Dopecentury XV --- The Chase
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: “the monotony rarely becomes tedious.”) My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these “Dopecentury” entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
“It got another goat last night.”
“Yeah. That’s it. We can’t let it take anymore livestock. I’ve got to go after it.”
“It will be a difficult run-down. That cat can move fast.”
“I will wait for the hottest part of the day. It can’t run forever. Keep the fire burning until I return.”
Running down the cat would require moving quickly but steadily. He needed to carry as little as possible. A skin of water. A bone knife. A head-height pole with a sharpened point, hardened black in the fire. A band of cloth wrapped around his head.
Initially finding the cat could be the most challenging part. But where to begin was obvious: the goat carcass. A trail of black blood led from just outside the camp, where the rest of the goats meandered around pulling at the dry brush and chewing slowly.
Three-hundred paces further out, under a clumping bush of gray-green leaves the carcass rotted. The belly had been slit open as neatly as a human might have with a sharp tool. The innards had spilled out, but the cat had consumed most of them. The skin was also peeled away across half the carcass, the muscle glistening and wet still. Most of the carcass had been left intact. Scavengers would find it soon. The cat had gotten so complacent in feeding on human livestock that it only felt the need to consume the choicest parts of the animal. Tomorrow it could simply take another.
He returned to the camp, and squatted next to the fire. There was still time yet before the hot part of the day. He stirred the fire, and ate a few strips of tough dried meat. The day progressed, the sun climbed up.
When he judged it hot enough, he filled the water skin, and drank more water with cupped hands. Might as well carry some water in the stomach. He put a handful of nuts in a small pouch.
The trail of the cat from the carcass was much more subtle, but he managed to follow it. The occasional paw-print. A drop of blood here or there. A clump of fur. Besides, he already knew the general location of where the cat lived: near the trees that grew up on the rock ridge. He climbed quickly, though without pushing himself out of breath. He needed to save energy for the chase.
When he gained the ridge he slowed. He pictured himself as a cat, stalking. Silently he approached the trees where he suspected the cat would be. And sure enough, as he came around a large boulder, the cat was laying in the shade of the tree, asleep.
If he could get close enough, he could save himself a day of running. A strong temptation. In his mind he pictured himself impaling the sleeping cat, dragging the corpse of it back to the camp, and dining on its roasted flesh — carnivore flesh always gamey, but extra savory flavored with the spice of vengeance.
That was a long shot though. Maybe a total fantasy. Cats slept with their eyes open, often as not. He tried to gauge the eyes from here. Was the cat looking at him through slitted eyes? Or sound asleep with crapulence? No way to tell. He must press his advantage.
Silently, he raised the sharpened pole, he pointed the end at the cat’s belly, and advanced silently, his footfalls muffled by the sandy dirt and his leather-wrapped feet.
To no avail. The cat suddenly sat up looking directly at him. A moment later it was running. Such astonishing speed! Up within seconds to the top of the ridge, standing in the sun as if to mock the weak human.
So the chase began.
He simply shifted from a walk to a run. Towards the cat. A slow start to a slow run. He wanted to keep his breathing easy, his heart going at a very manageable pace. A pace he could keep up all day, if necessary. He moved steadily up the hill, following nearly the path the cat had sprinted up in seconds.
The cat stood on the ridge, watching him come on, unconcernedly. When he reached the level of the ridge, the cat sprinted off again, tearing along the ridge at speeds that were unrivaled by anything else the man knew.
But the speed was of no concern. His only concern was not loosing sight of the cat. And if he did lose line-of-sight, to not lose the cat’s trail. It seemed simple, on the face of it, but it was not. It required enormous concentration to keep his footing secure among the rocks and the roots and the shrubs at his jogging pace, and at the same time to keep his eyes on the cat.
It helped that it was mid-day, the sun high over head left no shadow, no question about what was moving in the heat — it was the cat alone and the cat had no place of contrasting light to slip away into. Especially not on this ridge. For a long space of time, the cat would sprint away along the ridge, and the man would follow. The cat seemed hesitant to leave the ridge, perhaps because that would mean losing sight of its pursuer. The man was content with that.
Eventually, the ridge started to descend to the sandy part of the land, where little brush grew and only small things scampered about at this time of day. The man was pleased — the cat would struggle more in this landscape than he would.
The cat, stopped far ahead, looked back at its pursuer and decided to go on, out into the sandy landscape.
The man paused here, and looked back, and saw the fire from camp, rising whispily black in the distance against the white sky, up from behind the ridge. On he went.
Now when took off in one of its sprints, it had to pause for longer and longer stretches, breathing heavily. The man could see its chest heaving even from a distance.
On he ran. The sun moved across the sky behind him. Now he had a shadow, and it slowly grew longer before him. The cat had a shadow too, and that played tricks on the man’s eyes. He focused his concentration on the cat, and its shadow. His mind picked them apart, and his eyes followed the slightest trace of movement. The cat stayed just at the edge of his vision, until he approached, and then it sprinted off again.
His feet were becoming sore. His knees ached. The nuts he ate without pausing his jogging stride turned his stomach. Sweat poured down off his forehead and salted and stung his eyes. But unlike the cat, he never stopped, never rested. He strode on, thumping flat feet into the soft sandy dirt.
On the next sprint the cat disappeared into a grasping stretch of dry brush that covered the side of a small hill. This slowed the cat down, and the man could see the path of the cat mostly by the waving branches it disturbed in its passage.
The man plunged into the brush after it. Thorns scraped along his legs and arms leaving behind thin bright red stripes. He had to steer the sharpened end of his pole now to avoid catching it in the brush — another thing that required concentration. And the brush was thin, no shaded relief from the hot sun behind.
By the time the cat emerged from the brush, it was no longer sprinting. Instead it walked, with chest heaving, over the hill and down the exposed sand and rock of the other side. It stumbled.
The man didn’t vary his pace. He kept breathing, kept moving, kept sweating. His water ran dry. He was stumbling himself now, but clearly gaining on the cat, which moved slower and slower.
The cat collapsed. The man stumbled up. The cat rose and took a few more steps as the man approached, then collapsed again. The man lifted his spear and plunged the point into the side of the cat.
The cat surged with dying energy, strode four paces, and then collapsed again. Foaming blood and air wheezed from where the cat had been pierced in the side. The man slowly limped up to the cat, until he could grab it by the scruff of fur at its neck. The cat swiped slowly at its approaching death. The man slit its throat.
He pulled back the heavy head and the cat’s jaw dropped open. The incisors, as long as the man’s forearm, gleamed white in the lowering sun, and the red blood spilled out on the thirsty ground below.