excerpt from Man Hunt

As dawn approached, the sun began to play games with Eli’s head. There was something about six am. He dreaded it every day. It was the one hour where the sun let loose with colors and out here in the open desolate Catskills, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of vulnerability being exposed to that mighty sun. He couldn’t wait for nightfall. They entered an open clearing and he was hit in the face with a blinding sunbeam. For a second he could’ve sworn he saw Charlie’s figure wandering the forest, wearing the same red Thomas the Tank Engine jacket he wore the last day he ever saw him, a scared and confused look on his frail face. Little Charlie reached his hands out to his father, but was soon lost within the thick foliage.
“Come on, Eli,” came Gabriel’s voice. “You’re lagging.”
“Why do we kill?” Another unexpected question. Eli was full of these.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Why do we come out here every year and kill deer?”
“We hunt. That’s what we do. And it’s fun.”
“It’s not fun.”
“You used to think it was fun. Now you’re starting to piss me off.”
A deathly cry of anguish echoed across the forest. They both heard it, exchanged frightened glances, then quickened their pace. The screams grew louder and louder and soon they stumbled upon an abandoned log cabin, buried by thick tree branches that resembled skeleton arms. It was a female voice, unleashing mournful wails that reminded Gabriel of his mother. The more he heard them, the more he wished she would shut up. They approached the cabin alertly and peaked through a hole in the wall. Quietly, they took turns looking into the tiny hole. A set of legs was standing tall over a young blonde girl, hands tied behind her back, blood covering her face. Her torturer whistled an eerie tune as he beat her mercilessly.
“What are we gonna do?!” whispered Eli.
“Take the right.”
“This isn’t a fucking deer, man.”
Gabriel grabbed his friend by the collar and squeezed. “Don’t pussy out on me now. That poor girl needs our help.”
The wails grew louder and Gabriel couldn’t help hearing his own mother calling out to him from within the cabin. He loaded his rifle and took the left side of the house. Eli headed towards the right side and disappeared. Inside the house, Gabriel tried to fight off the girl’s calls for help from penetrating his head. He approached the room, leveled his gun and peaked through the crack of the door. The punk was no older than twenty. The room had two doors leading to it and Eli approached the second. He put a finger to his lips and together they nodded. They understood each other. They’d been in this situation before. Precision of the kill. Gabriel signaled his best friend with his fingers. One…Two…
Gabriel kicked the door open and fired. The punk slammed back into the wall with a hole in his chest, shattering the window behind him into a spider web of broken glass. Behind the door, another punk was holding a professional video camera, filming the bloodbath with traumatized eyes.
Gabriel slammed the butt of his rifle into the cameraman’s head. The camera stumbled to the ground. Eli fell to his knees in tears and watched his best friend beat the cameraman mercilessly until his face was reduced to a battered prune, his knuckles and the floor caked with blood. When the punk was clearly dead, Gabriel stood up, his bloody knuckles trembling. He looked over at the girl, expecting a thank you, only to find she was more frightened than she was before, curled up in a ball, muttering a Hail Mary. They then realized the girl wasn’t tied up after all. She buried her face in her free hands and wept, breathing in and out as if she were having convulsions. Then, when it seemed like she was about to lose all the air in her, she let it all out, unleashing an ear-splitting cry of misery. She ran over to her dead boyfriend and threw herself over him.
“JASON! OH MY GOD! JASON! WE WERE JUST FILMING A MOVIE!”
It was then that they both realized what they’d done. Gabriel stood up and looked down at his knuckles, then back at the poor kid he’d mutilated with his bare hands. At that moment, he felt his mother was crying hysterically. He acted on instinct, grabbed the camera, took the tape out and put it in his pocket, then pulled the girl up by the arm.
“What are you doing?” mumbled Eli.
“We are tying her up and hiding these bodies. Let’s go. Move!”