Christmas Game: Hunting for a Human Mate as My Bride

Chapter 4: Run

Johnson bends down and checks Sara's pulse as I watch her chest rise and fall from this distance.

“No, I didn’t kill… I did break her spine and sever her spinal cord though. Now the only thing she will ever be good enough for is to bear pups. Do you still want her now, Johnson?” Morvello eyes him snarkily as Johnson sighs. He shakes his head and glares at him as he stands up.

“Keep the good for nothing, skank, Morvello. I’ll go find one who is ten times better than this skinny b***h anyway.” With that, Johnson ran off into the woods on the other side of the clearing while I watched as Morvello picked Sara up and carried her limp body back to the warehouse.

We are now roughly six hours in, only a quarter of the way through the game, and two of the five girls have already been caught. My odds are starting to look slimmer and slimmer by the second.

I am starting to snuggle back into my hiding spot when something strange comes over me. A horrible sense of dread fills my body and soul as I try to relax back into the tree. Why am I feeling this way? What is going on?

I look out over the field, and I see the hunter Morvello is struggling to pick Sara up, but once he has her, he starts the trek back to the warehouse.

Once he is gone and out of sight of the clearing, I snuggle back down, and sleep starts to take over.

I don’t know how long I was out for, but I woke up to the sound of something breaking. A twig snapping just below me. I swallow hard as I quickly turn my head and realize I am about to be face to face with one of the hunters.

Shit…

I quickly untied the rope that I had been using to keep me secured in the tree. As soon as it was untied, I tried to wrap it up quickly, but it was too late. The hunter was on top of me.

I gasp as I look down and peer into the bright golden eyes of the man who might try and do to me what I just saw happen to the other two.

“Hello,” he drawls in his deep voice. His whole face other than his eyes was covered by a camo bandana. “You’re coming with me…”

I frown and shake my head firmly as I poise myself to run. “Like hell I am.”

I kick my foot into his chest and knock him off balance. As soon as I get my strike in, I jump out of the tree and start running through the snow covered forest. He huffs before he takes off after me. I turn around and see he is following me and he is picking up the pace.

I have to get back into the trees. That is going to be the only way I might have a chance.

I look around and find a tree that is a bit more difficult to climb. There, just up ahead.

I bolt towards an old elm tree and start looking for hand holds to try and climb up. Just as I am trying to get up into the tree, I feel a hand grab at the back of my outfit and pull me back down to the snow covered ground.

“Gotcha,” he pants lightly, as he pulls me down and I go from standing to laying on the ground.

He instantly starts trying to fight my arms and legs as I kick, punch, and claw at his face. “Let me go, you jackass!”

“Damn, you’re like a little bunny fighting,” he chuckles as I keep fighting. I push and shove as he tries to pin my arms down to my sides.

“Quit fighting so damn much,” he growls. I huff and shake my head as I bring my knee up, and I connect with something. “Oof!”

I roll onto my stomach and crawl out of his arms as I try to get away. I feel him latch onto my ankle, and I kick at his face. “Let me go, you bastard!”

I feel my heel connect with his nose and a sickening crunch sounds through the air.

“f**k!!!” He instantly lets go of my ankle as blood starts to flow down his face behind the bandana. He rips it down as blood pools from his nose into his hands. “Damn, little bunny!”

His face is strong from what I can tell in the moonlight, but I can’t pick out many more details.

I don’t wait around or hesitate to get more details of his face. Instead, I stand up and I run. I run the opposite direction that I was going and I head straight for another tree. When I reach a great fir tree, I climb up the tree and climb high into the limbs. Once I get into the limbs, I jump from that tree to another one and keep running.

I move as quickly as I can to try and get away from him. It was close. Too close, and I didn’t feel very safe anymore.

When I am about two hundred feet from the first tree, I turn back around and see the hunter has pulled his bandana back over his face and is standing just under the first tree I was at. He locks eyes on me and I see his gold eyes glint under the moon.

“Don’t worry, little bunny. You might be able to run away this time, but you won’t stay hidden for long. I’ll be the one to find you again.”

I swallow hard as I start to jump from tree to tree again. I don’t know why, but his eyes are unnerving and he just seems to do something to me. I don’t know what this feeling is, but it isn’t fear. It is almost like a weird combination of excitement and something else… Something I have never felt before in my life.

Once I know I am far enough away from him, I rest against one of the trees. I am high enough into the branches that you would have to be looking for me in order to see me. I lean against the bark of the tree as I pant from running, jumping, and trying to keep my balance. That was way too close… I guess I’m not going to be able to just rest and relax until this game is over.

I stand up a bit straighter as I look up into the leaves of the pine tree I am currently in. I decide to climb a bit higher and I make sure that no one is around as I secure myself to this tree with my rope. Once I am secured, I rest my head against the tree and do my best to get some rest. In the morning, I’ll look for some tree nuts or something like that to eat, but for now, I need rest.

I don’t know how long I was asleep for, but when I woke up, the sun was starting to peak over the horizon and through the tops of the trees. I yawned as I set up and stretched my limbs and I felt my neck and back pop. It wasn’t the best sleep in the whole world, but it also wasn’t that bad either, considering I was sleeping in a pine tree.

I inhaled deeply and smelled the bright scent of the pine needles as I shivered slightly in the cold. It felt like the temperature had dropped about three degrees between when I fell asleep and now.

I shake my head and look around at the forest floor below. Everything was still and the only sounds that I could make out were those that belonged to the animals that lived here. I decided that now would be the perfect time to drop down and look for some nuts, berries, or some type of edible plant to eat to give my body the energy it needed to make it through this game.

I untied my rope and wrapped it around my body. I tied the rope into a slip knot before I climbed carefully out of the pine tree. Once I got to the lowest branch, I sat on it for a minute and looked around and listened closely. I didn’t hear anyone or see anyone, so I decided it was safe to drop down to the ground. It was about an eight foot drop, so when I hit, I went from my feet to my knees to help lessen the impact on my body. Once I was stable, I climbed up off of the ground and started my slow and careful hike to find something to eat.

As I made my way through the woods, I noticed several tracks of footprints that didn’t belong to animals. Some of the tracks belonged to the hunters, I knew that much, but there was another set that was much smaller with shorter strides mixed in… These had to have belonged to one of the other girls.

As I glance down at the tracks, an ear piercing scream rings through the forest and I feel my heart sink as realization sits in.

Another girl was about to be caught.