The Hunted

I have not done a lot of writing over the last few weeks. Recently the looming spectre of computer games has sunk its claws into my being and has stubbornly refused to let go. I’ve whiled away hour after hour amidst stealthy cyber-punk infiltration and corporate espionage; I’ve lost whole afternoons to pixelated mining; I’ve lost days to simulated space violence. I don’t regret any of this, I don’t feel too guilty about it. It was jolly good fun. But a man has obligations, a man has his patterns. This post is being hastily knocked together in the scant few moments I have before bed, with a hastily prepared dinner cooking in the oven. So in lieu of anything else to say I have delved into a back catalogue of wordascopes which are yet to see the light of day.

The Hunter watches you

The piece in question was the result of a long session of simulated space violence (or as it is commercially known: Mass Effect 3.) Every time I closed my eyes I could still see the hordes of enemies I had lain waste to etched on the inside of my eyelids and burnt into my retina. This in turn spawned the first line. It originally started out as a very short story, a quick collection of descriptions and events before somehow drifting into becoming something a bit more like a poem. As I’ve said in previous posts: I’m not exactly the biggest fan of poetry. Poetry is weird and strange in the ways that normal writing is not. It confuses me and I’m not really very good at it. All the same, here it is I hope you enjoy it.

The Hunted

When I close my eyes all I see is the shimmer of a hunter’s infiltration field.

It took out half of my squad before we even knew it was on us.

A blazing hail of ice blue plasma and they were rendered into charred meat.

I’d stopped to tie an errant boot-lace,

It was the only reason I didn’t die,

The plasma sailed clear over my head while it butchered those around me.

Leaving me to stand upright in a shower of gore and steaming offal.

The stars shine now,

Lonely in the sky.

They don’t need me to see them to shine.

The bell tower tolls the midnight hour.

It doesn’t need me to hear it to ring out.

Just like you don’t need to see the hunter for it to kill you stone dead.

There is a supernatural brutality about the way they do their work.

Such energy,

Such speed,

A furious uncoiling of compressed murder.

But you never see them,

They are like the wind,

Only the things they touch leave any mark as to their passing,

Any hint that they were even there.

A single baleful, red eye looming out the fog

A flash of silvered fish scales in a sea of leaves

I killed it

I dropped a building on its head

At least I think I killed it…

I hope it’s dead…

 Oh god…