The Blood Hunt

He could never imagine he would be chosen for this bizarre game... to watch a horror film in an auditorium... alone.

The movie was a psycho thriller, to be specific. And the only thing he could see in the big screen was blood – somehow or by some reason the killer was psyche about blood, that’s the thing the film wanted to show, and that’s the only thing which horrifies him.

“The Blood hunt.” He muttered.

It was for the famous TV program he is here today – ‘The Blood Hunt’, for a massive hunt of brave teens. And now, when the final stage has come, they have arranged a sequence like this. The ones win; go for a meeting with an actor, famous for his onscreen braveness.

“...Blood Hunt.” He muttered again.

They needed a bunch of psycho people, not some brave persons, as he believed. They had to survive several stages to come up to here – had to lie with snakes, had to stay in a 5’*5’ gas chamber, bath in a tub consisting water mixed with goat’s blood and like so. Rule was simple, one expression from your face, and you will be out of the show. And now he thinks, would’ve he been out of this game long ago... he didn’t come here to be a psycho; he wanted to be only a brave person.


Back there, it was the bloody movie... still running – converting blood, from his veins into water every second, of which he could do nothing but to watch – blood, all over the screen.

He stood up on his weak legs. There were really nothing left of the competition in his mind. He was shocked, getting sick, and somehow, feeling red everything around him – His tongue was salty, and he didn’t know, it was the blood or for the hatred towards it.

He was on the footpath now. The auditorium was left behind – from which he managed to sneak away, through the back door.

“Blood...” he continued to mutter.

It was past midnight. A season wind, generating from the southern lake, tilting the branches of the trees nearby, vanished somewhere. And a white owl moved from its nest of the far-off tree towards the only open window of a high-rise building, with its glistening off-white feathers in the moonlight.

The chain of thoughts broke away as he heard some faint sounds – it was a beggar, poor, sick, about to die, calling for something to eat.

“Blood… that’s the thing they want.” He smiled.

And then, once again, the dark night saw blood and blood only. There he was, with a stone in his hand, in front of the beggar – head crushed…several times.

“The blood hunt has just begun… and it will continue.” The cry kept hovering and haunting into the dark.

-Written on September '08, for the TOI competition.