Flash Fiction: The Hunt

New year, old fiction

Happy new year, dear reader! I hope your 2025 is better than the year just passed. And thanks for your occasional glance at my humble blog in the last few months. If you are new here, although the dice pool dot com is normally an RPG-related blog, I also like to sometimes share the short and long form fiction that I have produced over the years. Since I have a splitting headache today and not much in the way of good ideas for original blogposts, it seemed like a good opportunity to post this piece of flash fiction. It’s exactly 500 words and came out of some randomly generated nouns and verbs as an exercise a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it.

The Hunt

by Ronan McNamee

I always think of my ambition as the gun I bring on a hunt. Continuing the analogy; job interviews, important proposals and meetings are everyday hunting expeditions.
But on today’s safari, we’re after really big game.

There he is, the prize: Dr Khan. I’ll call him the Great White Rhinoceros; I’m going to mount his head on the wall of my soon to be much larger corner-office. He is just as I pictured, minus the pocket protector; an irredeemable nerd; nervous,
slightly slovenly, side-parting.

My smile and greeting are genuine. I have never been so happy to meet anyone, to be staring down my sights at such a magnificent beast. My trigger finger twitches and I almost shoot early! He had been explaining his discovery, and I interrupted
like a rookie.

I check that my gun is correctly loaded and resume ambush position. He continues his boring explanation. I do glean a little important information, though. The
product he just developed, the product he is just about to sell to my company, enables the user not just to experience the world from the perspective of a bird or a tortoise or a duck-billed platypus, but to live it. No mere virtual reality headset, this.
This invention of Dr Khan’s will revolutionise humanity’s understanding of the natural world by literally allowing its users to become a part of it. It will also make my
company a metric shit-tonne of cash.

His explanations and interminable techno-babble proceed unabated for the entire walk through the university Physics Department until we are in his lab. I continue to nod and make the right noises. The hands holding my gun are becoming sweaty and my patience with the Great White Rhinoceros grows thin.

He stops talking, I level the barrel at him and fire.

I assure him that we would never try to influence him to use his invention for any purpose but the one it was meant for. I convince him we share his values; the welfare of animals, the preservation of Mother Earth, yadda, yadda, yadda. I watch the smile creep across his face when I mention remuneration, a seven figure sum. He nods excitedly. He shakes my hand as I wonder what to carve into that wonderful, big hunk of ivory.

Khan leaves me in the lab as he rushes off to spread the good news to his trophy team. I receive a text. Unknown number. “I’ve seen you on Facebook with that elephant’s corpse,” it reads.

My gun clatters to the red dirt of the savannah. I hear the door being locked. I rise and approach the window to the next room. The Great White Rhinoceros is in there. His finger is poised on a button. His phone is in his other hand. I receive another
text: “Time for you to see how it feels.” He pushes the button.

I run and run and hide, heart hammering, legs aching, tail bleeding. Another gunshot. I bleed.