“Like the Skins of Great Beasts” by Eric Rampson (fiction, ’16)

A story by Eric Rampson (fiction, ’16) appears in Penultimate Peanut Magazine (keep scrolling down for the story):

Like the Skins of Great Beasts

I hunt them. I go to where they are and I wait for them. I glimpse them. A rustling, they move through the periphery. They glide and shift. I never see them in full, only flashes and hints, suggestions, and a certain dread.

I hunt them inelegantly. There is no smooth take-down. There is no whisper-soft kill. There is blunt force trauma. There is blood and noise. There is wrestling with jaws, claws, and all manner of horns, spikes, razor-sharp plates. … continue reading here.