The Skinnymen

The Skinnymen. A short story by Clunkbot

 

 

 

“I saw it!”

 

"Don't start with this story again Travis, hummies ain't real"

 

“No no, it's true! Remember the scout retreat back in ‘95?”

 

"The only thing I remember about that was swimming across the lake to the girls camp."

 

“Right, but you remember when I didn't come back that night?”

 

"Because you got lost in the woods?"

 

“LOST AND HUNTED”

 

"Ah god, here it comes again. Just euthanize me.” Brett smothered his paw into his face

 

Travis scowled. “Listen Brett, I know you don't believe in The Humans, but just ride with me on this one, okay? At least hear me out. I’ve been thinking a lot like this.”

 

Brett rose from his seat. “Fine. But I need to grab a smoke first.” The panther strolled outside, filling his lungs first with chilled air. He wormed a pack of smokes from the front pocket of his jeans, working on retrieving one with his gaze cast into the stars. Winter always made the night sky look more crisp and vivid. Travis followed up behind him, dragging the warmth of the bar with him. The soft glow of heat against their bodies snapped off as the door behind him came to a standstill.

 

“Thought you were quitting?” Travis raised an eyebrow at his friend. His body swayed gently in place.

 

“Thought you were gonna quit getting so drunk after work?”

 

Travis jabbed a hoof at Brett. “Touch eh my good sir.”

 

 

 

“It’s touche.” Brett snapped his lighter shut and sagged his body against the cold walls of the bar.

 

“Alright, go. Let’s get this over with.”

 

“So, I find this sweet Doe named Rachel, as you know-”

 

“Yes Travis, you told everyone a thousand times about Rachel.”

 

“-And we get to talkin’. Havin a good time, playin spinnnnn the botttlleeee…” Travis slinked forward, his breath a stale breeze of whiskey that offended Brett’s sensitive olfactories. “It gets reallll late, and the lights go out. So the girls want a scary story, because that’s just what you do when you’re at scout camp. I start tellin’ them about The Humans, and the human of Murkman lake.”

 

“Hold it, we weren’t at Murkman lake. We were at Greylake,” Brett cut in. “And furthermore, this part is different. Where did the rest of the girls come from? It used to be just you and Rachel playin ‘bad touch’.”

 

Travis groaned and sagged his shoulders. “Let me tell the damn story you overgrown cat.”

 

Brett pulled on his smoke. “Fine.”

 

“ANYWAY, I tell them about...THE SKINNYMEN OF THE FOREST.”

 

“Right, Humans. Forest savages that enslave animals and force them into servitude.”

 

“That’s them! And they’re real Brett, they’re real!”

 

“You better start producing proof before I call you a taxi.”

 

“Fine.I finish the story and Rachel’s just shivering with terror. The Humans are ruthless predat- hunters, I mean. They stalk the forests wearing nothing but the skins and hides of animals they capture. Get’s a doe like her all touchy. Wants a strong buck to hold her close and make her feel safe So I tell her, I say ‘Rachel, I know where I can find a hummie.’ She wants me to show her. Now, I got no intentions ‘cept wantin to look like a big strong buck for this sweet little doe. I say to her ‘There’s some that live in PACKS out in the woods ‘round here, only come out when there’s a full moon. You know the most ingenious part of this plan?”

 

“There was a full moon that night?”

 

“EXACTLY!”

 

Brett rolled his eyes.

 

“So I take her out in the forest a bit. Places we’ve been to before so I won't get lost. I’m on the lookout, holdin her close, practically calling out to the Humans. I said ‘HEY YOU HAIRLESS WEASELS, WHY DON’T YOU COME BAG A NICE BUCK?’ She keeps asking me stop that because she was getting scared. Cold hooves actually. In retrospect, I don’t blame her, but I was just tryin’ to be a show off you know. She asks me to take her back, but I’m too into this little game to want to stop now.”

 

 

 

A car slowed by as it passed the bar. Disposing his first by casting it off into the night, Travis took a second from the pack and lit up.

 

“Two smokes?” Travis questioned.

Brett puffed a cloud of ash into the Buck’s face. “It’ll turn into a whole pack if you don’t move this along.”

 

His focus slowly reeling away from him, Travis is silent. He furrowed his brow in concentration, and something close to straining crossed his face. “She left. She got scared. I knew I shoulda turned back with her when I had the chance, but I was stupid, and I was angry.”

 

“So why didn’t you go back with her?”

 

“I just told you. I was angry. I thought Rachel might not be so sweet on me, couldn’t trust me to protect from the savage men of the forests. So I kept on going, just sweating out that blow to my ego like some dumb kid in a cheap horror film. I shoulda known…” His voice trembled and he hunched forward.

 

Brett shot his friend a worried look. “You okay man? You gonna be sick?”

 

“I just shoulda stopped going further out into the woods,” Travis continued, deaf to his friend. His new found anguish came from somewhere that only alcohol or therapy could touch. Some curious deposit of trauma that seemed to elude most other Deer, especially Deer who work as accountants, a relatively comfortable and benign job. His voice was dry and hot. He found that terrible night again in the pinks of his eyelids, lipped tightly together by some haunted memory.

 

“I was alone Brett. So alone. I thought I knew my way back to the cabins, but I got so turned around in there. It was like a maze. Everywhere you look, trees trees trees trees trees trees. And as I’m walking back in a direction that I think is home, I hear something, something that sounds like a timberwolf, you know, the howls. Only this one is shorter than any of the ones I’v heard. It’s off pitch too. Then another. And another. Like a thousand trumpets I hear this choir from hell singing in undulating pitch and tone, off key and ugly. You know how much those timber wolves like to make a show of their howling.” Travis laughed, if only to keep his nerves steady.

 

“I start sweating a little bit, looking over my shoulders. But it’s just trees Brett. Trees trees trees trees trees mother fucking TREES! I start moving a little quicker. And the howling follows me. The unholy shrieking and grinding of vocal chords against air keeps closing in behind me, only, see I can’t see ‘em! I can only see these fucking trees! I can’t see the lake, I can’t see the smoke from the bonfires, I mean, thank god the moon was full that night or I’d probably be a goner!”

 

“Then-” Travis stepped forward, and for a second, Brett was afraid he’d have to stop his friend from leaping into traffic. “In the gap between these two trees...standing there in the distance, watching me….I saw it.”

 

“You saw what? The human?”

 

Travis swallowed hard and turned to Brett. His face was sodden and his eyes bugged out of his skull. Remarkably, his voice only trembled. “Not just the human. It was too far away to tell what exactly it was, but I have my theories. It LOOKED like a bunch of wolves to me. A buncha wolves on all fours. The human had a big handful of rope wrapped around their necks, and he watched me, not moving. The wolves, or the demons, or whatever they are, they were shivering, not because it was cold, but because they were hungry. I swear to GOD if you could have heard the sound they made. Or if you saw the pit of their eyes, like little flashlights. No color, no character, just hate and hunger. So I screamed.”

 

“We all heard that and- Cheese and crackers Travis, you wanna cigarette or something, you look like you’re gonna chuck. Here, sit down.

 

He waved off the already cindering smoke, but did slide back against the wall, running his hooves through his scalp “I screamed and then I saw the human drop the rope. Those things tore off at me, faster than I’ve ever seen before. They come hurtling at me like shadows, so I take off in the opposite direction.”

 

“Wolves that the humans enslaved chased you?”

 

“No, no, no no no, not wolves. Those weren’t wolves. I got a look at one of them when I was crossing the meadow. They were leaner than wolves. Less angular, right at the nose.” Travis folded his hooves together on the bridge of his nose to form a crude point. “They were sleek, and thin, and their fur was more like someone's hide. Maybe they were wolves at one point, but whatever those were- they weren’t wolves.”

 

“So I broke for the river. I knew it had to be somewhere, I didn’t know if they could swim. But I was counting on it. I got lucky, Brett. I got so damn lucky when I fell face first into the river, because I saw them on them, kicking up sand on the shore. They were angry, their fangs all chipped and ruined. I couldn’t see the mammal in them. They hadn’t ever worn proper clothes by the look of it. They were really were demons or something. Savages!

 

“I had to swim to shore. It was hard, but I knew I’d freeze my ass to death or drown if I didn’t get outta the water.” His breathing slowed into controlled puffs. He slowly turned to look up at his friend, who stared down at him in bewilderment. “And…” He sounded on the verge of tears. “It followed me.”

 

Brett drew another stick from the pack, not even bothering to light it. “Wait, it followed you? What followed you? The demons?”

 

“The human….” He let the word slither out of him like it was blasphemy. “I was halfway up this hill when I heard something sloshing in the river behind me, so I turned to look back and I saw this shadow with eyes like pinholes working through across the river. It had a- had a spear raised above its head or something, like from a museum sculpture.”

 

“Did you see what it looked like?”

 

“No, no. I could only see its outline. But I could tell it was huge, like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Legs like tree trunks, arms like logs. A body carved outta the wood of the forest. He came running at me. I wasn’t sure how he’d covered ground so quickly, but his strides could almost match my own. No sound, no warning. It was like running against a ghost.”

 

“So, how did you get away?”

 

“I didn’t. I hid.”

 

“You hid. You got away.”

 

“No, because it always knew where I was. I don’t know how. Maybe they have night vision, like a Fox. No matter where I went or where I hid, I could always see those eyes creeping in the dark like two wandering stars. And they always were on me. Every second I have to catch my breath, whenever it got dead quiet ‘cept for my breathing, I would hear a twig snapping somewhere in the forest, and I’d look to where I thought I’d heard it, and I’d see these two little dots of white hot fire moving around slowly, circling me. I’d start running again in the opposite direction, calling for help as loud as I could. Tore my throat after a while, so all I could hear was the wind moving behind me, something evil and old matching my footsteps, his audible breathing getting louder and closer to me with each second.”

 

“They don’t sleep man. They don’t sleep. They don’t stop or slowdown. They have no weaknesses, no shortcomings. The apex predator. They just wait. They run you out, scream you out, wait until all you can do is wheeze, and that’s when they get you.”

 

“Right, but I bet a cheetah could outrun a human. I bet you or me could have outsmarted him too.”

 

“HOW LONG DO YOU THINK HE HAD TO RUN FOR TO CATCH THOSE WOLVES!?”

 

“Alright calm down, quit yelling.”

 

“We’re not talking about a mammal here, Brett! It doesn’t believe in our laws or in our ways. You can’t reason with it-”

Brett cut in. “Reasoning and outsmarting someone are too different things man.”

 

The Deer’s breathing slowed and he cast his gaze into the pavement. “You know why I couldn’t outsmart him. Use our ‘evolved intellect’?”

 

“Because you were scared?”

 

He slowly nodded. “And because I noticed he was leading me downhill-”

 

“So?”

 

 

 

“-towards the river again.”

 

Brett’s jaw went slack, and the sterile, chewed cigarette took a long dive in silence, at last clattering onto the pavement with a soft *piff*

 

“It was like…” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry man, you know I’m not like this usually, but it was like I was prey and he was a predator. Like it was millions of years ago, depersonalized and savaged. I was going to be a piece of meat for his demons and skin for his clothes. I’ve never felt so helpless and alone in my entire life. I couldn’t even scream because my throat was so torn up. I knew he’d planned on it. It was attrition.”

 

“No, no, it’s fine, how did you get away?”

 

“I just- I ran. Back up hill, past him in a wide circle. I don’t know how long I ran for, but my body felt broken by morning. Anywhere except the river where his demons were waiting, frothing mad and hungry. I kept going, hiding, stopping, watching his shape move in the dark, glittering with sweat - They have no fur either. They’re bald across their entire bodies, except on their heads. It was unnatural. We played chase for hours, until the first light broke. I ran towards the sun, puking my way till dawn. I don’t know when, but he had stopped following me at some point. Still, I didn’t stop until I hit a highway. Maybe the sound of cars had scared him off. Maybe it was the light. I don’t know, I don’t care.”

 

Brett had sat down by now and was looking empathetically towards Travis. “So that’s why you came back that day so filthy.”

 

 

 

He nodded slowly. “Why I missed roll call, lights out, why I came back in a minivan, man. A MINIVAN! FULL OF SKUNKS!”

 

Brett sighed and looked up towards the moon, full and bright and so so close to the earth it felt like he could reach out and break a chunk off. “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you man. If you had told us like you did now, we wouldn’t have given you so much shit for so many years.”

 

Travis didn’t look up. “You still wouldn’t have believed me. I know how crazy it all sounds, and I know that humans are just a campfire ghost story to everyone, but they’re real, Brett. Realer than I want them to be.”

 

“Well,” Brett hooked his arm around around Travis’ own and the two of them rose together with Travis tripping forward. “I do know what’s real, and that’s sleep. C’mon buddy, back inside. I’ll call you a cab.”

 

Travis shuffled through the doors, leaving only Brett outside, alone in the chill air. The roads had long gone dead and the streetlamps cast an ugly shade of imitative fire on everything. Shadows crawled out towards the panther, long and thin until their shapes became unrecognizable. He shivered and picked up the cigarette that had fallen onto the sidewalk. He paused for a moment to twist it between his fingers, letting his ears wander in the unnatural dark. Maybe, just maybe, he could hear the convoluted howl of the demons, hear the heavy breathing of the hunter, if only he could listen close enough. The thought made him shiver.

 

He let the smoke drop again, and he rose, dusting himself off, to stare into the full indomitable light of the moon.