Chapter seven: Hunting a hunting creature

Trigger warnings for those who need them

substance abuse, mentioned death of an animal

I’m standing in front of Adrian’s house again with a box in my hands.
I wonder what kind of bottle he has for me this time.
I’m aware this isn’t normal.
This…situation; the whole song and dance of going inside and listening to this man’s strange stories.
But my life is messed up anyway.
And free booze is good.
And the job pays incredibly well.
His company is not too unpleasant.
A man can get used to anything so long as he’s running out of options.
I ring the silver bell.
The door opens instantly, as if he was waiting on the other side. “Valentine.” He says with a smile.
“Adrian.” I tip my cap. “Here’s your package.”
“Do you like bergamot?”
“What’s bergamot?”
“It’s a fruit in the citrus family. The essential oils in the skin make for a really nice and complex liquor.” He steps away from the door, inviting me to enter.
I step inside, make my way to the curious room by myself now.
The man follows me.
I can feel his eyes in my neck. It makes the hair on my neck stand on end.
I shake the feeling off. I’m used to having an audience.
This shouldn’t be a problem.
I look around as I enter and note, “You redecorated?”
“Just updated a couple things. Thank you for noticing.”
The bats are gone, instead suspended from the ceiling, is a long lizard with fierce, pointy claws and red shimmering scales.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s a satin dragon lizard. I read in the newspaper they’re extinct now. I had this one in the attic for years. It felt appropriate dusting it off and giving it some love. Just so they’re not forgotten.”
Most of the shelf space is still the same I think. Oh but, the statue collecting is increasing. Now there’s a cat among the lifeless animal collection. It’s so detailed, so lifelike. You’d be fooled if it weren’t stark white from top to bottom. I point at the cat “That one’s new as well right?”
He claps his hands delightedly “Yes, well spotted. Now how about that liquor? It’s called pjeetu and in Xjawa they mix it with black tea and milk but I prefer to drink it on the rocks.”
I sit, the table once again set for the occasion.
There’s the booze, two glasses and a bowl of cherries.
Huh? That’s new.
He spots me looking at them. “A neighbour brought them over. She has a cherry tree in her garden and it produces far too much fruit for her alone.”
I can’t believe my ears. This lady has a house to herself, with a garden that a tree fits into!?
That’s just rude! I grab a cherry, almost as if reclaiming some of that decadent space-hoarding and bite down.
It’s delicious.
Because of course it is.
Adrian pushes a delicate silver dish my way. “For the pit and stem.”
Right, I pick up the dish and spit the pit in.
Adrian looks bemused by that.
I don’t know why.
He pours the drinks and gives me a glass. “Now, this stuff is strong, so be sure to pace yourself.” He warns me. I’m mostly just enthralled by the colour, a deep magenta pink that’s so bright it must be artificial.
I take a small sip.
It tastes of…well…I guess it’s bergamot.
But it doesn’t taste of anything I’ve ever tasted before.
“What do you think?”
“It’s strange.”
“You’ll get used to the taste, another cherry?”
“Thanks.”
“It’s truly a shame of the dragon lizards…” Adrian muses.
Oh good, it’s story time. Something to take my mind off things.
“They were quite harmless and very shy. Or at least I think they were. Maybe we made that way by hunting them down for so long.
It’s the scales you see. They were perfectly suited for adorning ball gowns and bags. They have a subtle shimmer like pearls but fiery red. Few people could resist such beauty.
This fellow on my ceiling might be the last dragon lizard in existence that hasn’t been plucked and pulled apart to fashion into trinkets.”
“Where did you get it?” I ask.
“I shot it myself, back when there were still plenty around. A few friends and I were on a hunting trip in the southern regions of Karadonbu. We were looking for parrots and other colourful birds but I got distracted and managed to get lost. The forests are dense and teeming with life out there. Nothing like the forests in Charalia where spotting a squirrel is the height of your day.
I struggled against the thick foliage trying to find back my friends and then I fell through some ferns, straight on my ass in the sticky, wet mud. I ruined my suit but I barely registered the damp ache, because when I looked up I saw it.
I call him a fellow but it might as well have been a lady-dragon. I have no idea how to tell the two apart. He was standing by a raging river, eyes glued to the water’s surface.
His scales were wet with the water’s spray and they shimmered in the filtered light that came through the treetops in sparse rays. He looked almost…celestial. Not of this world and detached from it. Like an angel or a spirit.
I was awestruck.
I got up.
I expected for it to spot me, to run. But he was hunting just like me.
Focused. Fixed upon the water and filtering out any distractions.
He didn’t even respond to the sound of me cocking my gun.
It felt almost poetic, hunting a creature who’s on the hunt himself.
So I shot it.
It’s only as I waded through the water to collect my prize that he saw me. His eyes stood sorrowful, but he didn’t try to bite me or hurt me. There was no attempt to pull me into death with him.
And it made me want to cry.
It feels silly afterwards, but I bawled my eyes out for that lizard. I, the man who shot it.
But those eyes.
They get to you.
Pulling it back to the others was a bigger challenge than killing it in the first place.
Just because I had a nice catch didn’t mean I was any closer to finding the others.
But I managed.
Eventually.
I thought of leaving the lizard many times that day.
But I couldn’t.
Its dead weight was my burden now.
The weight of my sin.
That’s what it felt like to me.
That is until I found the others, of course.
They were ecstatic to see the beast and congratulated me fiercely.
We took our bounties home in crates of ice and had them stuffed by the best taxidermist in Cygne.” He takes a sip from his drink before continuing.
“But then, what I received back from him wasn’t my lizard.
It was the same skin, the same scales.
I’m certain of that, for the bullet hole was in the exact place I put it.
But the eyes were different. Drawn from of glass and set much too cheerfully for this solemn creature.
It felt like an insult to the depth of his character.
It was too light too. The weight of the stuffing wasn’t like the organs, flesh, bones and blood that I had to lug around that forest.
What had become of my lizard was merely a shell of its former self.
And I felt betrayed by it.
I displayed it for some time because it was expected. But I could never shake the feeling it didn’t deserve the praise of my guests.
It hadn’t earned it.
Not in the way the original had.
And so I moved it to the attic. Out of sight, out of mind.
And it was, truly.
Until I opened the newspaper this morning.” He picks up a cherry from the dish, plucks off the stem and puts it into his mouth. He then brings his cupped hand to his mouth and drops the pit into the dish .
I just sit there. Mouth hanging open looking for words.
In the end I just cut my losses, accept I have no words.
No adequate response to a story that…personal?
Is that the thing?
I follow his example and eat another cherry.
It fills the silence nicely.
“What is it you do?” He then asks out of the blue.
I almost choke on the stone. I gag, gracelessly coughing the seed into my hand before dropping it in the dish. “Well I…deliver a package to you every week.” I wheeze.
“And outside of that?”
What?
Why does he care?
This isn’t how this is supposed to go! He should only talk about himself.
Is this punishment for me not having a retort to his story?
I don’t want to tell him.
I don’t want to reveal that I spend every day in a haze.
That days just blur together until it’s Friday again and I have to pull myself together for a few hours.
I don’t want him to know he’s the only thing I can look forward to every week.
I swallow and collect myself to lie. “I’m a dancer.” I tell him.
“Really?” He sounds intrigued by that. “What style?”
“Ballet.” Going well so far.
“Can I see?”
My throat tightens. “I’m not in any production at the moment. I’m…rehearsing.”
He shakes his head “Not in the theater. I want to see you dance here, now.” He gets up and walks to the door “Come with me.”
I don’t want to.
I want to go home.
I want to get a smoke and some sleep but somehow I get up and follow obediently.
Trapped by my own deception.
I haven’t danced since I got fired.
What if I can no longer do it?
Surely I wouldn’t forget my entire trade in a couple months.
And yet my stomach is sinking.
The corridor he leads me down is far too long.
I hate these big houses.
Then he opens a door on his left and my jaw drops.
The room is round, well round-ish. The mirrors that line the walls are flat so it’s a…twelve sided prism.
It reminds me of the mirrors we used to roll onto the stage during practice but a lot more excessive.
“Why do you have this in your house?” I ask.
“It’s my dressing room.” The man explains casually. “I like being able to see all angles.”
My jaw drops.
Is this man serious!?
I quickly collect myself while he steps out the room for some reason.
I look around at the twelve Valentine’s looking at me.
Judging me.
This…scraggly, underfed piece of shit.
Pathetic.
Useless.
My hair is too tangled.
I want to go to my barber.
Get my hair fixed and a shave.
I want to look nice.
To feel nice.
I’m surprised this guy even lets me in, looking like this.
I’m a disgrace.
The door opens again.
Adrian returns, holding a chair in his hands. He sets it down by the door, sits down and just…waits. Looking at me expectantly.
Suddenly it’s not my own rough state I focus on.
It’s his eyes, reflected around the room. Those calm, brown eyes, waiting patiently for the show to begin.
I feel hot.
“I…” I don’t know what to do. There’s no music, no choreography that comes to mind. my head is full, yet any time I try to find anything all I find is a blank space.

Then Donna’s voice blinks into my head ‘-we’re rehearsing for Mariella and the snake at the moment.’
And just like that my feet start to move as if possessed.
Mariella and the snake is an odd play. I always found it far too macabre to be a winter classic but perhaps it’s the darkness outside that feeds the darkness within?
The story is about a gardener who makes a deal with a snake to have the princes Mariella fall in love with him in exchange for their firstborn child.
When he refuses to pay the snake, the snake steals Mariella and the baby away.
The gardener manages to save his daughter but the snake kills Mariella in the second act.
She then comes back as a vengeful spirit to bring vengeance over both of them.
Ever since I made it to liadro I’ve played the snake. I’m the best at it, there are several sections where the snake performs on pointe and I’m one of the few male dancers who posses that special skill.
Although Darren is apparently ‘learning’.
Ridiculous, I bet Barnaby just lets him perform on flats in the end just so Darren doesn’t have to embarrass himself.
Donna on the other land always plays Mariella. Her voice is smooth and youthful enough to sell the idea of the pure princes while packing enough power to play the enraged banshee.
It’s one of those strange plays where both departments have leading roles. Normally, if the singers are in the dance they’re there to help out the orchestra as a choir.
If the dancers help in the actors’ production it’s to perform ‘role of a dancer’.
But this.
This is a mishmash of both.
It’s why Donna and I became friends to begin with, we had a lot of stuff to rehearse.
I don’t want to do this alone. Mariella should be circling around me, calling out for help as I steal her voice and will away bit by bit.
Without her the effect is lost.
I’m lost.
I don’t want her performing this play with anyone else. Least of all a bumbling fool like Darren.
I don’t want her moving on without me.
I think I love her?
No.
God dammit! I know I love her and I chased her off like an idiot!
And now she’ll be dancing with someone else.
She’s not coming back.
Not ever.
I’m crying.
And Adrian is clapping.
I’ve stopped moving.
The dance is done.
I look in the mirrors, see my own puffy red face and quickly wipe away the tears.
“That was grand, so modern.” I don’t have the heart to tell him the choreography is over fifty years old. He then spots my distress and asks with almost childlike curiosity. “Oh, are you okay?”
I hide my nose behind my hand and tell him. “I have to go. Thank you for the hospitality.” I rush to the door, heart pounding, trying to keep it together.
“Until next week then?” He asks after me.
“Next week? Yes. Sure.”
The hallway feels shorter on the way back.
I rush out into the cold.
It helps, somewhat.
I cry softly into a cig as I make my way home.