steel clasping her paw and a spear to her throat—so was he. He was trapped. And if he couldn’t do this, his family would starve on the unforgiving streets of Maharashtra. He had no choice. He hoped she knew that.

Amol closed his eyes, took a shaky breath, and deeply thrust the spear through the tiger’s throat. He’d expected to meet resistance—the tiger appeared so strong, her shoulders as thick as tree trunks—but the spear slid through the tiger’s inner flesh like paper. A strangled sob emerged from Amol’s throat. As if in a daze, he glanced at his hand, blood seeping through his fingers like red teardrops. He had the sense that he’d breached a sacred line, one from which there was no forgiveness, no redemption.

Falan simply regarded him with disgust.

“Go call the truck over,” he ordered distastefully as tears slid down Amol’s dirt-streaked face. He opened his lips to respond, but a sob caught in his throat. Instead, Amol nodded in confirmation, suddenly overwhelmed by the need to get out, to be anywhere but this waterhole, where he’d done such dreadful, unforgivable things.

He stumbled through the underbrush towards the truck, his eyes fixated on the grassy floor. Suddenly alone, there was nothing to spare him from the reality of what he had done. He’d committed the deadliest sin. He’d killed. 

When Amol finally raised his eyes from the spindle-laden ground, he was greeted by two, familiar orbs of doubloon-gold. Horror cascaded over him like a tidal wave. The eyes were nestled amongst the shrubbery, watching him, assessing his every move. A sob emerged from his chest. Another set of smouldering, chatoyant eyes emerged from the undergrowth, and then another, and another, until there were four sets of golden orbs assessing him, their gazes implacable with their hatred.

“I’m sorry,” Amol cried as the orbs emerged from the long grass, revealing their boldly striped pelts and convex heads. They bared their vampirish fangs, a guttural sound emerging from their throats.

It sounded like grief. Betrayal. Loathing.

Amol had committed a sin—and now, he had to pay.

He had the unsettling realisation that the real hunt had only just begun.