The Most Dangerous Game

Have you ever felt fear?

I mean real fear.

Fear that engulfs your soul and sends you spinning into a spiral of fright and lost courage that all you can do is let that spiral spin you until your nothing but a coward pleading for it to stop?

I felt that fear.

As a formal hunter, I am shamed to admit that I had that feeling before.

The biggest African Buffalo could have charged me with its massive horns and crack every bone in my body but I would feel no fear.

An elephant could grab me by its giant trunk and throw me twenty feet in the air and I would felt no fear.

But I suffered at the hands of an even horrid monster.

His name was Zaroff; General Zaroff.

The man was also a hunter, with lips as red as blood, sharp teeth, and eyes as black as night. But it was not his appearance that made him a monster; it was his chose of game to hunt. Because regular game bored him (animals) he hunted his own version of what "the most dangerous game" was.

What he hunted was men.

He would trap sailors on his island and force them to "play" his twisted hunting game. There he would hunt a man for three days and if that man would survive  being hunted by Zaroff he would get to leave the island. But if Zaroff found the man he would have the ever sickening delight of killing the man himself.

No man ever left that island.

I was, sadly, one of the men who got stunk on the same island with that Monster-man.

Being a hunter, I knew the way a jungle and I was always quick and swift both physically and mentally so I was able to survive and navigate my way through Zaroff's thick jungle island. He came after me with everything he had; guns, trained killing dogs, a Strong Man who was both deaf and dumb (His name was Ivan).

But I persevered; I withstand the terrible conditions of the jungle and I killed one of the Zaroff's best hounds and his Strong Man, Ivan, and for the final touch of my bloody masterpiece I killed the Monster himself.

Zaroff.

I will admit that surviving Zaroff was the toughest, dangerous, most disturbing, and horrendous thing I have ever had the misfortune of doing in my whole life.

What do I do with my life now, you ask?

I can not bring myself to hunt anymore. Though I have always had a hearty passion for hunting I can't bring myself to lift up my rifle and take the life of another living thing anymore.

Even if it is just an animal.

I have felt what it is like to be the pray and what it feels like to have that feeling of fear of dying at the feet of the hunter.

I will never hunt again, so that I may never became like Zaroff.