Short Story - PREY
So, I’m in a writer’s group and we often prompt one another with pictures and snippets, challenging ourselves to write 500 word stories. STORIES!! Beginning, middle, and end!!
Now, I’ve struggled. I’ve created pieces that intrigue you to read more - the beginning of a larger tale - but I think I finally achieved a beginning, middle, and end this time! I did it in my previous short story, Chains, as well, but this one is much cuter.
We all took the same prompt. All of us. That meant that we really had to think outside of the box and try to write something we thought no one else would. Looking at the prompt, you know I wanted to write a stalker story. A dark, evil, malicious, twisted thing. I took that idea and turned it on its head a little bit. I hope you enjoy it.
Prompt - and we all had to use these words verbatim:
Without further ado - I bring you: PREY
He prowled, his paws placed carefully in the spaces between the fallen leaves, teeth bared as he approached from behind. At any moment, the rabbit could have caught sight of him and darted, but the breeze was in his favor, wafting the fox’s scent away from his next meal. His belly coiled in hunger and anticipation as he lowered himself to the ground, preparing to strike.
The rabbit’s ears went straight to the sky, and the fox lunged. To the onlooker, he knew the sight would have been a blur of tawny brown streaked after by a brushstroke of copper, but to the fox himself, it happened in slow motion, every flexing muscle and twitching whisker.
The fox snagged the rabbit’s scruff, and shook his head viciously, jostling the thing to disorient it, but as the rabbit kicked its long feet in panic, the fox’s grip was lost. The momentum flung his prey into the nearby willow, and the rabbit hit with a satisfying thwump.
Its eyes rolled in its head, and the fox took no time pouncing once more, the furry brown ball locked between his black feet. He readied to snap… until he heard the rabbit’s faded words.
“Who are you?”
It pulled the fox up short. Never had a rabbit spoken to him. The fox didn’t even know they could talk. To him, they were simply mindless meals hopping around and making his mouth water.
He loosened his jaws to say, “I am your doom,” but the words never had their chance.
“I…I’ve lost my memory,” the rabbit whispered in realization. Looking back up at the fox, it…smiled. “I don’t know who you are, but I just have this feeling that I’m supposed to trust you.”
The fox caught a derisive scoff in its throat.
“Are you my mother?” it asked.
It’s not a scoff he had to hold back this time, but a full-on bark of a laugh. The rabbit’s round, dewy eyes blinked at him with innocence before it stood, woozy, and plunked itself against the fox’s furry belly.
“Mama,” it sighed nuzzling in, and the fox froze stiff at the absurdity of it all.
The rabbit’s little body thrummed with the rapid breaths of its kind, yet – strangely – the fox’s mouth no longer salivated. Its belly no longer called. Still, winter was coming and there was no time for…whatever this was.
Yet the fox didn’t eat the rabbit that day. Nor the day after. Nor as it lay in the fox’s den that winter. He told himself it was just because his adopted child gave off heat like a burning ember, and it was comfortable to cuddle in each night, smelling its musk and feeling its warmth.
He knew, come spring, his little rabbit would leave to make a real family, and his heart already ached.
He vowed then to never eat bunny nor rabbit nor hare. He’d never want to take his child by mistake…or put his teeth upon someone it loved.
