Not Deer

Hunting season is the time Walter Pike waits for all year-the quiet ritual of man against beast, the return to God and nature, and the promise of meat to keep his family fed. This hunt begins like any other: an early-morning coffee, a kiss goodbye, and the familiar path into the woods.

But what he finds in the stillness is no deer.

It is something older.

Something starving.

And as night falls, Walter realizes he is no longer the hunter but the prey-stalked by a thing born of cosmic hunger, wearing the wilderness like a mask.