Tim Meyer - The Switch House

Not yet.

And that was where Milo Medlock drew the line. He wanted to remain proactive. Like the situation with the mailman imposter, he wanted to down the beast before it could inflict damage on the community. Sure, it’d started with a few overturned trash cans, but what came next? A few butchered people? Kids shredded like rag dolls on their way home from school? What if the animal wandered into that sixty-five and older community down the block? Granny might be watering her front lawn one minute, getting her fucking arm ripped off the next. Milo didn’t need that. Not in his neighborhood. Not when he had the means to do something about it.

“You’ll never kill that bear,” Tilda had told him. “You don’t have the sack.” She’d continued to smoke her Marlboro Reds and watch Drew Carey on the television. She was only forty but she acted almost twice her age. Constantly nagging and crotchety. She’d been the reason Milo collected so much overtime, why he’d spent so much time in the garage with his bow and arrow and his almost-endless supply of Miller High Life.

“You said the same thing about the mailman who wasn’t a mailman,” Milo had told her. “Said I wouldn’t get him.”

“Not what I said, numb nuts.” She’d scoffed then, between drags of her smoke. “Said you’d get yourself killed and unfortunately I was goddamn wrong about that.”

“You know, you’re a miserable wench, you know that?”

She’d ignored his comment, acted as if he hadn’t said anything at all.

He’d leaned his head against the wall, and breathed in a cloud of second-hand smoke. He’d coughed something fierce and his asthma instantly flared. “Would it kill you not to smoke in the house? You know I have trouble breathing.”

She’d flipped him the bird.

Sitting in the tree was peaceful. Milo breathed in the fresh atmosphere, his lungs full of healthy, clean air. It made him happy being alone. Happy to breathe. Happy to be amongst the silence of nature, those intermittent sounds of birds twittering and branches swaying, the swoosh of the wind passing through the trees. He closed his eyes and thought he was in heaven. He had no desire to head back, back home where hell waited.

Milo hadn’t any idea where to start. He’d watched a few Youtube videos on bear hunting but it hadn’t seemed like a big enough sport. All the hunting videos featured deer or duck, and even less of them featured the bow and arrow. Everything was shotguns or rifles (mostly rifles) and those videos bored him. How hard was it to put down an animal using a gun? Seriously. At close enough range, a kill was almost automatic with a gun. Pull the trigger and the gun delivers instant death. No skill there. Now, to kill with a bow and arrow, one needed to be close. Real close. But not too close. Especially to a bear. Too close meant your head was coming off. Too close meant instant death, for you .

Milo had found one bear hunting video he liked and had watched it several times. One of the things the video preached was making sure to procure the proper license. Bear licenses were issued at certain times of the year depending on your State, and the instructor of the video told him not all states allowed bear hunting and to check the local gun shops for more details. Milo had done his research; New Jersey allowed black bear hunting and, sure enough, black bears were in season. He’d gone down to the local Waldo-Mart and gotten himself good and registered.

He was now licensed to kill… bears.

“Bet you’re after that black bear everyone keeps talking about,” the guy behind the gun counter had said to him.

Milo had nodded.

“Well, good luck, partner. Got any bait?”

“Bait?” The question had caught Milo by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Need bait to catch a bear.” The gun salesman had shrugged. “How else you gonna get that close?”

Milo hadn’t thought about bait. He’d thought he’d peruse the forest that bordered Red River and hopefully pick up the garbage-sniffer’s trail. That was what the Youtube video had taught him to do. Bait hadn’t crossed his mind.

Now, in the tree, he looked down at his bait. It was a good choice, he thought, and he wondered if anyone else would agree. Probably not, he thought, smiling.

“Don’t worry,” he called down. “That bear’ll be along soon and this will all be behind us.”

His bait stifled a cry and called something back, words which were ignored. He’d heard something rustle amongst the leaves, and when he looked down in the direction of the sounds, he spotted a cluster of green foliage bouncing back and forth. Something had disturbed the shrubbery, something big.

Sure enough, a second later, a snout emerged from the forest. A massive, fur-covered cranium followed. Behind that, the bulk of the black bear came into view. It was bigger than Milo had expected, and, even from his vantage point, he could tell the beast was above average. In fact, he didn’t think black bears grew to be that big. Its girth surprised him. No wonder the neighborhood had been shaken; if he’d seen that thing digging through his trash, he might have given this bear hunt idea a second thought. Suddenly the bow and arrow felt weightless in his hands.

The black bear moved out from the brush and into the clearing slowly, waddling back and forth, reminding Milo of the Youtube video. The bear in that video had been equally sluggish and in no rush to go anywhere. Milo thought that might change when the arrows began to fly, but he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know how many it’d take to down the beast, but he’d brought two full quivers, twelve in each. He was hoping to only waste one arrow—hit the monster right between the eyes.

The monster.

The bear.

Were they the same thing?

Then the screaming started.

“OH MY GOD!”

Milo wished he’d put duct tape over her mouth. It would’ve been better that way, but he had needed something to grab the bear’s attention. He couldn’t risk it passing by without noticing the bait. He needed it close. He needed it practically on her so all he had to do was look down and fire. Shoot. Release the arrow, and watch it penetrate the skull right between its eyes.

The bear spotted Tilda and Tilda started screaming, really letting him have it.

“GET ME OUT OF HERE, MILO! GODDAMMIT! YOU SON OF A BITCH! I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE LEFT YOU! YOU WORTHLESS, LIMP-DICK FUC—”

The bear jumped back on its hind legs and roared. The bestial vocalization moved birds from their positions in the trees. It silenced Tilda at once. It gave Milo a rush of adrenaline and coated his skin in gooseflesh.

All of a sudden, things felt real.

There was no going back now. He aimed with his bow and arrow. He held his concentration on the bear’s massive target of a head. The beast lowered itself down on all fours. It jogged toward the potential meal tied to the tallest oak tree in all of Red River.

Milo waited.

“HELP ME!” Tilda cried.

The bear approached, closing the distance with more speed than Milo had anticipated. The gap between his wife and the black bear slimmed. He looked down the arrow, picturing what it’d look like buried in the beast’s skull.

The beast.

The monster.

Which one?

When the bear was about five feet away from Tilda—Tilda who now screamed and cried and begged to continue on with her lethargic lifestyle—the bear roared again, pushing the hair back off the face of its next meal. The bear took the last five feet in a slow, calculated approach. It sniffed its food before attempting to eat it.

This is good, Milo thought. This hesitation on the bear’s part would allow him to adjust slightly, allow him to ready his shot, steady his aim. He did so accordingly, making sure he wouldn’t miss on the first attempt.