This choice: A hunting party wishes to unload a collection of carcasses • Go Back...Chapter #4A hunting party wishes to unload a collection o... by: Yote   An apprentice comes up to you. "Some hunting party out in the yard wanting to unload."
You smell Oswyn before you even see him, the sweet, foreign perfumes he likes so much cutting through the putrid air. He greets you with a warm smile. Nobody has ever explained what the proper title and greeting for a mayor's son is, so you give him a brisk nod and a "sir."
He spreads his arms, gesturing proudly to the catch laid out before him. A heavily pregnant sow lashed by the legs to a pole, and half a dozen rabbits. "Looks like you're going to be busy today, Finn," he says with a wink.
The four men behind him mutter quietly and roll their eyes. You know them all - they're the best hunters the town has to offer, honoured to hunt with the Mayor's boy, yet this catch represents a pitiful fraction of their normal takings. The problem is that the animals are able to see, hear and smell Oswyn coming from a mile away upwind, and you suspect that none of the men have the balls to tell the mayor's son to ditch the rainbow-coloured trousers, the perfume, and the endless chattering. Oswyn is a sensitive soul, a flower that wilts all too easily in the face of criticism.
You stumble for something positive to say. "A lot of skin on the sow, sir. And I dare say the piglets will have some too."
"That's exactly what I said," Oswyn beams. "A pregnant beast must count for triple, surely. That one was mine of course." He raises and fires an imaginary bow - even now you can see his technique is all wrong. "Pew. Shot it right in the heart. Perhaps I ought to get a portrait taken of this fine occasion..." he grins, raising his boot onto the swollen stomach as if in a victory pose.
"Wait, sir, I haven't checked it yet!" Your eyes widen as you see the pig flesh crawl. You move faster than you thought possible, dragging the mayor's boy to the ground just as the husk strips away from the flesh in a floppy, liquid blob and hurls itself at him.
The hunters are good. They have their bows in their hands and arrows in the air faster than you can blink. The arrows pierce the husk and out the other side, barely slowing it. It latches onto the nearest hunter's hand and coils up around his arm and chest underneath his clothes. His screams turn to squeals as the pink flesh swallows up his head, sealing his human face within a porcine snout. The husk gives a ripple. A trickle of steaming green liquid comes from one of the nostrils. "Get it off me! It's burning my skin! Get it off!"
You climb off Oswyn and grab the man under the armpits as he collapses in pain. "Somebody help me carry him," you bellow. The other hunters grab the legs and together you race him across the tannery to the flayman's hut. You kick open the door.
Inside the air is choked with woodsmoke. The blackened walls are lit only by the light from several braziers. Several dozen empty skinsuits hang from hooks, twitching slightly in the whorls of smoke. The flayman is the man charged with the processing and treating of the husks that get brought it, turning them into usable products. In here they are smoked for weeks until their predatory intelligence is killed off and they are made docile, able to be donned and removed at will.
"The smoke will slow down the creature," you tell them.
The flayman is there in a moment. "How long has it been attached?"
"Moments."
He grabs the husk by the snout and heaves. The trapped hunter screams and struggles as though it is his own skin being pulled away, and strikes the flayman so hard it knocks him back. The other hunters pin the man's arms. The flayman tries again, and this time he manages to get some leverage. The pig face slowly, agonizingly peels back. He draws a knife and hacks it away, peels another segment, hacks it away. The human skin underneath is red raw and blistered. The flayman covers the exposed parts in a white power designed to counter the corosive green goo. The lumps of husk wriggle on the floor like worms.
The flayman knows it is a race against time - one which he ultimately loses. He succeeds in removing the skin only as far as the stomach. In the time it takes to strip the man's leather armour, the husk has joined fully with the host. As he tries to tear away the skin below the navel, human blood begins to flow. He shakes his head. "I've done all I can. He needs a physician now."
The three hunters carry the man away. "Is he going to be alright?" Oswyn asks tremulously, staring at the curly pink tail protruding from above his buttocks, which bounces with each step.
"He'll be half the man he was before," you say honestly.
"That would have been me if you hadn't pulled me out of the way. Thank you, Finn."
"Just doing my job, sir," you say. "We deal with them every day."
"Evidently," says Oswyn, staring at the racks of smoked husks in amazement. There are ones of all types - deer, wolves, sheep, even small squirrel skins and the occasional bird. The flayman cleans his blade, takes a broom and sets about sweeping up the scraps of husk and dump them in a deep barrel of water. The husk with decompose and break apart over many months, until it forms a sort of liquid flesh paste that can be spread on to wounds.
As you step out into the fresh air, the mayor's boy turns to you.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
<<-- Previous · Outline  · Recent Additions © Copyright 2024 Yote (UN: yote at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Yote has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work within this interactive story. Poster accepts all responsibility, legal and otherwise, for the content uploaded, submitted to and posted on Writing.Com. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author