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Swallowed by the Gene – Fourteen |
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Take my words to heart!
The police were still after me. They were getting closer.
The amount of people in black suits and sniffer dogs that I had spotted out of the corner of my eye had increased phenomenally in the last few weeks. They were tracking me.
I knew Shika and Jirrotho wouldn’t let them take me away – they would brutally murder any policeman trying to apprehend me – but that didn’t escape the fact that someone, sometime, would get me. They almost found me.
It’s a horrid feeling to know you are being hunted. Some strive for this feeling; I detest it. The exact parts of this feeling are inexplicable by any form of communication we are yet to come up with, and I’m not about ready to explain it. They had me in their sights.
You’re running through the trees at high speeds, a wolf on either side of you, one your mate, the other your best friend. The hard ground hits the soles of your feet without a hint of pain. Dogs are chasing you – staying back due to the wolves. In your ears you hear the pumping of your own heart and in your throat you taste your own blood. You’re running for your safety, your freedom – your life.
Then you somehow catch your foot on a tree root. You fly forwards and hit the ground heavily, the roughness ripping off the skin of your bare chest and the root ripping up the skin of your toes. The wolves who were beside you skid and turn back to guard you while you get up. You manage to get to your feet but can’t run as the pain in your foot is too much. You then realise where you are.
It had been a while since I had come to this place. It wasn’t somewhere I enjoyed coming – it meant a higher chance of running into Yol again, and I didn’t want to meet him again in case I wanted to go back with him.
The dogs were advancing, beads of drool hanging from their snarling lips and bared teeth. A look in their eyes told of anger. Their breath smelled of old, long digested dog food and was even more smellable when they opened their large jaws to bark loudly to tell their owners that they’d found me.
They daren’t get too close in case the wolves launched an attack, knowing full well they’d be overpowered in a second. In case, they stood watch as I gazed up against the tree I was leaning on.
I looked around to make absolutely sure that this was indeed the place. I was in a clearing with the same two trees that I had jumped up almost a year ago now.
It was my birthday today. My 18th. Unbelievable that they were still looking for me this far on, and somehow absurd too, but maybe the police force wanted to catch a “dangerous arsonist” as I’d heard Reef put it so many times before. But he was dead now.
And I feared for my love’s future. I looked over at Shika and saw she was looking back at me worriedly. Regardless of the dogs – Jirrotho was staring them down – I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her and cried silently, listening to her heartbeat with my ear in her thick fur. I loved her more than it would ever be possible for me to love a human. The companionship and peace of mind she offered me was by far more advanced than any human could achieve.
The next few moments would change my life.
A thunderstorm was starting.
And for the first time in years I heard the voice of another human.
“SIMON! PAUL! HERE!”
It was the voice of the owner of the dogs – the policeman. It was a sharp, shrill voice of a female.
My eyes widened against Shika’s fur and I shut them tight and buried my face deeper into her. I wouldn’t move until the human was in a dangerous proximity.
“Oh my god, he’s just a kid!” I heard her shout as she saw me in all my nakedness and with half of my body shielded from view by the body of a brown wolf. Now tears were beginning to fall from my eyes and roll down my cheeks, but they were being drowned out by the rain now falling.
“I have a gun and I’m not afraid to shoot,” came the voice again of the woman, “And I’ll have no need to do so if you come with me silently.”
“Don’t lie to me you WHORE. You’re terrified to shoot. One thing, Jirrotho here would tear you LIMB FROM LIMB, and another, Shika would EAT YOUR HEART!”
I screamed the last three words so loudly I could feel the air shudder around me. I started to wail softly. Shika moved closer and looked at the woman with a deep growl coming from her chest. I didn’t want to lose her.
Jirrotho was ready to attack. I could feel his rage from the other side of my body. I was his brother and he wasn’t quite ready to lose me to any human.
I knew without looking that the paw print was glowing.
“Did you make those names up? Come, they are only -"
"If you dare to even contemplate finishing that sentence, I personally will rip your throat out and devour it. They are no mere wolves," I let go of Shika and started to stand up while talking, "These are my family. More of a family than my rent boy of a father and wench of a mother ever were. Do not try and stand up to me. With the click of my fingers I could let my mate here and my brother destroy you and your pathetic whiney dogs."
I could feel Cortoth rising inside me, but this was my fight and I would fight it alone. The woman was quaking in fear and the dogs turned tail and ran.
I grinned deeply.
“Do you wish to die?"
Her hands shook violently and she dropped the gun by accident, proceeding to do the same as her dogs, but her with a flail of her arms and a scream as if trying to rid her hair of a swarm of bees.
Thinking I would be smart and jump on her back from the high point in the tree, I scrambled up the tree as fast as I could and turned around to see that she was in fact within jumping distance.
I jumped off of the tree and the first crack of lighting hit the highest thing from the ground – me.
 Daisuke Hirotaki · Mon Sep 25, 2006 @ 07:44pm · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Thirteen |
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Awaiting your arrival.
I think it’s high time I spent some time talking about Shika. I know it seems strange, a human taking to a wolf, but this one was different.
Light brown in colour and female in stature, Shika was very attractive for an animal, and after all, humans are only animals too, and I was the last living relative of a now dead family.
She was the only one who stayed to help me on that first day. The only one who cared. She meant a lot to me and any threat to her was a threat directly to me. It wasn’t just a brother-sister bond like me and Jirrotho – it went deeper than that for me.
At nights I was now beginning to sleep cuddled around her protectively, her muzzle by my belly, and a year in to staying with the Cirungol family I had long since turned 17. I wanted this to be my permanent home.
When it came to mating season those few months earlier, the first being Shika turned to was me. And I am proud to say I accepted her offer and mated with her. I knew though, that other males would be eager to get their dicks into Shika. If I was to have my way, I wouldn’t let them, and by HELL I would have my way. Shika was mine, and even she knew it, although her animal instincts told her otherwise.
Even Jirrotho tried to fight me for use of Shika’s form. Using all the knowledge I had learned over the last two years, I overpowered him with a certain amount of struggle. But then mating season ended and I was left alone with Shika.
An important moment was that when I actually was alone with Shika. We were out hunting. I stopped her by running in front of her and looking directly into her eyes from a sitting position. She looked back into mine with her light-reflective opals and slowly walked up to me and sat down in front. I extended my hand towards her mouth – the hand with the paw print on it – and she licked it and pressed her nose to it. I then leaned forward, buried my cheek into her fur and stayed like that for a few minutes, letting her warm skin play against my cheek.
To clarify – I loved her.
Daisuke Hirotaki · Sun Sep 24, 2006 @ 01:11pm · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Twelve |
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Each and every one of them
Shika was interesting. She cared for me as if I were her brother. The leader, whose name I found out to be Jirrotho, was still wary of me for the first month even though the rest of the pack treated me with the utmost respect. From the way they acted around me I was able to glean that the Sket family were very close to the Cirungol family, but the ties that bonded them would soon die due to the death of the whole family of jackals.
The memory of seeing them dead still haunted me. Even seven months on from the incident, the point at which I joined the wolves, I was still feeling guilt for their death. The images of their limp, cold bodies lying around the wastelands still pained me deeply inside and I often cried myself to sleep at night with the knowledge of what I had done, Shika always there to keep me warm.
Already I had been with the wolves for two months and the wounds on my back healed nicely to leave two scars in the shape of eagle claws – scars I was proud of. Being with the Cirungol family felt twice as natural as being with the Sket family. This could well have been because of the company of Shika and the much appreciated protection of Jirrotho. The three of us had become suddenly close; a family within a family if you will. Any problem, one of us would go to the other and it would be dealt with together. The pups loved the company of myself and Shika, always eager to play a game. I learned a lot from my games with the pups – mainly how to play rough. Still, they were great fun to play with, and kept me on my toes. I never knew when one was going to jump on my head and paw me to death.
Either way, I was truly enjoying my time with the wolves. I wouldn’t let Cortoth have whatever way he wanted. This family were one for me and I wasn’t about to turn over and let him take them.
And I think somewhere inside me feelings for Shika were brewing.
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Editors note: Gawd I'm sorry for the shortness crying . It WILL start getting longer, I assure you.
Daisuke Hirotaki · Thu Sep 21, 2006 @ 08:52pm · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Eleven |
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To ruin life’s surprises
A smell filled my nose, and for a second, I thought I was with the jackals again.
I tried moving, but my back was too stiff. I tried moving again, but this time sent a sharp pain through my body.
That was when the memories came back. The fear of the wolves returned to my mind and a snarling came from somewhere near me. Now I decided to open my eyes. Slowly. Very slowly.
The sun was bright above the trees. I wasn’t in the place where I was before – I would’ve been able to tell that because the eagles would still have been there – but I was definitely still in the forest.
Three large wolves surrounded me, their growls and snarls only warnings. The print on my hand still glowed. Weren’t jackals and wolves related…? Maybe the print was what was stopping them from tearing me limb from limb under the assumption I meant them harm…
A dead deer lay next to me, its skin torn apart badly by wolf teeth, it’s insides exposed and half eaten. They must have left the rest for me. Maybe if I washed it, I could use the skin as a bandage for my back… Then I realised what I was wearing would do fine if I tied it tight enough.
I sat up as much as I could and propped myself up on my elbows. The wolves growled a little louder. Propping myself up on just the one elbow, I reached out with the printed hand and held it with the mark facing up. One of the wolves sniffed it tentatively and then placed it’s snout in my paw and let out a low whine, leaving me to assume that the Sket family and this one were related.
The other two wolves got the message and walked away slowly. The wolf left sat down next to me and curled up. I was the last living member of the Sket family. With a sigh, I placed my hand on the wolf’s body and dragged the deer carcass over to me and ate as much as I could manage before awkwardly taking off my vest, ripping off a long strip and tying it tightly around my body. The wolf stood up and sniffed my wound as I covered it and rubbed it softly with it’s nose. That was a sentiment I had never even received from anyone in the Sket family, not even Skarra.
Then the wolf came around to my front and turned around. I, being my over-observant self, just couldn’t help noticing that this wolf was female. She scampered off quickly and came back a second later with a larger wolf, probably male, who curled his tail between his legs as he approached slowly. I assumed this was the leader of the group, but I didn’t care about that. I was watching the female; looking into her eyes, interested in her.
Cortoth snickered.
A wolf Hiro? Now that’s low, even for you.
[******** off. Seriously, just go away.
He laughed loudly but took my word, making his own assumptions about the family of wolves.
The female looked back at me with the same eyes but eventually looked away, leaving me with a satisfied smile. With a bark from the male, I looked back at him. He stared accusingly into my eyes. I held out my hand with the mark on it and he walked up to it and sniffed it also. Seemingly happy, he turned and walked away, tail held up.
I shuffled painfully to the trunk of a tree, turned over with even more pain, checked I hadn’t reopened my wounds, and began shuffling up the side of the tree to stand, the female wolf standing beside me the whole. When on my feet, I walked slowly and steadily along the clearing and followed the general direction of the wolves that had previously left me. I enjoyed the company of the wolf and every time I stumbled, she helped me stay up to the best of her ability.
“Sket Hiro,” I said in the tones they would name me with.
“Cirungol Shika,” she communicated, lying next to me on a raised tree trunk in the main part of the pack.
Now that who I assumed to be the leader knew who I was, he would help me if I got into trouble with the rest of the pack. Obviously being part of the Sket family meant something.
Daisuke Hirotaki · Mon Sep 04, 2006 @ 08:55pm · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Ten |
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I won’t be the one
Yol and I bonded together like glue. There really was no way to separate us. We truly were each other’s bodyguards.
One such occasion was when a bear had tried to kill me. I had somehow angered it by trying to sneak past it. It noticed and begun to run after me, so I quickened my pace. Had it not been for the protection of Yol, I would have been hunted down and beaten to death brutally by the large forest bear, which stood at nearly twice my height when up on it’s hind legs. In a ferocious movement, Yol soared down from the sky and clawed at the bear’s face just as it was about to crash down on me. Losing it’s balance, the bear tottered to the side, trying to desperately swipe Yol off it’s face, and bashing itself in the process. In a fluid movement, I jumped up and ran for my life, knowing full well Yol could handle himself, and sure enough, ten seconds later, he was flying along beside me.
Had it not been for his protection on one other occasion, I would either be blind or Cortoth would have massacred the whole of the Ghuratha family.
I already knew Heek, the leader of the family, and Rawn, the third in command below Yol, didn’t trust me one bit, due to the fact I had a demon inside me. They also disliked Yol for bringing me into the family, but they themselves knew that if they attacked Yol then the rest of the family would be there to protect him, myself included.
So instead, they came after me. A grave decision, for wherever I go, Yol follows.
The sun wasn’t shining this day. A coincidence too, rather than cliché. Yol and I were sitting on a thick tree branch somewhere in the main thick of the forest, looking out towards the horizon for no apparent reason. With a flutter of strong wings, Heek and Rawn surrounded the both of us, Heek on my side, Rawn on Yol’s. We ignored them for a second and they shuffled closer. Becoming uncomfortable, I stood up and started to move away. Heek followed me. Taking my lead, Yol followed me aswell. Rawn followed him.
Something was wrong.
I picked up my pace as I jumped from branch to branch, Yol flying beside me and the two family members behind us. I jumped to the ground and Yol kept flying on ahead, but banked around to circle me. Just as I guessed, Heek decided to land on the ground next to me.
He flew straight at my face, but not quick enough for me to raise my hands and grab his claws. I held him in front of me as he screeched, flapped his wings and tried to rip my nose off my face. With a grin, I spun round, picking up momentum, eventually letting go to send Heek flying. I quickly crouched down into a low stance. Yol was about to come down to help, but Rawn stopped him from landing. Obviously he was the diversion.
Heek came round for another try. This time he banked over me, spun around quickly and managed to dig his claws into my back. I arched and screamed in pain, feeling Cortoth awaken.
SLEEP! I yelled, I CAN DEAL WITH HIM!
Cortoth took heed of my words with a sadistic laugh and faded back down, leaving me to it.
I reached round and ripped Heek from my back, holding him by a wing. He flailed again. I screeched something at him, and obviously it worked. It shut him up. Then I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I growled.
The paw print on my hand began to glow.
I flung Heek into the air again, this time harder and in the direction of a thick tree trunk. He hit it hard with his wing and I heard it break. I winced at first then grinned widely.
A loud howl came from the forest. Wolves. They smelt my blood and were on the hunt. Or…
I stalked over to Heek before calling up to Yol.
“FLEE! FLY AS FAR AND FAST AS YOU CAN! YOU MUST NOT STAY HERE!”
Rawn by now had noticed what I’d done to Heek and was coming to his aid, but before he could get to me I had already snapped Heek’s neck. I spun around before Rawn hit me and smacked him in the side of the head with the back of my hand, hard enough to kill him in one hit.
“Pathetic…”
I looked around to check for Yol. He had gone. I didn’t want him being killed by the wolves.
And that’s when I heard it again, closer, much closer. They were surrounding me. The clearing was big enough to fit eight fully grown wolves in.
I was finally beginning to feel fear. I heard their panting breaths and smelt the smell that I’d only known to be from jackals.
My breathing quickened and my eyes moved around in their sockets as my body began to spin around, trying to count how many wolves there were, but my vision was already clouding. Little did I know, I was losing more blood than I thought from the wounds on my back.
By the time they had all gathered around me, my eyes were beginning to droop and my knees to feel weak.
I made eye contact with one of them and felt my heart flutter before passing out.
All through this, the paw print from Skarra shined strongly.
Daisuke Hirotaki · Wed Aug 30, 2006 @ 11:47pm · 2 Comments |
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This is an aside to my story.
Last night, my brother Donald, who I have never really gotten along with and recently moved away, added me on MySpace.
I don't know why, and I don't know if someone asked him to, but this is the first sign of him actually acknowledging my existance and growing up.
I seriously almost cried ._.
Daisuke Hirotaki · Sat Aug 26, 2006 @ 10:32pm · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Nine |
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The extensivities of fativital nature...
The eagles were a totally different family to the jackals, but that really was to be expected. After all, jackals and eagles find their food in different ways, live in different ways, act in different ways, but even beyond that, there were subtle differences, like how they would scatter with the approach of a stranger, or possible predator.
One of these scatter methods was to fly as far and fast away as possible.
The trees in the forest were very high. Extremely high in fact. High enough that about ten feet off the ground, even a fully grown human would only be an eighth up the side of the smallest tree.
This came in handy when the police finally managed to work out where I'd gone. Since joining the family I had gotten rid of my clothes again, leaving my scent behind, and spent alot of my time in the trees. One time, a police dog managed to find the tree I was hiding in at the time, and started barking. How it managed to find me was beyond my brain power, but int hat second I stood up on the thick branch, and, using my speed and grace, made it up about thirty feet before anyone located the dog, and by the time someone got to the dog, I was fifty feet in the distance.
Another day, the second in command, Yol, took me to an interesting place in the forest. Here, there were two trees, both the same size, both parallel to each other, and about ten feet separating them. I looked at Yol and he looked back. Was he testing me?
I stalked over to the base of the two tall trees and again looked towards Yol. He took flight from where he was and pulled up at the very base of one of the trees. He went from the side of one to the other in a diagonal fashion. At about halfway up, he stopped and nosedived to the ground. He stopped next to me and looked up at me. I grinned.
"I get it..."
I took a few paces back to give myself a good run up. I looked up at the trees and swallowed. They really were high... What if I fell...
Swallowing all doubt, I let out a huge cry and ran fast up the side of one tree. I crouched up against it and sprang off it onto the other tree and continued like this back and forth for three or so minutes before reaching the top of the trees. I looked out from the topmost branch, able to see above all the other trees in the forest. A grin broke out on my face and my eyes widened in awe. These were the two oldest and highest trees in the forest.
Yol flew up beside me and also looked out along the thick of the forest, the fields out beyond that and then the cities and roads, cars going along it and polluting the world. My eyes narrowed as I watched the cars pass and Cortoth growled. He felt the same way.
It was interesting, living with the Ghuratha family of eagles. They were so different to everything I'd known... And the things they taught me would stay with me for life. However, the leader didn't trust me, and neither did the third in command. They were planning something.
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Writer's note: Oh my god I just so totally got the best idea for a plot twist...
Daisuke Hirotaki · Sat Aug 26, 2006 @ 10:29pm · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Eight |
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We wouldn't understand...
"Poor b*****d..." I mumbled as I feasted upon the raw flesh of a young deer.
It had been caught but less than a minute ago - still warm.
The meat was like leather, which was exactly how I had gotten used to it. The blood dyed my teeth as I chewed heavily on the meat. Leaving the giblets, I stood up from the roots of the tree that had grown into a makeshift seat and stretched.
The forest was huge. I'd been here a week and still not seen the whole thing. Obviously my plan to fool the dogs had worked, however three times now I'd had to move quickly to escape the police themselves, hiding in the thick pines up above.
Somewhere in the forest, an eagle screeched.
Those screeches were becoming more and more frequent as the days went by. The previous day I'd heard five, and that was the sixth today.
Just before starting to move, another screech came from right above my head. I looked up to try and ascertain from which tree the noise was coming from, and an eagle swooped down at me, its claws ready to attack. I lifted my arm in defence and, as if rehearsed, the eagle quickly slammed those same claws into my arm and then out again, leaving six holes in my arm that were bleeding profusely.
I yelled out in pain and spun around, going into a low crouching stance, ready to spring up and kill the eagle on it's next swoop.
Which, as a matter of fact, never came.
Instead, the eagle landed on the ground in front of me and spread its wings, trying to show off it's power I assumed.
The only thing I figured to do in return was to nod my head. It seemed to understand and then turned it's back and started to hop away.
"My arm..." I mumbled. The eagle turned it's head and somehow glared at me with it's black beady eyes. I took a step back and made a decision to keep my mouth shut and follow the bird.
While following it, I quickly ripped off a piece of my vest and tied it around the gaping wound tightly. Suddenly, the bird took flight. It didn't fly very high nor very fast...
Using my intuition, I ran up to the nearest tall tree and scaled it quickly. I jumped form the branch of that tree to the next one and so on until I was running and jumping directly above the eagle. Then it started to test me. It swooped to different sides, went up and down, did barrel rolls... Every movement it made, I followed by changing my course.
After what seemed like minutes of gymnastics but was in fact two hours, the bird came up into the trees and clamped onto a thick branch with it's mighty claws. I stopped jumping awkwardly about three branches behind it. It turned around and screeched, the noise reverberating in my head for a number of seconds afterwards. I shook the noise out of my head and looked around. All around me, other eagles were coming out from behind branches and trunks. There must've been.. what... twenty odd?
I smiled and went along with the routine for the second and hopefully last time in a year. If a distressing end became of this family, that would be it.
Cortoth laughed deeply at my thoughts, the laugh chilling me to the marrow.
I won't let you... I growled.
I do what I want. You have no choice, more maniacal laughter.
Sighing, I looked upon the heads of an interesting family.
Daisuke Hirotaki · Sun Aug 20, 2006 @ 02:23am · 0 Comments |
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Swallowed By The Gene - Seven |
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That's bigger than we can conceive...
It was easy to cope by myself out of the town. The black cloud of smoke loomed high above the hills that surrounded it and was visible for at least twenty miles out of it.
I would be turning sixteen in a few days, and I really didn't care. All I did care about was finding somewhere to sleep that I wouldn't kill me.
As well as the problem of wolves, there was also the problem of being caught by the authorities and being jailed for major arson. However, they would be quite easy to avoid. Any trace of my living there had been taken away.
My mind wandered to Quilea and the mess I'd left her in. If I had thoguht it through properly, she would have woken up just before the flames had engulfed the whole city. Hopefully she would come after me - to seek what was a mystery to me.
I shook the thoughts out of my mind and went into a run, speeding through the field I was cutting through in a matter of seconds.
There were the sirens. I was just jumping over the fence into the fifth field from the town when I heard the fire engine sirens, and probably the police and ambulance aswell - I never could tell the difference.
Staying perfectly calm, I jumped that fence and ran the field, staying low in case they got a helicopter out. They wouldn't find me if I could help it. The sniffer dogs wouldn't be able to track my scent - I made sure to wash every part of myself in a running stream about three fields back - so I'd be safe from them hopefully. This was a part of my plan I hadn't thought through properly.
I looked up from my loping run and saw a thick forest on the other side of this field - that would make it harder still for them to track me. I quickened my pace and jumped the higher fence on the other side of this field, landing on hard forest ground.
I stood up straight and stretched, a smile appearing on my face. This would be perfect. High trees loomed right ahead of me and animals scuttled away as they noticed my presence.
Long shadows were cast by the trees as the sun was in it's three o clock position; long, interesting shadows. Shadows that invited you in, not scared you out. I shrugged and walked into it. Instantly fifty per cent of the sunlight was blocked out and I was cast into a evening-like gloom.
Somewhere in the depths of the forest, an eagle screeched.
WRITER'S NOTE - Holy s**t this is short... Well, I am kinda blank for ideas at the moment....
Daisuke Hirotaki · Thu Aug 10, 2006 @ 05:01pm · 0 Comments |
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