The Hunter

i.

“The dog’s killed a cat.”

Ionesco instructed the seated patient to open his mouth and leaned forward for a better view as the thin lips parted open to a spaceship. At the centre of the spaceship was an alien, pink and moist, writhing around in discomfort at the sudden exposure to the light. It made one last jerking movement, then died and was still. Ionesco gave a quick sweep of the teeth, saw nothing unusual and so seized the opportunity to search beyond both the hard and soft palettes, past the uvula hung at the very back of the mouth- a warning, an acoustic regulator- into the larynx, and finally into the organs where it became too dark to see. With both their faces pressed closely together, Ionesco could hear the sound of the lungs filling and emptying. The patient’s breath was warm and smelt slightly sour. He gave a sharp exhale and Ionesco jerked his head back reflexively. After one last search that required him to adjust his body into all kinds of distorted shapes, Ionesco let out a sigh and snapped the patient’s mouth shut with a brusque flick of the hand.

“Oscar, there’s nothing there.”

Oscar took a few moments to recover from the intrusiveness of the examination before asking the dentist to explain what he had seen.

“Nothing, there’s nothing to see but I sympathize. When something’s wrong with the teeth, it’s too close to the head.”

At the window just behind them, Persephone repeated her remark.

“The dog’s killed a cat.”

This time, the two men turned their necks to face her and searched behind her figure, through the window, although it was almost entirely dark outside and they were stationed at a rather disadvantaged angle. Still, they continued to stare until their necks grew stiff.

“A stray cat?” Oscar asked at last, but Persephone only shrugged and let the curtain fall closed. He checked his watch. It was almost two in the morning.

Ionesco retreated to the shelf at the corner of the room and pulled down a new bottle of something that couldn’t be made out from where Oscar sat, and poured it into the three glasses that had been in use by the company since the previous evening. Persephone walked over to him and helped him to carry them back to Oscar. In the hallway, the landline was ringing. The three friends turned in unison towards the door open to the sound, but said nothing and didn’t move for several moments until Ionesco stood up once again and went to answer the phone. 

“Hello… yes, good- well, good morning… no… he is, but he isn’t here… over an hour ago, actually, but we’re not worried…no… he’s hunting…” A pause, then Ionesco laughed. “Yes, well he’s hoping to catch one asleep… I don’t really know, but I’ll tell him to call you… good night.”

There was a pause that followed the phone being returned to the receiver as the friends awaited his return. Shortly after, Ionesco re-emerged into the living room and sat down again at the table, directly beside his sister. Oscar looked up briefly from his glass and briefly examined their faces; how similar they were in the darkness of their eyes and fullness of their mouths but other than that, there was really no way of affirming they were twins. Ionesco had tried to convince him once that they were, in fact, actually identical but they looked fraternal at best, like cousins at their furthest degree of separation, and Oscar, despite the insistence that he was being honest, could not make out Ionesco’s motives or the need for the terrible performative effort that was being cast behind what was so clearly, in reality, a joke.

They stared back at him too, not identical in the shape or design of their faces but entirely undistinguishable in their expressions. He had no doubts that each of them could sense what the other was sensing and, in fact, they did very often behave as a single consciousness occupying multiple spaces. Oscar felt another burst of pain erupting in his molars and clutched at the side of his face. Ionesco looked concernedly over his patient but Persephone pretended not to have noticed, and instead

“Why did you tell her that Frankie was hunting?” Persephone asked her brother.

 “He is- he took the rifle down from over there.”

“It’s two in the bloody morning, Nesco. If we’d been sober an hour ago we wouldn’t have let him leave.” Oscar said this leaning forward in his chair so that his arms could rest upon the table. His hands wrapped around the glass of something. “Is there even anything to hunt over here? I don’t think so.”

“Boar.”

“And hares,” Persephone added. Her brother nodded.

“And deer.”

“There are not. Oscar, dear, tell him there aren’t any deer over here.”

“Oscar-deer isn’t pulling sides.”

Oscar covered his head with his hands and grunted. Ionesco held the back of his sister’s head and looked into her eyes.

“You’re a Boor,” he said, to which she replied “and you’re a Hair”.

“Oscar’s a Bair-”

“No, Nesco, he can’t be both.”

Outside somewhere in the distance, two gunshots rang out: ‘bang? Bang’. The three turned their heads simultaneously to see out the window. Oscar felt another pain blooming at the base of his gums and let out a gasp.

“I’ll have to do an extraction on you in the morning.”

Oscar looked his friend in the face with a surprised expression then mumbled something about not wanting to infringe on Ionesco’s sabbatical. He apologized for insisting upon an examination and vowed to see his regular dentist when the weekend was over. Ionesco shook his head vehemently.

“It’s been awful being out of work. I thought I might sail out to the islands for a week or two but I can’t bear the idea of doing anything alone, you know.” Ionesco said, still shaking his head.

At this moment, the phone rang again but he stood up again to retrieve it with such a force that Oscar turned to Persephone in surprise, but saw she was still looking towards the window with a disturbed expression. In the hallway, Ionesco was whispering into the receiver as the two remaining at the table both inconspicuously struggled to hear what was being said. Oscar was the first to notice that in doing so they had entirely neglected conversation for a number of minutes, and he felt his face flush with a warm embarrassment. Persephone, if she noticed this, did not seem to care but so awash with tension that she continued to fixate her sights upon something outside the house. He wanted to call out to her but felt her quietness to be somewhat ominous, as if by maintaining silence she was defending herself against something that had gone unsaid. It piqued his curiosity but made him even more uncomfortable. The pain in his mouth had disappeared without his noticing.

“I could sail up with him, if he’d like,” he said finally. Persephone took several moments before answering.

“How’s that?” she asked, and finally she looked away from the window.

“If he’s afraid of going alone. To the islands. I’ll go with him.”

She blinked large, brown eyelashes coated with dense, black mascara.

“Why?”

Oscar blinked twice in return, surprised by the question, and asked her why not. She gave him a look that mingled pity with disbelief. She shot a glance in her brother’s direction and saw he was still on the phone, still had his back to them barely in sight around the doorframe, then she turned to look back out the window.

“How’s the new one?” Oscar asked.

He chose to ignore the look she had given him, insisting he must have imagined it or at least shelving the issue to dissect later. She merely shook her head. Oscar, at this point completely discouraged from conversation, sank his head back into his hands to await the oncoming pain.

Ionesco placed down the receiver in the hallway then leaned against the wall for a moment. Since he could not hear any discussion taking place in the other room, he fumbled around in his pocket for his smoking items and walked down the hallway, out the front door of the house. The night was colder than he had anticipated after being inside for so long. It bit his face, pulled on his skin like a needy child, and blew out his lighter every time he lifted it to his mouth. At last, the cigarette lit and he held it between his lips with his hands buried inside his trouser pockets. He looked out at the enclosing trees. The light outside the house did not extend more than a few feet into the darkness, and so he did not venture any further than that, but remained at the top of the few stairs that descended from the front door into the dirt. When the cigarette had almost burnt down to the filter, a figure emerged from the breach of the trees waving jovially and whistling an accompanying tune.

“Greetings!” it called and stepped into the perimeter of vision.

“You’re definitely in a better mood. Your lady called, by the way, but she wouldn’t let me take a message.”

Francesco swung the rifle over his shoulder and placed one foot on the bottom stair. With his free hand, he fumbled with his collar nervously.

“Yeah… you can’t take it personally, you know, that she doesn’t like you. Nowadays she doesn’t seem to like anybody very much- me included.”

Ionesco tossed the cigarette somewhere into the dark. “We heard some shots; did you follow something back here or did you just hang around closer than we thought?”

Francesco smiled a big smile. “I don’t really know where I was, I suppose it couldn’t have been too far. Hell, I wasn’t even really planning on shooting anything for real, you know, I was just making a scene.”

At this, Ionesco laughed and walked down the steps. “What did you shoot?”

Francesco’s eyes lit up as he gestured for Ionesco to follow him away from the house and drew a flashlight from his belt.

ii.

Inside the house, another wave of pain in Oscar’s mouth had just passed. Persephone was studying one of the paintings hung above the fireplace with an elaborate amount of scrutiny. Oscar picked up the glass of something and emptied its contents into his mouth then felt at once a bout of nausea. He groaned and threw his head back with the specific self-pitying of drunk people becoming suddenly sober. This most recent addition to his discomfort turned him hopelessly immune to shame or etiquette, and he gazed at the back of Persephone with a raging anger.

“Where’s your brother?” he demanded.

Persephone shrugged and kept her back to him as she moved her attention to a collection of figurines on the fireplace mantle. Oscar just stared at her. Her unwillingness to speak to him outside her brother’s presence made it more and more clear to him that she was afraid of conversation, and that she was counting on Ionesco to keep her from it. Oscar felt guilty immediately afterwards for the way he walked up to her and shook her violently, but another wave of pain was upon him, and he felt that they were becoming somehow worse and more frequent. He gasped and struggled to keep from yelping.  

“Damn it, what is the matter with you? You think I don’t know about that mess with the hygienist? Well, I do! And it’s all lies and I don’t see why you should be so ashamed to look anyone in the face over a mess of such goddamn lies!”

When he had finished shaking and yelling at her, he was surprised to see that she was crying. He let her go and sat down, stunned, but in too much pain to comfort her. With his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, he heard her sobbing softly into her own hands, and began to understand what she was not saying to him. He began to mutter something else, to move towards her and ease her crying a bit, but the front door had opened again and Ionesco had returned with his face white, and a cold sweat collecting at his brows.

“Jesus, Nesco, you look like hell.”

He nodded his head, parted his lips slightly, and begun to look around the room. He saw the sofa, upholstered in brown leather that had been worn out terribly by years of dogs climbing on and off it, and the table with six chairs and tea set up perpetually upon it, and the hanging portraits of people whom he had not known personally. He took in all of this at once, as well as the enormous windows that lined the east wall and the bouquets of flowers that nobody could remember buying, and it overwhelmed him so much that he could not notice his sister weeping quietly in the corner. Oscar rose to look him in the face with a worried expression.

“What is it?”

“Frankie’s shot a deer,” he said simply.

Oscar frowned and said “Yes, alright. It’s that that’s got you like this?”

Ionesco shook his head and continued to look around. Persephone, having wiped her face clean on her sleeves came to stand beside her brother. She put her hands on his shoulders and called him back from his trance. They shared a look that seemed to restore him somewhat to sense, as if the strain had been spread out from his half of the brain to hers, making it easier for him to manage. Ionesco shook his head once more.

“He shot a deer, but it’s not a deer. It’s a woman.”

Persephone and Oscar stood in silence for a moment and then looked at each other briefly from the corners of their eyes. Ionesco sat down on the sofa and inhaled a deep breath. Neither of his company felt the desire to press any further, however he carried on.

“I just met him outside; he came back from the woods and he said that he’d shot something, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I went with him- it wasn’t too far off from the house, remember we’d heard the shot- and as we’re walking, I ask him what it is exactly that he’s got and he said it’s a deer and he needs help lugging it back to the shed. So, we walk on for a bit, I ask him about Diana and why they were fighting in the first place, and why she wouldn’t let me take a message and all, but finally, we reached the place and he looked down at it and says Ta-Da! Jesus, you’ve never seen him looking so proud of himself before! And I look down and at first, it’s hard to see because it’s so damn dark out there, but he shines the light on it and! It’s a woman! A real woman, dead in the woods.”

He paused here, looking around for a glass of something to drink, but nobody moved to offer him any so he continued.

“I thought it was a joke- a sick joke but you know Frankie. After some time, nothing happens, he doesn’t give anything up so I ask him if he’s serious and he can’t see it! Doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about; can’t see anything wrong with the picture. I swear I’ve seen that girl somewhere before, by the way.”

Oscar and Persephone had knelt down on the floor at either side of Ionesco while he had been telling his story, but they couldn’t recall doing so. They looked at each other again and, at the same time, asked where Frankie was now. Ionesco gave out a howl of agony and threw his body back against the sofa.

“He’s locking her up in the storehouse. I had to help him carry that lady’s body all the way back to the house and he still didn’t get it. I couldn’t say a word and he couldn’t stop talking about skinning and smoking meat and learning to do all of that stuff, oh my God!”

Oscar felt sick. He made a heaving motion but nothing floated out of his body except fear. He checked his watch again. It was almost three. Persephone was still kneeling at her brother’s side and staring up at his face with an unreadable expression. Oscar stood up.

“You have to tell him. You have to call the police.” He said quietly.

Ionesco’s eyes locked on him with an abrupt ferocity. His eyes had sharpened, now perniciously alert, and he looked his friend over with suspicion. He appeared to be feeling multiple things at once and thinking at such an incredible speed that Oscar begun to fear what he would finally say to him when he spoke. However, all he managed eventually was a disbelieving “What?” and leaned forward in his seat.

“If a woman’s been shot then we need the police!”

Ionesco continued to frown and examine him through narrowed eyes. Oscar might have felt insecure if he did not already feel so nauseous and tired. He merely stood and looked back at Ionesco through bloodshot eyes, desperate to catalyse yet pacify the situation, but thankful that Ionesco’s astonishment was allowing him a moment of rest.

“Don’t tell me-” he began, and Ionesco’s eyes widened in anticipation. “Don’t tell me you don’t want the police here just because you...” but another sharp pain in his teeth cut him off. This one was worse than any of the ones before, but he couldn’t tell if everything physical had been heightened by the emotions. Something in Ionesco suddenly became very calm and his eyes relaxed to their normal size. He stood up and put his arm around Oscar’s shoulder, who was audibly whimpering and fighting back tears, and began to console him with an unexpected clarity. 

“Don’t worry about this, let’s get you upstairs, there has to be something in the bathroom for pain. I’ll get it for you, come on.” And he led Oscar upstairs like a child.

iii.

Persephone rose to her feet, numb except for an insistent vibration in the balls of her feet. Francesco entered through the house and locked the front door behind him before sauntering into the room.

“Perse, Perse, you even look like the Spring!”

She smiled and let herself be embraced by him. He walked over to the table and poured himself a drink, laughing quietly.

“No hope for anything like water around here. A few more drinks and we’ll all have died of thirst.” She smiled again and refused his offer of another drink. He asked where everybody else was, to which she gestured to the ceiling. He took a sip, made a face and then placed the glass down. Bent over and leaning with both elbows on the table, he widened his eyes animatedly and spoke in a mockingly innocent voice.

“Guess what?”

“I know what.”

“Oh?”

Persephone nodded. “Nesco said you killed a deer.”

He threw a mock tantrum then said “well, that’s no good. He was going to let me tell everybody.”

“I don’t think you should be so proud of yourself for something like that.”

He made a vague motion with his hands and then paced around the table.

“Oh, I’m not. I would never have done it before, and that’s what I’m so thrilled about mostly. Hunting is awful, I know. But it’s so nice to know I can still do things that surprise me.”

Persephone laughed, beside herself. “But you’re a Gemini!” and they both laughed, albeit him a bit uncertainly.

The phone in the hallway began to ring again. The shrill sound cut through the air and for the first time that evening, Persephone felt truly afraid of everything that was happening around her. Francesco noticed her face and stroked her arm affectionately.

“Don’t worry, Perse, it’s probably for me.”

She shook her head fervently. “No, it’s probably for Nesco and I’m tired of it.”

He frowned but did not press her.

“Why is Diana so mad at you? Why couldn’t she just have come with us and not left me alone with you people?”

Francesco sighed, the weight of the question pushed him down onto a dining chair as he picked up and fondled the glass with his hands. His gaze fixed at something between his feet.

“Well, really she’s mad because I’m sick and she just found out… because I only just told her, you see.”

“Are you really sick?”

“No, not really sick, just sterile.”

“Oh, Frankie, I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, well, I did it to myself. It was all the smoking. And she really wants kids, you know, and I haven’t quit. So, I told her yesterday morning, and I didn’t even realize it but I had taken one out and started smoking it right in front of her as I was telling her about it and, well. It set her off.”

“I see.”

There was a pause as they both looked thoughtfully out the window. In the dim light from the house lamps, they could see the dog, pale and large, emerge from around the corner carrying something in its mouth.

“Frankie, could I please see your deer?” Persephone asked. Francesco turned to meet her and was taken aback by the intensity of her attention. He wondered how long she had been looking at him and what she had been looking for.

“Of course, but we should get Oscar, too, and your pariah brother.”

She smiled sweetly then once again gestured upwards at the ceiling.

“It’s funny to think about, isn’t it? That our up is their down, and your right is my left, and Nesco’s idea of a fun weekend is our hell.”

He did not reply but looked out the window again and did not see the look that filled Persephone’s face. As he disappeared up the stairs, taking them two at a time, she made rounds about the room being careful to re-observe everything that she had already seen. She saw haughtiness in the expressions of the painted figures where before she had seen boredom; she sensed a room that seemed as if it were watching her as well, and as she heard somebody making their way down the staircase, she wondered what things looked like in the dark. What colour were they? What did it matter what anyone said about her brother? And what was the difference between a woman and a deer to the blasting end of a rifle? If it did not care then why should she be expected to either?

Francesco and Ionesco had returned from upstairs. Oscar was not with them; Ionesco had pulled out four of his teeth without any anaesthesia and he had lost consciousness. Determinedly, he led the three of them out of the cabin silently, with Persephone looking crest-fallen, and Francesco looking deeply disturbed at the mess he had just seen upstairs. Ionesco remained quiet.

On their way to the shed, Persephone walked behind her brother and stared at the back of his head. He could tell, of course, since he could see himself out of her stake of the view they shared, but he did not dare speak either. At the storehouse, Francesco pulled back the door with a nervous sweeping motion, determined to re-enliven the atmosphere.

Persephone entered first and decided at once that she had never been able to tell the difference between a woman and a deer. In fact, she had never tried to. Ionesco let out a sharp exhale, but she could not hear him anymore. She was focused upon the figure lying still on the worktable up ahead. She felt her brother’s presence suddenly at her side and looked up at him in wonder. He was looking back at her with that special kind of desperation that made him appear very young and in need of taking care of. She took his hand warmly and understandingly and squeezed it gently in her grip. She smiled sweetly and heard the gentle click sound of something being stored away in her private mind, never to be seen or debated again. Ignoring Ionesco’s look of puzzlement, she turned away and returned to the image of the animal sprawled awkwardly across the slab and bleeding from its every orifice.