Page 3 of Righteous Deceit
Subject: RE: RE: Red Treasure
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Date: January 12, 2022
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: RE: Red Treasure
Send me the paperwork to register as an active participant.
CHAPTERONE
DIEGO
The air is silent. No wind rustles the leaves on the trees. No life burrows in the earth underneath my boots. I can hear the quiet. The echoing chasm of nothing as I stand still, waiting, listening. Seconds pass, and my hands clench at my sides involuntarily. My breath is warm under the black gaiter covering the lower half of my face. I long to remove it, to feel the cool air brush across my skin.
Even with my hoodie up, my ears are on high alert, and I listen intently, waiting for movement. I’m in the middle of the maze. The soft glow of the spotlights artfully placed under evenly spaced thickets of trees shines across the heavy footing of my boots.
A sharp intake of breath catches my attention, and I turn to my right, conscious not to make a sound. A grunt of pain echoes in my direction, and I smile.
I’ve never hunted an animal. I was never dragged into the forest as a child by his dad, dressed in camouflage, and taught to fire a gun with the sole purpose of killing an animal for entertainment.
I was trained to shoot a gun, but that was for business.
This is different, though. The raw resolution of basic human experience. Survival, sex, and status. The world doesn’t exist between the walls of trees that surround me. Surroundus.
Status.I am a hunter. She is my prey.
Survival.Her goal, mine to undo.
Sex.The primal need for possession has taken ownership of my being. I want to own her if only for the split second she knows I claimed her.
I’ve watched countless hunts through the barrier of my phone screen. Observing patterns of prey and the way they panicked. Their rushed escape attempts ended in bloodied knees and scraped palms as they fell to the ground in their plight for freedom. Their hysteria was often unnecessary. Examining the strategy of the hunters, I found most of them wouldn’t stop moving. They were forever stalkingawayfrom their prey with an innate need to keep going.
When hunting game animals, you want to be quick and efficient. You’re there to complete a task. To kill.
Hunting people is different. For me, anyway.
I want to prolong my entertainment. I want to take my time. I want to center myself enough that my body becomes alert to every move she makes.
The Quest operates for six months out of the year, and for a sizable subscription fee, you can watch it unfold online. For a much more significant contribution plus a shit ton of psychological and medical assessments, you can participate. I was content in watching, in observing.
Until her.
Until she stepped into the maze in her red cape and played the game the same way I would.
She didn’t run when she didn’t need to.
She stood still and listened.
She was a hybrid of hunter and prey. She hunted him as much as he did her. She needed to know where her predator was at all times.