A Thousand Tales

 

By pr_squared@hotmail.com

 

Valerie Ceru closed her checkbook and put her favorite pen back in the pocket of her washed-out, hopelessly blood stained white apron.  She shook hands with each of the sisters in turn, Trung Nhi and Trung Truc.  They thanked her effusively, but she should really have been the one to thank them.  She could always count on the Vietnamese sisters to bring home the bacon, so to speak.  She knew that they hunted from a blind like many others, but they were consistently more successful than anyone else she knew.  The average hunter brought home a jack every other year.  The sisters came home with three, four or five jacks every year.  Valerie had a difficult time securing them enough permits.  The sisters claimed that it was their bait.  They attributed their luck to an old family heirloom, passed down from their great-great grandmother.

 

Valerie had little time for such old-country mysticism.  Four carcasses had been hanging in her cooler since yesterday.  Rigor mortis had come and gone and the meat had stretched upon the bone.  Les Guerillieries was gearing up for another Hunt Week Festival. She walked to the back to see what Martha was doing.  Much work remained, too much.  Today was the day to skin and butcher her jacks.

 

Martha clicked on 'print' and grabbed the page as the printer spit it out.  Looking up with a triumphant grin, she saw Valerie and was momentarily chagrinned at her all out of proportion great glee over her rather insignificant triumph, woman over machine.  "There! I registered our purchases.  Here are the serial numbers of our four new guests in the first column."  Martha had this thing with euphemisms.  "Look, there's their names."  She flashed the paper in front of Valerie's face, too briefly to allow the woman to read it.  Then she led Valerie back into the cooler, grabbing a wax pencil as she passed the desk.

 

All of the serial numbers had the same first two digits, the last two digits of the year when the four birdies were eligible for their first Hunt - and their last - as it turned out.  Males were subject to the Hunt in the summers after their eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth birthdays.  The second column had their names.  The third and fourth, their 'live' and dressed weights. Their live weights were filled in when they registered for the Hunt.  Their dressed weights were tallied when the Trung sisters registered their kills with the Rangers.  A fifth, sixth, and seventh column awaited assessment of their grade - prime, choice, best, or wholesome, the yield in prime cuts, and the yield secondary stew meat and ground hommeburger.  The reporting requirements were burdensome but necessary for a well-run program.

 

Four gutted carcasses hung head-down in the walk-thru cooler, patiently waiting further processing.  Their male parts were no longer in evidence.  The sisters knew what Valerie wanted.  All were lean and trim; none was a fatty.  The cold had made their firm young flesh even firmer.  The sharp sound of a smart slap on the rump or flank testified to their quality.

 

Always with a sense of humor, Martha checked her list and scrawled a name on each carcass with her wax pencil.  The small, dark hair jack was named Robert Arliss.  The blonde boy had a complexion as light as one might expect in someone with blonde hair and blue eyes.  His pallor was further exaggerated by loss of blood but mitigated by the beginnings of an angry sunburn from his three days of exposure in the field.  His name was Jason Erickson.  The third, with dark brown hair, and more than usual male hirsutism, was the largest.  His name was Ethan Bradshaw.  The fourth was the African American.  His name was Kobe Lennox.  Martha scrawled and the black wax pencil was hardly visible on his dark mahogany skin.

 

The first carcass was the smallest.  The scale read only 40 kilos.  Martha and Valerie heaved him up onto the table where he flopped limply onto his back, head back and arms and legs outstretched.  His body cavity was slit open from groin to chin.  He had been cleanly gutted.

 

Valerie prepared to cut off his head.  Loss of his head would largely sever his remaining resemblance to a human form.  The bridge of his nose was crushed where the arrow had passed between his eyes.  Valerie noticed a brown smear next to his mouth, and rubbed it with her finger.  Cautiously, she sniffed her finger.  "Chocolate- Martha - I think it's chocolate."

 

"Then go ahead and taste it," Martha suggested thoughtfully and pointed to her mouth. "You like chocolate.  Be my guest!"

 

"No, you taste it." Valerie responded.  "Come on!"  She pointed her finger at Martha.  Martha made a face and Valerie sniffed her finger again.  She thought about tasting it, but finally decided against it.  She made a face and then went and washed her hands.  She returned and pulled down her safety goggles, flipped on her electric saw, and sawed off his head.  Little specks of flesh and blood clung to her protective lenses.  The head fell to the floor with the dull thud of a dropped melon and rolled away unheeded.

 

After Valerie cut off his head, Martha made cuts around his wrists and ankles and proceeded to skin him.  "It's lot like wrestling a toddler out from her snow suit, she explained while Valerie watched.  Martha was so good at what she did.

 

"See here, his name was Robert Arliss."  Valerie commented while Martha worked.  Without his head, he hardly looked human.  She emptied out the plastic bag containing 4 cocks and 4 scrotal sacs and tried to decide which belonged to which male.  Well, actually they all belonged to her now.  After all, she had paid for them.  One looked so small, it looked like it had come from a joey.  That one must be Robert's.  In particular, one of the cocks fascinated her.  It had a small scabbed-over laceration.  Since it had partially healed, the wound must have occurred before the hunt.  She thought about the poor buggers running naked through the brush with their male paraphernalia just hanging out there.  "You know, Martha, I bet each of these birdies has a story."

 

'I'll bet Robert really liked chocolate."  Martha responded.

 

"He should have eaten more of it.  I bet we won't get 25 kilo's of meat from the little bugger!  I only paid half for him anyway."  Valerie turned her attention to the task at hand.  "I wonder what Robert Arliss's life was like - before the Hunt.  What was his mom like?  Did he have a sister?"  Valerie spoke as she set about removing the testicles - city oysters - from the scrotal sacs and carefully flaying the penises.  "What about the others?"

 

 

The Hunt had always been a part of Jason Erickson's life.  His mother, Lynn, hunted and in the last few years, his younger sister, Bethany, joined her.  Even though the Hunt was a central institution after the Revolution, most women still never hunted.  Most had never developed an enthsusiasm for it, the physical exertion, the danger, and the unavoidable messiness of it.

 

When he was small, Jason sensed the excitement of the days preceding the Hunt without really understanding what it was all about.  His mother wore different clothes and all sorts of fascinating things - canteens, binoculars, mess kits, and her heavy bladed Janie knife emerged from storage.  She treasured her crossbow and oiled its mechanism lovingly.  A special set of friends paraded in and out of the house, different from those he saw throughout the year.

 

His mother would disappear for one day, two days or three and come home either elated or dejected.  When he was small, he shared both her joy and her disappointment unsullied by any reservations or understanding.  Every year, several days after her return, one of her friends would drop off a box filled with packages of meat, neatly wrapped in white butcher paper with the contents of each package neatly written together with the current date.  Jason was endlessly curious but he wasn't much good at reading either then or now.  The box was larger in the good years and smaller in the bad years, but some friend or other friend always delivered a box.

 

            A party usually followed and his Mother and Granny barbecued for their friends.  Jason was always given something different to eat but once or twice, he snuck some meat from his sister's plate.  The samples were delicious.

 

One memorable year, his mother returned from the Hunt with an entire jack lashed to the roof of her sedan.  She and her friend Allison, whom Jason called Auntie Allison, carried him into the house with his sister Bethany's help and laid him out on the kitchen table.  Jason wanted to look, but his mother shooed him away.  He pretended to comply, but snuck back to a place under the kitchen desk where he could watch without being conspicuous.

 

Little Jason inspected the strange creature from ten feet away.  He had two legs just like people.  He was large - larger even than his mother.  His hands and feet looked enormous. Where his mother had rounded curves, smooth skin, and a soft face like Jason's, the creature had a bulky angularity, a coarse, hairy skin, and a harsh, exaggerated face.  Jason looked between his legs and found only two circular holes - one atop the other.  Once his mother removed the head, the carcass hardly looked human at all.  The male's skin was still mounted at home in the great room over the large fireplace. Eventually, Jason was caught and shooed away.  In subsequent years, his mother left her jacks at the meat locker until they were butchered so as not to upset her offspring.

 

When he was small, Jason loved to play Hunt with the kids in the neighborhood.  At first, he was always a Hunter like his mother.  The girls giggled but usually let him have his way.  One day, however, one of the older girls took him aside and told him point blank that only girls were the hunters and boys like him were always the jacks they hunted.

 

Jason didn't believe her at first and ran home to ask his Granny.  His Mother was away at work as usual.  His Granny looked sad and said a lot of different things, but in the end, she agreed with the girls.  Girls were always the hunters.  Boys were hunted, just like the mean girl said, but a brave, smart boy could outsmart the hunters every single time and come home to his Granny and Mother who loved him.

 

After that day, he was always the jack and the girls were always the hunters.  He was a brave and resourceful jack.  Often he eluded the hunters and when he didn't, he played dead for a moment and then jumped up for the next game.

 

It didn't seem too bad at first.  However, gradually a new understanding emerged in his maturing consciousness.  The jack whom his mother and Auntie Allison brought home was dead and dead was forever.  He never jumped to his feet for a next game.  His body was cut into pieces, cooked, and eaten.  He was dead forever.  Jason didn't mind being a jack, but he didn't want to be dead, not dead forever.  However, the Hunt was many years in his future and time crawls when you are young.

 

When puberty came, Jason couldn't believe his body's changes.  He grew taller and heavier.  His appetite was a family joke.  His body sprouted hair in places where he had had no hair before.   His sex organs grew and well-defined muscles appeared on his limbs and torso.  His voice changed and became deeper.  His sister's friends suddenly urged her to let him play Hunt with them and insisted that he play naked like the jacks in the real Hunt.  They loved to wrestle.  His Granny worried that the sun might burn his fair complexioned skin, but Bethany's friends were more than willing to share their sunscreen with him and even help him apply it.

 

His sister, Bethany, was two years younger.  She practiced endlessly for the Hunt.  Girls were allowed to hunt at sixteen.  Bethany had an inexplicable fondness for her older brother and her friends teased her mercilessly for her male-like soft-headedness.  She urged Jason to work-out to build his strength and endurance.  She even discussed hunting strategies with him, trying to teach him the hunter's point of view and help him to think like a hunter. She taught him the common strategies and the best responses.  He learned about still hunting and hunting from blinds.  He learned about drives.

 

In a state of 7,000,000 people, about 160,000 males are subject to the Hunt each year.  The state maintains 12 Hunting sites of about 200 square miles and thirteen three-day Hunt Weekends.  About 1000 males are released in a preserve with about 1000 hunting permits per day.  Usually 2 to 4 women share a permit.  Hunting with a partner is safer.  Jack have been known to attack hunters and most hunters need help to carrying or dragging in their kill - even after he has been bled and gutted.  Hunting is commonly said to bring families together and solidify friendships.  Curiously, for an institution so central to post Revolutionary society, no more than 5% to 10% of women hunt.  However, among the Hunters, one finds a disproportionate share of society's leadership elite.

 

On average about one jack in four is taken each day.   The harvest is numerically and percentage-wise higher on the first day of the hunt than on the third day because more inexperienced jacks are at large.  First day permits are also more expensive. 

 

Many experienced hunters prefer the early hours of the second day.  They can position themselves in the field before the first siren and take advantage of the entire session. The jacks are still elated at having survived the first day and often careless.  Just over one-half of jacks are taken in a three-day hunt and just over half of hunting parties take home a jack.  The rules are tweaked from time to time to regulate the harvest.

 

Still hunting is most popular, but least efficient.  Too often the hidden jack spots a stalking hunter and just slips away unseen.  The jack's greatest danger is blundering into a second hunter or into a hunter hiding in a blind.  His best solution is often to slip into the area just vacated by the hunter.  Hunters usually stayed space apart.  However, experienced hunters know that jacks know that hunters usually maintain their separation and sometimes hunt in a line.

 

Hunting from a blind is dull but more efficient.  The hunter picks a likely spot, conceals herself, and simply waits for the jack to blunder into her field of fire.  Many use bait to attract jacks and put them off their guard.  Her first shot is also her most likely.  Hitting a moving target is a major challenge, rarely appreciated by those who have never tried.

 

A drive is the most efficient.  Several hunters act as beaters to herd jacks into the field of fire of their partners who waited in hiding. 

 

When a hunter spots her quarry and he flees, she may choose to give chase.  Most naked jacks, even without proper foot-ware, can outrun most hunters, especially as the hunters are burdened with their gear and the jacks are running for their lives.  However, hunters carry whistles to alert others to join the pursuit.  The chase can be exhilarating and exhausting, and someone usually takes the dog-tired jack - though usually not the hunter who flushed him in the first place.

 

Some women - usually the youngest and the most athletic - wait specifically for these chases, called coursing.  Running down a male and taking him belly-to-belly requires a fair bit of stamina and courage even if he is exhausted from a prolonged chase.  For the hunter, success is the reward for strenuous training.  These hunters always work in teams.  The first to tackle the male, usually the quickest and often the slightest, drops her Janie knife so that the male cannot grab it and turn it on her should she find herself over matched.  Once he is down, her teammates rush in to subdue him.  In addition to their jack, all usually go home with bumps, bruises, abrasions, and a feeling of real accomplishment.  Bethany and her friends trained for coursing.  Bethany was quick and wiry-strong. She looked forward to running point.

 

Bethany and her friends liked to wrestle with Jason. Until Alicia came, they hadn't a chance with his advantage in size and strength.  One day with Alicia's taunting, they agreed that the winner should set a forfeit for the loser.

 

Bethany was always game, but Jason pinned her again.  Jason made her get down on her hands and knees and kiss his foot while her friends taunted her.

 

Jason was half again heavier than Madison but he was huffing and puffing before he subdued her.  He stood over her and demanded, "Show me you titties!"

 

Madison feigned outrage but lifted her T-shirt and unfastened her bra.

 

"Now turn around and show your friends!"  Jason commanded, shocked by the unfamiliar authority in his voice.  "Damn it!  I'm stark naked." Jason protested.  "It's the least you can do."

 

Now Madison was really embarrassed and looked to her friends for support.  "It's different for you.   You're just a jack!"

 

None of her friends came to her support.  Red as a beet, Madison turned to face Bethany, Jennifer, and Alicia.

 

Finally, Jason nodded that she had done enough and she quickly re-arranged her clothes.

 

Gasping for breath, Jason taunted the women daring anyone else to try.  Jennifer replaced Madison on the mat, but she had no better luck.  She could cope no better with Jason's size and strength, despite his fatigue.

 

"Okay, what do you want me to do?"  Jennifer asked.

 

Jason thought for a second, gasping for air, "Okay, Jenn, let's see.  You can show me your pussy!"

 

Outraged, Jennifer jumped to her feet fuming.  She faced Jason and unsnapped her shorts and pulled down her panties, exposing the small triangle of bush between her thighs that once was called a woman's shame.

 

Jason grinned from ear to ear.  He felt like the king of the world.  "Come on! I want to see pink!"

 

This was way too much in Jennifer's mind.  "Honey bunny, enjoy what you've got right here."

 

 

"No, Jason!  Now you're really going too far!" Bethany had countered sternly.  Alicia and even Madison jumped to Jennifer's defense.

 

"Okay, I give." Jason surrendered, feeling powerful and magnanimous," just show your friends."  Jennifer complied, then dressed.

 

"What are you going to do when you beat me," Alicia taunted.

 

"Let's see, Alicia," Jason pondered.  "Do you think you might suck my dick or else you can lick my butt.  "Have you any preferences?"

 

Bethany blushed in embarrassment bordering on humiliation.

 

Jennifer sputtered and choked.

 

"If my brother spoke like that, my mom would send him to Obedience School -teach him to heel, walk on a leash, and keep his mouth hut!" Madison interjected.

 

Alicia preferred to let her actions speak for her.  Unlike Bethany, Madison, or Jennifer, Alicia would not let Jason close and grapple.  Time and again, she danced away from his grasp.

 

Jason was tired by his three previous bouts and buoyed by his success so far.  "Fight like a man," he protested.  The women tittered at his odd choice of the unfamiliar word, 'man.'  It was a word everyone knew but rarely used in polite company outside of literature courses.

 

"I'm not a man," Alicia answered and spin kicked him in the head with her left foot, then drop kicked him to the matt.   Jason rose from the matt and Alicia answered with a kick to his midsection.

 

"I give." Jason gasped breathlessly, simply unable to regain his feet

 

"Let's see," Alicia considered carefully as she helped him up.  "Stand up and move your cock out of the way.  I want to feel your balls.  The others hooted and hollered but Jason complied.

 

 

The Hunt had always been a part of Ethan's life too, but in a different way.  His family never hunted and what was more, his mother never even served jacques in her house.  Many women who found the hunt distasteful, still had no reservations about buying neatly labeled, cellophane wrapped packages of jacques in the market. However, Ethan's mother studied labels and never allowed any product containing jacques in her house, no cowboy chili and no hommeburgers.   His older sister shared her mother's views.  They even shunned the luxurious man-skin leather goods.

 

When Ethan was six years old he eavesdropped on one of his mother's frequent People for the Ethical Treatment of Males (PET'M) meetings at their home.  She seemed to devote more of herself to PET'M than she did to him.  She and her friends watched a graphic 3VD on the horrors of the Hunt.  Not even his ten year-old sister was allowed to watch.  He had nightmares for a week, but never told anyone what he had seen.

 

            His mother claimed that she was an old fashioned girl.  She boasted to her friends that she had gotten her children off a male, belly-to-belly, in the old fashioned way.  She even exchanged e-mails and jpg's with him from time to time.  Her friends looked at her with a mixture of admiration and confusion.  She was a vocal opponent of the new order since her college days and dedicated to building a better world for both people and males.  She had opposed the Hunt on humanitarian grounds, even before she had a son of her own to protect.

 

            His sister, Madeleine, was infected with the left-wing bug too.  She belonged to the "Save the Males" club at college and frequently wore their logo T-shirt, which featured a naked supine male, one arm and both legs widespread, with his remaining hand covering his male parts.

 

            Ethan was troubled.  He tried to reconcile what his mother and sister told him with the very different story he heard from his teachers and the Coach at school.  The Coach had survived three hunts and won the rights of citizenship.  He wore his three earrings proudly and told the boys that they could triumph too -if they were just good enough and manly enough.  They should play by the rules and do their duty.

 

            Ethan knew several males who had survived one, two and even three hunts.  He knew that it could be done.  It had been done.  He had also had acquaintances go off for the Hunt and never returned.  The teachers told him that the hunt served to cull out the weak and the dumb so that only the best might father the next generation.  To him, the males killed lost did not seem to him any dumber or weaker than the ones who survived - maybe they were just unlucky.  Males who survived three Hunts earned most of the rights of citizenship and were required to deposit sperm with the Sperm Bank monthly in return for a tax rebate.  Somewhere, deep inside, Ethan cherished a hope that he might be one of the best and survive.  He trained and trained hard like the other youths his age.

 

His sister bought him CD's on the Hunt that he could watch on his PC.  He wasn't a very good reader.  The CD's were always made from the hunter's point of view.  It was macabre but fascinating in its own way.

 

One evening as the day of the Hunt approached, his mother came home from work excited.  She had a plan.  She had talked to the PET'M lawyer and she had a plan.  She could pay an indemnity and buy Ethan a deferment.  He would have to take female hormones and have a sex change operation or at least undergo castration, but he would be safe.  Madeleine didn't even seem to mind that their mother was planning to use her college money for the deferment.

 

That night he wanted to talk about it with his girl friend, Caitlin.  Caitlin was a couple of years older that he and was already in college.  He met Caitlin at a track meet about a year before.  Caitlin told him that she would never hunt.  Neither would her roommates, Nichole and Sheridan.  Jacks were just too cute and fuckable, they agreed.  The idea of gutting a jack or even cleaning a fish made her gag.  She never ordered jacques in a restaurant or bought jacques for home.  It was too expensive for a college student like her, she quipped.  However, she never gave much thought to hommeburgers or cowboy chili and when someone served jacques at some festivity or other, she never made a scene.  In fact, when the college held a jack roast, she and her roommates were as likely there as not.  She did confess to a weakness for leather goods.

 

As the Hunt approached, it seemed that their love life was becoming more poignant and increasingly passionate - when they could get away from her roommates, Sheridan and Nichole.

 

Alone in her room finally, she kissed him wetly on the mouth, then she slid down his well-muscled body and tongued his balls.  Her soft breasts and fragrant hair brushed against his sensitive skin.

 

"MMMM," she purred in jest,  "Your balls are scrumptious."

 

"You shouldn't talk with your mouth full," he quipped.

 

"Do you want me to stop?  Just tell me!" she bobbed up pertly, her face blooming in a wry grin.

 

"No, Caitlin, stop. I mean, yes. Don't stop. I mean, I mean just stop talking.  It feels so damned good."  How could he tell her about this planned sex-change operation and female hormones so that he could have breast like hers?

 

Caitlin laughed at his confusion.  She dived back down and ran her lips along his cock, then took him in her mouth while kneading his balls softly with her warm, slender hand.  Ethan's head was filled with the fragrance of her perfume and the compelling sensations rising from his sex.  Caitlin rubbed her index finger around his anus and his hip bucked involuntarily from the bed.  Caitlin almost lost her balance and fell.  With effort she stayed on the bed, but she nipped his cock.

 

Ethan recoiled.

 

"Sorry! Sorry!" Caitlin apologized, sensing what she had done.  "Here, let me kiss the ouie.  I'll make it up to little Ethan.

 

That she did.  Ethan was exhausted when he finally fell asleep.

 

He awoke mid morning.  Knowing fingers once again manipulated his sex.  The light was so bright that he couldn't open his eyes.  Hell, he didn't want to open his eyes.  He just wanted to bask in the sensation, but something was wrong.  There was a humming noise and perfume wasn't Caitlin's.  He came abundantly before he opened his eyes to feminine laughter. 

 

He opened his eyes to see Nichole sitting beside him, still holding his cock, but trying to avoid contact with his ejaculate.  Sheridan was videotaping the proceedings, while Caitlin stood next to her with her hand set deeply in her pants. Ethan was speechless.

 

"See, my prince has awaken."  Caitlin teased.  Caitlin looked great in her skin-tight man-skin pants.  Her flat belly had a slight roundness.  Her navel peaked out above her man-skin belt and was echoes in the appearance of a second navel on the fly.  .  Her modest breasts were restrained by man-skin bikini top whose cups were made from matching halves of a stretched scrotal sac.  Ethan's mother and sister would never approve, but Caitlin looked hot.

 

"He's really cute."  Sheridan said.

 

"Thanks for the show, Ethan." said Nichole.  Good luck!"

 

"Here's something to remember me by," said Caitlin.  Caitlin withdrew her sopping hand from under her belt and smeared the evidence of her arousal on Ethan's face.  "You survive this hunt, and there's lot's more of this right here for you, baby. Come back, lover.  Come back to me!"

 

Ethan showered and dressed as quickly. The Hunt began tomorrow.  As he dressed he heard Nichole say, "He's really cute, Caitlin.  A really great body and lot's of fun!"

 

"Tell us you love him for his mind," quipped Sheridan.

 

"Guys, give me a break, Ethan's really got a good heart," protested Caitlin.  "I really hope he makes it!"

 

"I noticed his ass first at that track meet," Sheridan sighed. "And so did you."

 

Caitlin, don't get your hopes up. The best ones always get taken," said Nichole.

 

"My Mother always warned me about doting on one lone male, especially a birdie - they just don't last," said Sheridan.

 

"You never complained about Ethan not lasting when he gave you head for a full hour on your birthday." said Caitlin.

 

"Remember, when you fucked him the first time and he tried to grab you - put his arms around you," said Nichole.

 

"Caitlin shook her head in disgust.  "I thought he was going to crush me, but I taught him to keep his arms at his sides."

 

"Why don't we go trawling at Cady Stanton High tomorrow and look over the new class?" Sheridan suggested.

 

"What'll we do when we're hags?" mourned Nichole.

 

"I hope we'll be able to afford something better by then," said Sheridan.

 

"Count me in!" said Caitlin.

 

Ethan went home confused.  In the shower, he inspected the male paraphernalia that had caused him so much trouble.  The small cut was scabbed-over.  He thought about his mother's desperate plan.    His sister didn't even begrudge him the money that had been saved for her college.  In some families, he knew, sons were signed over for the hefty government bonus and didn't even have a chance to participate in the Hunt.  What would his friends say if he took this opportunity?  What about Caitlin?  What would she say? He looked at himself again and knew that he would find the courage to be a man and endure the Hunt.  He surprised himself with his use of that archaic and unfamiliar term.

 

Once again Kobe Lennox found his mother and older sister, Kendra, sitting around the kitchen table and talking about him.  "Sell his ass," his sister insisted forcefully, obviously exasperated at her mother's continued refusal to listen to reason.  "He goes on his Hunt and gets his dumb ass killed - we get nothing.  Sign the paper - here, here, and here and we get $50,000.  We can use the $50K and dumb-ass as he is, he's certain to get killed anyway."  His sister looked up and saw Kobe.  Her chagrin was only transient.  "Nothing personal," she insisted.  "I'm just trying to get Mom to see reason - to do something for her daughters for a change.  You tell her!"

 

"Tell her what," Kobe asked, feigning ignorance of the burden of their conversation.

 

"Tell her to think of her daughters and herself, and sign your dumb-ass over.  A flaming dumb-ass like yourself is sure to end up in someone's game bag on the Hunt Day anyway.  If Mom signs you over, we finally get the new car and my tuition is covered.  You go out and get yourself killed in the Hunt - we get nothing at all, for all our work raising you and feeding you.  You eat like two horses.  It only makes sense," she appealed to his sense of logic.

 

Kobe searched his mother's face.  He couldn't refute his sister's line of reasoning, even if she and her friends spent too much time down at Peckers' checking out the Woodies, but he did want to live and in order to live, he had to endure the three days of the Hunt.  About half of males survived each year and why couldn't he be one of the lucky ones.  He was quick, smart, and agile.  Some said that the dark complexion of African Americans made it easier for them to hide and that their survival rate was higher.

 

Kobe didn't know he was 'safe' until the package arrived from the Gender Control Bureau.  In it was the yellow cotton robe that he would wear to the collection site.  First year males wore yellow robes, second year bucks wore red, and third year bulls wore blue.  They would leave their clothes at home and wear nothing underneath.  This way, the authorities need not keep track of which clothing belonged to which male.  Nothing needed to be returned.  Once his mother signed for the package, she could no longer sign him over to a ranch.  As fate would have it, his mother wasn't home and Kendra signed for it herself. Kobe's signature wouldn't suffice.

 

They were checked in at the collection site at 6 AM and allowed to wear their robes on the bus to the Hunt site.  No one talked much on the long ride.  At the Hunt site, they were told to leave their robes on the bus and checked in again.  The ranger entered each male's registration number on her hand computer.

 

In school, Kobe and his classmates in gum class participated in the nude and so nudity was little issue.  They were offered something to eat and drink and told that the first day's hunt would begin with a siren at 10 AM.  People for the Ethical Treatment of Males or PET'M set up a table where they distributed chocolate bars in biodegradable wrappers paid for by their T-shirt and backpack sales.  Basic food and water were available throughout the preserve.

 

Males knew to be wary and wait until after hours to eat.  Hunters often watched these locations.  The Hunt would begin at 10 AM and end at 6 PM. 

 

Kobe met up with a school friend, Jason Erickson.  Kobe suggested that they head for the center of the 10 mile square preserve, that way it'll take the hunters hours to even get to them.  Once they saw a hunter, they would try to move past her and back toward the gate while remaining unseen.

 

Jason agreed and said that according to the internet, most hunters at Red Lake used the South and West gates.  People would likely be returning by the gate they entered - they have to pick up their parked cars after all - so that once they reached the center, they'll likely work their way back toward their original gate.  Jason and Kobe should hide and then slowly work their way north and east.

 

Other males dropped off the trek as they found what seemed to them good hiding places.  Every hiding place was a balance of concealment and vantage point.  One wanted to hide, but not be taken unaware by a hunter.  Jason and Kobe reached the center of the reserve.  Kobe found a first hiding place that offered a good view of the surrounding terrain.  Kobe faced north and west.  Jason faced south and east.  Working together, no one could sneak up behind them.

 

It was noon before Kobe saw the first hunters advancing in a line.  One good strategy was to find a hiding place between two too widely separated hunters.  Suddenly, one of the hunters thought she saw something.  Kobe wondered how many jacks were watching her from hiding.  She pointed and blew her whistle.  A number of hunters quickly converged in the direction she pointed.

 

Jason motioned to Kobe.  It was time to start moving in the exact opposite of the action.  They had no time to see what was to happen here.

 

With considerable stealth and patience, Kobe and Jason worked their way quietly northwest.  The afternoon faded and the number of hunters they saw gradually decreased.  They stopped about a quarter of mile shy of the Northwest corner.  Kobe had read, that hunters sometimes staked out the corners.  Finally, the siren sounded and the first day was over. 

 

Jason insisted that they wait a few minutes more in order to see if any hunters emerged from any unrecognized blinds.  Kobe had shown real aptitude at recognizing well concealed blinds.  Now it was the time to eat, drink, and attend to the calls of nature.  They would spend two nights in the preserve.

 

Statistically, about one quarter of jacks were taken on the first day.  Thankfully, Kobe and Jason had seen none of it so far - with one possible exception.  However a half hour after the siren, they saw two hunters dragging their kill back to the staging area.  Even bled and gutted, he was too heavy to carry.  The hunters saw the youths just as the youths saw the hunters.  The sirens had sounded and the Hunt was over for the day.  One hunter stopped and waved.  Kobe and Jason waved back.  They didn't want to look too closely and they didn't know what else to do.

 

Naked, the night in the forest was likely to be cold.  Jason and Kobe met up with Robert, Ethan, and Mike.  Mike boasted one earring.  He had survived one Hunt while Robert and Ethan were birdies like Kobe and Jason.  Robert was so slight that it was difficult to believe that he was 18 years old.

 

Robert told a harrowing tale.  About 15 meters from his hiding place, three hunters cornered a poor male.  He had run up against a rock face and could run no further.  He turned to face his pursuers who stared at him over the sites of their crossbows and argued at length over who would have first shot.  One woman vigorously demanded first shot then pulled her trigger.  Even though she was no more than 4 meters away, she missed completely.  No one was more surprised than the male, but he hadn't had more than a few seconds to enjoy his good fortune when a second bolt pierced his chest.

 

Robert lost his urine and watched in morbid curiosity as the hunters cut his throat, then methodically gutted him, all the while razzing the woman who had missed.  Two pulled out these one-foot metal rods, which they extended to six feet in length and used to carry off the gutted carcass.  His brother, Tim had died in the Hunt two years earlier.  He allowed himself to wonder what his last moments were like.

 

Together, the males constructed pilled of leaves and branches that would provide some shelter from the night's chill.  Exhausted, physically by the day's exertion and danger, they slept well.

 

 

Trung Nhi and Trung Truc sat in their blind and waited.  They had been there before dawn.  Nhi wore jeans with an old Mickey Mouse top and Truc wore short-shorts with her Cancun T- shirt. The blind was a hole sunk four feet in the ground with a false roof giving the impression of a thick bush.  Nhi sat on a plastic cloth on the damp ground and ate a Snicker's bar while Truc kept watch, an arrow at the ready.  Each had several arrows stuck in the ground before her, all readily accessible.  Ten meters from the blind was a torn backpack, looking discarded, but in reality carefully positioned as bait.  Around the backpack several dozen assorted candy bars lay invitingly.  The sisters sat and waited.  The red PET'M backpack was visible at quite a distance against the forest floor and several other candy bars were scattered over a wider area.  It seemed rather stupid, but it had worked before and would likely work again.  They sat quietly and waited patiently for quite a long time, taking turns on watch.

 

 

 "Robert!" a woman's voice called.  Robert Arliss, called Chocolate Bob by his friends, shoved the last remnants on one candy bar into his mouth before answering his mother.  His mom marveled that he had stayed so thin for all the chocolate that he ate.  No matter what he ate, he never gained weight. He was always active, always into something.  Maybe, he'd be so thin and scrawny, that no self-respecting hunter would take him and perhaps he could come back to his mother alive.  Robert jumped with a start and awoke from his dream.

 

He had teamed up with Ethan Bradshaw, Mike Lewis, Kobe Lennox, and Jason Erickson.  The food packets were nourishing, but Robert had this thing about chocolate.

 

They were deep in the woods when the first siren sounded.  Kobe found a PET'M chocolate bar poking out from under a pile a leaves and unwrapped it.  He gave a piece to Jason.  Finding one, the others searched for more.  Young males had tremendous appetites and an unshakable belief in their own invulnerability.  Robert, Mike, and Ethan set out to look for more.

 

Nhi was on watch and she thought she saw something move in the distance.  Silently, she alerted Truc.  Truc grabbed an arrow and looked.  Nhi pointed out several jacks skulking through the woods a hundred fifty meters away or so.  They had found a candy bar that the sisters had left as bait and seemed excited and distracted. .  Nhi counted five in all.

 

Suddenly, they stopped searching.  One of them, a brown haired jack, bigger than the rest, apparently had seen the brightly colored red PET'M backpack and was pointing it out to the others

 

One slight, dark haired jack, smallest of the lot but more adventurous or more foolish than the others, cautiously came over to investigate.  He picked up the backpack and saw the candy bars inside.  Something spooked him.  Nhi and Truc held their breaths.  He dropped the backpack suddenly as if it were too hot to hold.  He jumped back up a couple of steps and looked around suspiciously, ready to flee at the slightest provocation.  The candy bars spilled out and lay invitingly on the ground.  Also on the ground, lay an old, tattered, magazine, yellowed with age.  The woman held their breaths and waited.  Nothing happened.  He picked up a bar, unwrapped it and took a bite.  Then he saw the magazine.

 

Suddenly, Truc felt a terrible need to sneeze but somehow controlled herself.  Her contortions, though, almost made Nhi laugh but she controlled herself too, though only with difficulty.  Nhi's contortions, in turn, almost made Truc laugh or choke in turn and reveal their hiding place.   Still, nothing happened.

 

The jack suspected nothing.  He grinned and waved to his fellows.  Tentatively, at first, and then with more confidence, the others came unknowingly toward the blind. All five gathered around the backpack to share in the unexpected treat, two dark haired ones - one very slight, the blonde, the tall black, and the large brown haired one.  One fellow with dark hair, less enamored of chocolate, less curious, or more wise, disappeared back into the woods.  The four remaining collected the various brands of candy bars, talked quietly, ate, and traded one kind for another.

 

Jason found that the yellowed magazine was filled with pictures of naked women.  Its cover was gone and its pages were stained and torn, but unmistakably, it was an ancient, battered copy of Playboy magazine.  The magazine was now banned.  Inside were the airbrushed photos of naked young women, now long dead, frozen on the pages forever in various inviting poises.  Kobe grabbed the magazine from Jason and the Ethan grabbed it from him. 

 

The sisters found the women were more grotesque than arousing.  Pendulous breasts hung on scrawny emaciated frames.  Still, Ethan and Jason wanted to see more and jostled Kobe for position.  Robert was content with the candy bars.  The four were oblivious to everything around them.

 

Truc nodded to her sister and each picked out her targets.  Nhi nodded her understanding and they timed their ambush.  As one, they leaped up and loosed their first arrows.

 

Truc's first arrow took Jason through the meaty part of his thigh.  Her foot had slipped less than a centimeter on the damp ground.  Thick red blood coursed down his pale leg.  He honked, howled, and hobbled away in pain.  The noises were almost comical, but Truc cursed angrily, not aware of the humor of the situation at the time.  She grabbed a second arrow without hesitation and methodically sought her second target.  She knew that she had time enough to come back to her first, lamed as he was.

 

Nhi's first arrow, on the other hand, took her first jack, Ethan cleanly through the heart.  The brown haired youth was the largest of the four, probably 80 kilos.  He froze and collapsed, blood bubbling out of his mouth.  Nhi had known her shot was true as it left her bow and had already grabbed her second arrow and took aim at a second target as the first arrow struck. She did not even see him collapse.

 

Truc's second shot was better but she still needed a third to bring down her second jack, Robert, the slim youth who had first examined the backpack. Her first shot pierced his flank and spun him around sharply.  Her second arrow drove over the bridge of his nose between his eyes and into his brain.  He died instantly.

 

Nhi's next arrow brought down the blonde Jason whom Truc had wounded earlier instead of her own designated second target.  The wounded male's howling and hobbling gait had distracted her from her second target, the tall, gangly black youth who literally ran for his life.

 

Truc watched helplessly for an instant as Kobe fled unscathed.  She shook off her momentary paralysis and leaped out of the blind.  She raced to the top of a small rise.  The jack ran desperately too and with his long, distance-devouring strides quickly neared the limits of her range.  She would have but a single shot.   She set her feet carefully and centered herself.  She nocked the arrow and drew the string back past her ear.  She took a deep breath, took aim, and loosed the arrow.  The arrow leaped from her bow.  In her mind, she was the arrow.  She rose and fell in a flat trajectory.  Screaming in triumph, she pierced his neck.  He fell, screaming in pain until he died, drowning in his own blood.

 

Truc and Nhi retrieved their arrows and recovered their ancient magazine.  Nhi wiped a fresh smear of blood from its pages, leaving yet more yellow residue and turned to the battered page where her great-reat grandmother had been the model.  She lovingly hid it among her gear.  Curiously, the magazine had been banned when it first appeared toward the end of the Patriarchal Era and now it was banned again.  Hunters were expressly forbidden to use Playboy or Penthouse or any such magazine as bait.  The tattered, coverless magazine was the sisters' secret weapon.  They laid out their four jacks supine,  one beside the other - one for each permit.  Their naked forms were a parody of the vulnerable women in the long banned magazine.  All were ringless chicks, just 18 years old in their first hunt, but the women, business-like as always, had little interest in trophies.

 

On the left, was the medium sized blonde.  One arrow had punctured his thigh and the other his lower chest.  He was still alive.  Nhi squatted at his head and pulled up his chin.  His arms flailed weakly without effect She deftly avoided his impotent struggles and cut his throat in her efficient business- like way.  He weighed about 70 kg and would yield about 40 kg dressed and butchered. Next to him was her clean kill.  He was heaviest of the four though the black was taller.  His chest was likely full of blood already and Nhi found no reason to bleed him further.  His face still showed his surprise at his sudden demise.   At 80 kg, he would yield almost 50 kg.  The third was the slim dark haired youth.  Nhi saw chocolate smeared on the sides of his mouth.  She smiled because she liked chocolate too.  She found a place on his face where the chocolate wasn't mixed with spittle, blood, or brain fluid.  She rubbed some onto her finger.  It tasted like chocolate.  She cut his throat because he was not likely to bleed out sufficiently from his lethal head wound.  She hoped that his flank wound had not pierced his bowels.  He weighed only about 50 kg and would yield only 25 kg -at best.  Contamination would only decrease that meager total.

 

Truc dragged the 60 kg black out of the brush.  Quite a few hours of work remained but their quota had been filled.

 

Ethan's mother accepted the condolences of her friends with dignity and rededicated herself to her cause.  Madelaine promised to work even more hours selling PET’M candy bars and red PET'M backpacks.  She had even sold backpacks and bars to the hunters yesterday and today.

 

Gladys Lennox sat down on the floor and wept.  Unknown to Kobe, she had consigned his oldest brother, Kareem, to a ranch before Kobe was born.  The money helped her buy her house and give Kobe the opportunity to participate in the hunt.  Now she lost two sons.  Kendra, filled with righteous indignatinon, stomped out of the house to meet her friends at Pecker's.

 

Joan Arliss' sister was with her when she got the news.  She had lost her older son, Tim, two years earlier.

 

Lynn Erickson, Jason's mother, had gone to the Emergency Room to see Bethany who had a minor injury but needed stitches.  Bethany grinned despite the pain, as the intern sewed up her arm.  "I got him, Mom," she crowed.  "Jennifer chased him until we could tell he was flagging, then I ran him down.  Suddenly, he just stopped running.  He turned and faced me.  He looked puzzled and confused.  He must have weighed twice what I weigh.  He wondered, what in the world was I going to do to him?  Well, I just tackled him.  He fell and I scrambled away.  I cut my arm on a rock but - don't worry - he didn't hurt me. I just kept him busy until Madison and Alicia caught up.  The two of them beat him to his knees with there kick boxing techniques.  Alicia let me put him down.  They held him and I cut his throat.  Blood.  There was blood everywhere - his blood and my blood.  He weighed 100 kilos at the Rangers' station, bled and gutted!"

 

Lynn Erickson was proud.  "I took a jack too today too."  Losing Jason was the only flaw in an otherwise perfect day. 

 

Caitlin and Nichole fucked this guy - Ben - that was his name - whom they picked up at the cross-country meet.    For a moment, Caitlin forgot and thought that she was with her Ethan again.  She caught herself, and her eyes moistened when she remembered.  She cursed her sentimentality.

 

"Caitlin, are you all right?" Ben asked earnestly.  "Did I do anything wrong?"

 

Caitlin smiled and also remembered her mother's advice not to become too deeply involved with any boy - especially one who has yet to survive his first Hunt.  Ben had a great personality and seemed like a lot of fun and his first Hunt was a still a full year away.

 

All four carcasses were finally skinned and butchered.  The skinned penises were soaking in lemon juice.  Martha carried the last tray of neatly wrapped packages of jacques into the cooler.  Valerie was still day dreaming away - deep in thought - still pondering the circumstances and chance that brought these particular jacks to her kitchen. 

 

Martha emerged from the cooler with a plucked chicken on each fist.  She looked at Valerie - still so deep in thought - and grinned her silliest grin.  Female sentimentality, she thought, shaking her head.  Hey Valerie," she scoffed, "D'you think these chickens have stories too.