Lazy Days

Once, seemingly a lifetime ago, Enrico may have chosen to bring his lover to a place such as this. He might have relaxed here among the cattails, beside a quiet little creek in the shade of a sycamore. They might have laughed together, shared a meal, made love.


It made him sick to think of it.


But he’d been taking it upon himself to explore the continent he lived upon more. The realization that he’d been living on a subsistence level, no better than a rat hiding in the wreckage of human existence, had galvanized him into taking hold of his own life once more. He refused to continue to react, instead of act.


So he locked the memories and might-have-beens this place engendered deep inside him, and set off to hunt with a single-minded intensity. And when the duck he pounced on set up a hideous racket before he could snap its neck, he wouldn’t even allow himself the luxury of self-recrimination for betraying his position with the noise. If someone came to investigate and found him, well, he would deal with that. And if it were one of the remaining red brothers, well, he’d deal with that too. One way or another.


Duck dangling from his jaws, the gray-coated male wove through the sycamores, intent on finding someplace to tear into the bird in peace.


Alas, he was not, it seemed, destined to do so. He broke out of the trees onto the creek, only to see his path forward blocked by a much larger, unusual looking male. Enrico paused there with the duck still in his mouth, eyes fixed calculatingly on the stranger as he silently debated with himself the merits of continuing on or returning the way he went.