#this is a beast that trundles if I've ever seen one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vcnatorr · 1 year

Text

the hounds are baying || self-para

Dated 27th May 2023 Summary: Clayton missed prom for an important meeting. TW: animal death/hunting, its a Clayton self para you know the drill

He was in London. Briefly.

He had been in London long enough to leave his car at the flat and call for a driver to take him to Heathrow, where he had boarded the mid-morning flight to Stuttgart. From there he had rented himself a car and driven out to a small village right in the heart of the Black Forest. By mid-afternoon he was in a small, rustic-looking bar, sat across the table from an old friend that he hadn't seen in some time.

"It's not often you're in these parts," Braun observed, his English thickly accented and slow. Clayton wondered if the thick, dark beard he sported made it difficult to get the words out. "When did we see you last?" He turned to the other man at the table, clean shaven, but with eyebrows so bushy and brow so low that it was almost impossible to see his eyes -- Friso huffed, and raised his stein to his lips.

"The 90s?" Friso offered groughly.

"I remember that, actually," Clayton reminisced, his gaze far away as he recalled that particular hunting trip. "In the Alps, wasn't it?"

"Ah, yes," Braun nodded sagely. "Hunting wolpertinger."

"Slippery little bastards," Clayton chuckled.

"We're about to go into the forest, if you want to accompany us." Braun offered. He glanced around the mostly empty pub, and then looked back at Clayton. "We can talk there."

Which was how Clayton found himself in the back of a rickety old truck, bouncing around on the back seat as they trundled over the old dirt tracks that weaved through the forest.

"What are we hunting?" Clayton asked.

"Aurochs," Braun replied. "Albino ones, specifically. We've got a lead on one, and a good price for the hide. Buyer over in the United States. They'll pay any price you tell them," Braun snorted. Even Friso, who was usually rather stoic in Clayton's recollections, was chuckling under his breath.

The car came to a slow stop exactly in the middle of nowhere, and Braun and Friso jumped out. Clayton, assuming he was supposed to, hopped out as well.

"We go on foot from here," Braun explained, handing Clayton a rifle. "We don't want them to get wary of the vehicles. Follow me."

They set off through the trees, Friso a few steps ahead of Braun, his eyes cast down at the soil beneath their feet. Or so Clayton assumed from the tilt of his head, anyway.

"So," Braun began, glancing back at Clayton. "I'm guessing you didn't come all this way just to catch up?"

"No," Clayton admitted. "I was wondering if you had any experiences with owlbears."

"You're hunting an owlbear?" Braun whistled. "They're viscious. I've only ever seen one once."

"And how did you kill it?"

"We didn't." Braun glanced back at Clayton, eyebrows arched. "It took a chunk out of my father's arm. My friend's father lost his leg. We left trophyless, and when we went back, we couldn't find it. Moved away to new pastures, most likely."

"So, what? They're unkillable?" Clayton ask dubiously.

Braun snorted. "Nothing is unkillable, my friend. But it takes skill. Precision. And it'll need to be covert. No front on attack, or--"

"Leise sein," Friso instructed, coming to a halt. "There he is."

He gestured for them to hunker down behind a large log lying across their path and so Clayton crouched, the barrel of his gun resting against the log itself.

The creature was huge, easily the same height as a bus and about the same width, a great, hulking beast. Its coat was pure white, not a mark or tarnish on it. It looked almost like it was made of snow, two dark coals for eyes. Its horns stretched outwards for what seemed like a metre each side, curving sharply upwards into a point so sharp Clayton could see it from here.

Braun pulled out a pair of binochulars and looked for a moment, before nodding to Friso. "Take the shot."

It all happened rather quickly after that. A good clean kill, the rest of the herd sent scattering into the woods by the sound of the shot and the beast's body hitting the floor. They drove the truck right up to the carcass, Braun chattering away on the phone as they pulled up for a closer inspection.

Braun walked around the body, still on the phone. Clayton looked at Friso. "What's he doing?"

"Arranging collection. Beast this big weighs two tonnes, maybe more." He pulled a face as he considered it. "Needs special equipment."

"They'll be twenty minutes," Braun said, shoving his phone in his back pocket. "Now, what was it -- owlbears."

"Yes." Clayton nodded. "I've been told its a juvenile--"

"Juvenile or not, you're an idiot. Or a dead man. Soon to be both, perhaps." Braun chuckled, shaking his head. "They're quick. They're aggressive. The head fools you, but they're more bear than anything else."

Clayton chuckled. "I'm not afraid of bears, gentlemen. I've hunted more bears than you could shake a stick at."

"Three times the size of a regular bear." Friso muttered.

Clayton huffed softly. This meeting wasn't going exactly how he had expected it to. "So you're saying it can't be done?"

Braun appeared to consider it, looking off into the forest. "With your kind of money I would imagine it can. But it'll be a big job. You'd need a crew. Traps. Like I said, covert. A headshot won't be enough to take down that kind of beast."

Now that was more like it. Clayton much preferred to hunt alone, or at most with a small party, because he liked the thrill of taking the shot himself. He liked knowing that he was the one taking home the trophy, a reward for his hard work. And a whole crew of people would be harder to hide in Swynlake, but he would find a way. He wanted that creature good and dead, and he wanted its head hanging on his wall.

"Know anyone who'd be up for it?" Clayton asked.

Braun shrugged. "The usual degenerates, I would imagine. Help us get this back to base, we'll have another drink and see who we can contact."

He stretched out a hand to Clayton, leaning over the auroch's massive head to do so. Clayton smiled, took it, and gave it a firm shake.

"Sounds like we have a deal."

#( journal. )#oh you thought we'd moved on from the owlbear?????#think again

0 notes

alchemisland · 5 years

Text

Moors Mutt - II

Prefer Wattpad?

Rising early, if rising it was and not merely stirring from a wakened restive state, I left the tavern in secret and walked a barren stretch. At pale dawn birds like Aztec idols flighted at my stirring. Cold light stained the pasture either side. Sleepshod, the road to Cairn Cottage found me quiet company. Even the tinkers were not yet to the road in their triskeled wagons.

The air was heavy with lavender. A pebbled stretch stirred a reverie of my late father and a codex of heroic tales he had purchased for me, whose chronicles of high adventure stirred me like nothing prior. At six years old, tales of old Arabia appealed most. Kingdoms wrought of sunstones stark against a tangerine haze, swirling tarot star ever-visible, scorpions armoured like chargers; the sheer cloying madness of it all. I visited them in dreams, jumped from the paths of unruly camels, watced the impenetrable waves humbly part in the wake of royal palanquins.

Their heroes were unlike our knights. More often sulky boys preferring quill to falchion. Brooding teenagehood made me relish the stranger entries, tales without lessons existing solely to unnerve, speaking on the bleak lives of Tartarian wizards.

Into adulthood, I came to enjoy Greek tales best of all. The tragedy of Ajax in his lover's plate leaking on the golden sand. Waves, caressing the moored fleet in passing, bursting against the shale where his pyre burned. Always when I hear crunching pebbles, I think of soldiers marching on the strand near Troy.

Before long, a trap could be heard from the middle distance, the first in a network of wagons due to arrive at Cairn Cottage to transport the priceless contents of Lady Sizemore’s library back to Sperrin, where they would be carefully parcelled and carried by train to the Royal Academy Library. I waited astride the ditch until the crude plume atop the horses head appeared like the mantle of some deposed pagan lord. Ixion's disc four times divided had been fixed to bear this chariot. Its heavy trundle ground debris to powder. I hailed the driver, a wind being, every strand of hair or cloth lank enough to lift stood disarrayed. A peak stole his brow but a smile waved me aboard.

The driver never spoke. There was a sense of grim penitence about all I had met thus far. Their lines of deep regret boldened every jowl and furrowed brow. Each bore the weight of his forebears in full. A place without time and silent, where happiness and sadness could last all of forever. So silent were they, matched only by monks in their solemnity, I christened this ham the abbodrice of Sperrin.

Inside chaos reigned. Lady Sizemore's estate was measured first in paper above coin. Hundreds, thousands, of jaundiced sheets all in disorder busied every surface. Before a single penny changed hands, a great many hours I spent hauling boxes, within which were more boxes where spiders large as potatoes spun temporary wonders above the invoices.

I wonder what effect prolonged tedium has. Such thoughts are entertained in avoidance of work as should never be given lucid credence. An entire day dedicated solely to translating letters in incomprehensible cursive, it felt ridiculous. My mind, perhaps reflecting its surroundings, felt dulled, unfocused. So long I stared, when I pried my eyes I found feint margins plastered across reality.

The previous night's visitations I had pondered, ultimately chalking to anxiety. Nothing substantially portentous. Unfortunately, another day I required before I indulged cryptozooligcal fancies.

Darkness in ravenfeather arrived premature. I ran to the track where the last impatient husbandman sat in stasis. 'Bound for Sperrin?' I called, already halfway inside.

I arrived at Lar's fiercely humoured. Tired, thirsty and caked in mud golemlike, my gladness at journey's end was quickly consumed by the fury of indignity, having endured the return trip atop a sewagesucker's swine van. Lar tended bar. I wondered had he stirred in my absence. Anticipating a thirst, two mugs were set.

I dropped my satchel and enjoyed relief akin to weightlessness by contrast. We drained tankards like soon-to-war Saxons, spoke of weather, I asked had anyone noteworthy visited, mostly from politeness. When asked had the room served, I replied it had done so more than adequately. Again, politeness.

Not wishing to appear overeager, I spared him details of my dream. If the tale was relayed to me, I should say how convenient the very man hoping to find the beast would experience a vision. Besides, in the unlikely event we found a mangy badger after I'd described a prehistoric horror.. perish the thought.

'Do we depart tomorrow?' Lar grunted as he pretended to dust.

'Short delay as it happens. I'd have said from the door, only for the ale calling. Alas, labour remains. My charges lust for satisfaction. They are at Rome's gates! Distant cousins write in droves. By air, land and sea their letters come, squeezing through grates, shimmying down chimneys. Forget the beast, if they find me I'm dead.' I said, picking at a heel of bread.

'We sank tankards enough last night. I've seen plenty pale on the dizzy morning after the night before. If this delay is to spite me, let me allay concerns, I'm the man for this job. We're the men for this job.' Lar shot a glance at Fergus. A pale lance cleft his brow through the slitted shutters.

I looked to my empty cup then longingly at his selection. Lar fingered a bottle, but reached further back and took another instead.

'My god, man. Boil a pot and toss it down your trousers. No such notions occurred to me. We're expedition mates! I didn't make a dent in the work, really.' I raised a silencing finger to hear the ale splash. 'There you have it. Mystery solved. If the mystery of the beast is this easy, we're laughing.' I inhaled its aroma. 'Listen, chap. There's something else I wanted to talk about before we go. I mean to publish an expedition diary. A chronicle of our adventures. Part scientific tome, part roaring adventure book. Your pub will be the busiest spot in the weald after this. Would you object to such?'

Lar's measured tone returned. Careful as a tiptoeing sinner, he asked 'You good?'

I smiled. 'Only Ben Adhem saw the book, ask him.'

Lar stove the ashen helm crowning his cigarette, plunging the embers into the cold bronze bowl. 'At writing.'

'You should say! I tease, I tease. To answer your question, yes. Humbly, in my hand the pen is like the master mason's chisel, from whence grand cathedrals spring forth from their less divine constituent parts.' Lar was fumbling for his tobacco already and I thought what small use that vice would be in peril.

'I'm convinced.' Lar spoke quickly, stumbling over the words to get them out. I took no offence at his zeal to change the subject. 'Do you have a manuscript at hand?' he asked.

'Not with me, unfortunately.' He stifled a sigh of relief. 'Upon returning home one story heavier, I'll ensure you receive signed copies of every one. I'll sing them My favourite tub of Lar. Yours literately, Beastman. That way you'll know it's me.'

Lar's ale, a home brew, was a swift agent, promising to travel from your mouth to the toilet's in twenty minutes. I joked he might patent it for a medicine. Call it the Midas touch. Everything it touched turns to gold: toilet seat, floor, shoes if you weren't careful.

I spied Fergus. His thumb led a blunt edge across the ribbed bark of a sprig, from which he had carved two lidded eyes and a pursed mouth.

Lar lit a cigarette from the flared end of another, then discarded it on the ashen pyre.

Lar had to raise the hatch for me, which spoiled any hope of a dramatic exit. 'Departure two days hence, on the strict proviso no unpleasant libel suit comes once my story hits print. Rest assured, I'll include nothing untoward, but I reserve the right to artistic licence. Print the myth.'

'Libel is a city crime.' Anticipating my desire, Lar walked while he spoke. I mirrored and slipped through the open portcullis to sleep, perchance to scream.

Lying in bed, I wondered what to include in my chronicle; exciting details only, or every charged exchange? Nobody asked how the shipwright felt constructing thousands of ships without prior notice. They only wanted Achilles. The reader will concede, I have included much of the mundane.

Well-oiled, I slept easily. Set like a star I saw things from the blind past, dark present and murky future, useless without chronology, stifling their prophetic nature. The beast came again, shaking the ground where it trod.

Lar, blackbird that he was, rose early. He emerged from the fugue state that best pleased his constitution and stretched, his wingspan filling the alcove. He found me in my linen cell, bewhaled as Jonah.

'Terrible day.' He drew the shutters. Groggily, I pulled the sheets down over my face to the sight of Lar's stocky silhouette in the dirty light. Tapping a cigarette loose on the sill, he plonked one cheek on the ledge and struck a match. 'Anything you want from town? I'm going to get supplies. I should be away most of the day. There won't be a return trip before we go. Speak now or forever hold your peace.'

'Ambulo in pace.' I tapped my journal, 'I have everything.'

'Do you have a mac?' he asked. The rain beat down harder.

'No, we're English, some Irish. Although I heard tell that a distant branch traded their roses for thistle stalks.' I smirked.

Lar shuddered, ill-humoured before midday despite protestations he needed no proper rest. 'I mean a waterproof.'

'Oh give me credit. That's humour.'

'We in the smiling countryside call it idiocy. There's a time for revels. Unless you've been up all night, dawn isn't it.' he said somewhat angrily.

'I don't have one and I'd like a loan if that's what you're asking, thank you. I didn't sleep well now you mention it' I tossed my feet onto the cold ground and felt for a sock.

Lar watched the rain spilling in romantic sheets. 'You'll need an ark to get back. It's like a bog when it rains. No one will be able to get you. Not me, not the constabulary, nor anyone else. If the weather worsens, make sure you get back in time. Otherwise, everything will be closed until further boatice.'

'Boatice?' I said.

'Now that is humour. Rain, boats, further notice. Get it?' Lar left, more spritely than when he entered.

0 notes