9

Ayala stood on the starting line, her eyes locked on the trees ahead. She was naked, as was tradition, a cool sweat forming on her otherwise chilled body. She wasn’t a superstitious person, but today, for the first time, she wore her mother’s pendant. She wasn’t sure for luck, for safety, or for the guidance of her people - she was simply convinced she’d need all three.

She shook her head, trying to remember the steps that came before. Just like her previous two hunts, everything between the moment she decided, and this one, was a blur, just jumbled snippets in her mind that played out of order. She closed her eyes, and tried to remember.

She remembered how impersonal she felt the night before. She hated the brightness of the fluorescent lights of the all-white room, the cold tile floor, the sterility of it. It wasn’t a room for a Dyani to be assessed. It was a room for venison to be…graded.

She hated how much she cared in that moment – not about her lust for what was about to happen, not about beating Remi, and not even about saving her own life. No, in this moment, as the two men in white butcher smocks walked around her, studying and writing on clipboards, there was only one thing on her mind, one thing that really mattered.

Ayala really wanted to be graded A again. She realized as she looked over herself, naked in this room she’d been in twice before, hadn’t taken care of herself the way she had in her youth. She had spent the last decade plus measuring herself by her sales figures, her ability to give a great pitch, to be a leader. None of those seemed to matter now; those perceptions of her were rendered useless by Remi in less than a week. So, she tried to suck in her belly fat, stick her butt out, and hide her wrinkles as they squeezed, and poked, and bent her body in all sorts of compromising positions. She NEEDED this affirmation more than ever.

Ayala let out a gasp when she saw the tag clipped to her ear, the large letter “C” a glaring reminder of how years of sitting at a desk had taken a toll on her. She shook her head, processing that she was 36 years old, and her high value years in this on again off again identity as meat were long behind her. Deep down, she really hated that it gave her hope that Remi still wanted to eat her, for whatever her true motivations were.

As she was shuffled out of the waiting room, she passed by a sign that shook her back into the reality of her situation. It was a classic autonomy butcher chart of the various cuts of a Dyani, complete with those drawn on dotted lines. She stopped in place when she saw a sign adjacent, a list of recommendations based on letter grade. The words kept rolling over in her mind.

GRADE C -BEST FOR ROASTS, SOUPS, AND STEWS.

Ayala opened her eyes again, her vision bleached with the early sunlight of morning. It would be any minute now before it was time for her to run - One sound of a gun would signal the battle between this life and the next. She only had to survive 10 hours – if the sun set before she was snuffed, she’d be free to go home, start a new life, and, if she was honest with herself, after realizing how good it felt to tell someone about her true desires – finally go to fucking therapy.

She closed her eyes again. She remembered the quiet ride to the hunting lodge. She second guessed herself over and over, but there was no turning back. She just couldn’t face the humiliation that awaited her at the office. She’d have to wipe the smug look off of Remi’s face, just like she’d done the two before, by outlasting her in the hunt.

Remi didn’t speak to Ayala for most of the hour ride, a welcome change of pace. It was like Remi had nothing to say to Ayala now that everything was in motion, that any connection to Ayala besides manipulation was meaningless to Remi. Even still, Remi’s words as they got into her truck still rang loudly in her head.

“I’ll let you ride in the front this time. But, on the way back…”

Remi gestured behind her. Ayala allowed her gaze to wander to the bed of Remi’s truck, flooded in the moonlight. As they drove under a streetlight, Ayala swore she saw the stain of blood. Ayala remembered Remi’s the three heads mounted on the wall, including the one she was convinced she knew, but still couldn’t place.

She realized all three of them rode back to her home in the back.

Ayala opened her eyes again, the sound of footsteps to her side. She saw Remi, bow in hand, lining up down the pavilion, her lean muscle glowing in the sunlight of morning. Remi didn’t look over at Ayala, it was like Ayala didn’t exist. Something told Ayala that this was what Remi wanted, deep down.

Ayala eyes closed one last time, trying to process one thing that still bothered her. Just as the paperwork was complete, and Ayala was taken back to sleep overnight, Remi did not say taunt her, or tease her, or take one long, last whiff of her scent. She simply said something that Ayala still did not understand.

“Third time’s the charm.” Remi said with a wink, like she knew something that Ayala did not.

Ayala lay on the cot that night expecting not to sleep. Her mind raced, initially, trying to figure out what Remi meant. Was it a reference to this being her third hunt? Was it related to the number three being a spiritual number of fortune to her people? Or, was it something about this hunt that Ayala wouldn’t find out until it was too late?

Ayala was surprised to find that just as quickly as she had closed her eyes, she fell asleep. She found herself restored in the morning by how soundly she had slept, and thought about what it meant. She had kept herself up for a week with the stress of her future – the promotion, the daily humiliation by Remi, her eroding self-worth – but on this night, she found peace in the finality of this moment – this would all soon be over. Either she would be rid of Remi, and this job, and she’d be Ayala Diner, again...or she simply wouldn’t have these problems anymore, as she’d be…

…dinner.

Ayala’s eyes shot open at the undeniable sound of a gun firing. It was time – no, it was past time, and she was still standing while she should be running full speed into the forest. She heard Remi’s familiar laugh, and it was all she needed to break into a full sprint – dashing full speed into what the forest, into what fate had in store for her.