Chapter Text
"You have five paid days off that will not roll over into the new year," Ren is told at the end of October. "Use them or lose them."
Ren has no intention of losing them. He's earned this, yes. Worked like a dog for the past couple months, coming in even when he was sick. Nobody can say he's not here to prove himself. He gives himself the first week of December and plans a week of hunting up in western Maryland for himself. He uses the bonus he got for raising the most money last quarter to buy ammunition and a warm hat and a good jacket.
Hunting is zen, he thinks, driving up . The way church or running or sex or drinking feel for other people, hunting feels for him. His earliest memories are of sitting still in the tree stand with his father, silent and wishful, looking for animals. "Scare my deer and we'll have you for dinner instead," his dad would joke. It was funny because Ren never did. It would have been less funny if he had. When he got older, he stopped hunting with his dad and went by himself, and since then he has never wanted to hunt with companions. It is purely for himself, his own concentration and his own cunning, his skill alone winning the day. His coworkers say the western part of the state is crawling with black bears.
"They're everywhere," another coworker of his had said, who also hunts a lot. "Watch the moms. A meaner bitch there never was than a mama bear. Reason for that cliche, kid."
Hunting bears sounds tempting, and so long before spring, the mothers won't have cubs to defend. But Ren's not sure if they've begun to hibernate. Do they hibernate in Maryland? Well, whatever. Plenty else to hunt, too. Deer out the ass in this state. Ren can barely drive through the suburbs where he lives without almost running over a crazy-eyed doe who's trying to cross the road in order to nibble on his neighbor's blueberry bush, and out in the wild, they're bound to be everywhere. And rabbit, turkey. Foxes.
He's on a fox's territory, the cabin he's rented. The fucking thing was sitting on the porch when Ren first pulled up, hadn't even unpacked, hadn't even gotten out of the car. For a brief moment, they lock eyes, and then the fox bolts. Ren curses his luck, banging the car door open. Not like he can scare it off any more than he already has. He's certain that's the only time he'll see such an elusive little bastard, and of course the gun's in his trunk. He turns his mental focus back to turkeys and deer.
But he's wrong. He sees the fox again just a few hours later, or what he assumes is the same fox. That afternoon, Ren focuses on game birds. When he goes to retrieve the duck he's brought down, the damned thing is already running off with it in his jaws. He shoulders his gun but it's too late, it's disappeared off into the thicket.
"I'm rusty as fuck," Ren says aloud. It's true. He's been so busy with work that he hasn't gone out for almost an entire year. For the first time in a very, very long time, hunting is not giving him that feeling of balance. He just feels frustrated.
Enough. Calm down. You've been driving all day after working nonstop. You gotta ease back into it.
He's aired out the cabin, but now that it's clean and brisk and cold, he closes up the windows and starts a fire in the fireplace. He checks and makes sure the chest freezer is properly cold enough to store his prizes, and that the doors all shut nice and secure. It's small, nothing fancy, but there's a fridge and a microwave and a sofa, a tiny shower and a cozy bed covered in flannel blankets, and a little TV that gets basic cable.
Ren sets his alarm for early the next morning and falls asleep with the TV on, a little white noise to settle him since he's always hard a hard time sleeping in new places. He wakes about an hour before he's planned to, bleary, his hunter's senses telling him something isn't right. At first all he can hear is the soft back and forth of the Golden Girls sniping at each other, and the studio laughter underneath. Then a rustle, a scrabbing sound like a dog's nails on a wooden floor.
Something is in here!
Something's here! With me!
Ren sits up. Mother of fuck! His first thought is the window, the window must have gotten open. He's not stupid, he seals up all his food and his trash, even inside the cabin, but something must have smelled it anyway. But there's no change to the warmth of the cabin, no breeze pouring in. He'd feel it. The windows are all shut.
As soon as he sits up, the sound stops. He tries to blink the sleep out of his eyes and something moves, but he can't see what.
Something must have cast a shadow through the window, he decides.
He gets up. The floor creaks like a motherfucker, these old boards. No helping it. Ren crosses the length of the cabin--not much distance to cross, anyway--and approaches the window, one hand reaching for his gun.
There is a face at the window. A human face, white and watching.
Half of Ren wants to scream. The other half, the one that wins out, whips the gun into position and aims it, but stops short of pulling the trigger. For a split second, he stays in that position, and then, suddenly, he bursts into laughter.
Your OWN face, you idiot! It's called a reflection, Narcissus!
He laughs until there are tears in his eyes. He sets the gun back down, as carefully as he can--he's heard about too many hunting accidents--and then doubles over. He howls like a cartoon wolf, one who's just seen a pretty lady walk past. He beats his thigh with his fist. Oh my GOD you're so stUPID! He really can't stop.
He sits himself down on the bed, Dorothy and Blanche still nattering away, and when he finally gets control of himself, he wipes his face with his sleeve and decides he's awake for the day. He cancels the alarm he's set, turns on the light, and reaches under the bed to get his clothes for today out of his duffel bag.
The bag's almost empty. Ren frowns, gets on hands and knees to peer under the bed. He furrows his brow when he sees all his shit scattered, way further than it would have been from just falling out when he stuck the bag under there. It looks like someone has emptied it and spread stuff around, or like someone was looking for something....
The only one laughing now is the TV.
Ren gathers everything out from under the bed, cursing when he sees the dust that's smeared on his socks and underwear and good flannel shirts. What the fuck happened? Something got in here and dug through his shit. What for, though? He didn't have any food in that bag. And how did it....?
"Enough," he says aloud again, and his ribs still hurt from laughing, even though he's irritated now. He wonder what his dad would do? Wouldn't have gone hunting without that big old hound of his, for starters. Chewie would have barked up a storm if anything had gotten inside and gone rooting through his dad's bag. Live and learn.
Well, for now, he'd do what he could. Ren wipes the dust off his clothes as best as he can, puts everything back inside and neatly zips it shut. He'd thought he'd zipped it last night, but maybe he forgot. He scans the perimeter of the cabin, looking for an entry point. There are some weird loose spaces between the fireplace and the rest of the wall, he thinks, poking at the bricks with the iron poker. As if it didn't fit right, or something was warped from years of weather. That must have been it. He'll find some big rocks from outside and block the fireplace to prevent any more shenanigans. But a voice in the back of his head wonders how something got in through that way and managed to not leave any sooty footprints all over the place, or not get burned on the still-dimming embers.
When he goes out in the first light of dawn, toting his gun and wincing against the bite of the December wind, he spots the gleaming white of one of his clean undershirts caught in a snarl of brambles low to the ground, like something had been dragging it away.