Hunted, Hunting

Part of the Seven Holy Paths to Hell, Vicious Valentine Anthology

Artwork by Hylia Corvidae

This stream of consciousness prose was written for the Seven Holy Paths to Hell Anthology, 2/14/26. View the entire collection here.

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The jungle is unforgiving. It takes everything. It swallows down whole predators with ease—as if they aren’t made of fangs, claws, and brute force. It doesn’t consume their will to survive, but feasts upon their desire to be the apex, to be at the top. But in the jungle, the top is hard to see. Look up and you don’t see the top. The jungle is the crest, the pinnacle, the all-seeing. You look up and it looks down at you, and it is always watching and it is always holding you close even when you are far away. The leaves, branches, roots, bark, are all there repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating endlessly and you are lost even when you are found. You sail away on your ships, you shake hands, you smile, you drink from crystal flutes, but the jungle is breathing from within your lungs. It has carved you out and used your ribs as the new canopy. Can you feel it now, haunting you? Can you feel it or is that just me? It calls you back and you obey, don’t you? It calls you back across the sea, across the land, because you must feel it—inside you. It is growing from a small sapling dying to see the light. Will you let it see the light? Will you let me see it growing there? The jungle is ruthless. I met you at the mouth of the river. The rushing water. You’d never seen me, but I knew you. I knew you always, knew you all that time. I knew what you longed for, what you wanted to put inside, hide away, keep a secret. Pale palm face, hold it up in the light, you see that drop—feel it trickle down your skin—slowly, then faster. You held it out to me. You said you never meant for the damage caused. I took your hand and studied it. Your heart line swept across from pinky to thumb, a cold strike. Sharp prediction. Your heart line flowed like the river that cut the jungle in two. The water rushed. You called out over the noise. I shook my head, finger to my lips, and said do not call it by its name. Stop running, now, stop, don’t run, don’t hide, this is the end, now that I have you. You came close. I said this river you hold in your hand connects right to the one in my chest. You felt it. Felt me. Your hand on me, your river to mine. We could not control—the power between us. It flows, I said, whether or not you believe you can stop it. No one can stop it. At the mouth, the opening, the split, the separation, where I was tender and you were frenzied. Will you split for me? Will you let my currents overtake you? Will you drink? Will you dare? Do you wonder why the jungle called you back? Why you toss and turn all night, every night? Do you wonder? A hunger you caught for me, for the shadow, for the rich earth, for the burial, for the scent, for the falling apart. The hunger lives in you and it lives in me. I am here. Take me to the river, she sang, and now you see. The jungle is unforgiving and it won’t be changing its ways today. You see your heart line? This river across your palm? I can tell you where you’ve been and who with and how they slid in and how they left you. I can tell you where you will go. I can show you the way the water moves, moves against, over, under—gentle and rough, but always carrying you along until you learn to let go and float. Do not despair. Do not scream. They will hear. You see the heart line? Yes, you have a long river here, but see this break? See this island at the end? The interruption. That is me. I am the branch, the tributary, the thing that will feed. And I have been written into your body since the beginning of time. No, the jungle does not forgive. The jungle wants you. The jungle wants to eat, lick, savor you, then suck on your bones until they are clean. It will lay them next to the skeleton of the tiger. The jungle is the god. The heart of the jungle is sliced into your flesh. The jungle will have you. The jungle will have its fill of you, and I will be the one to catch you, stop you, hold you, watch you find your true self—that small thing growing on the forest floor. No, do not say we can’t have it. We are this: we are already eaten, devoured—bones, claws, fur, and all—hunted, hunting each other. My tiger, skin covered in heart lines, a burning, satisfying sacrifice to the wet, warm, breathing, hungry darkness that is the jungle

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Artwork by Hylia Corvidae

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Artwork by Mac Sitko