A Hunter Calls
Dear Reader,
Today I’m sending you (from a very hot Lisbon) another short story, a piece I’d been intermittently tweaking for about two years until it was brought to generous fruition by Niamh Campbell in her capacity as guest editor at Belfield Literary Review in 2022.
On the surface it’s about the joys of living alone, of being able to focus with unfettered intensity on one’s—for want of a better word—‘craft’. The protagonist is a sculptor, and her engagement with her work in progress gave me a chance to spend time with the slow nuts and bolts of bringing an artwork into the world.
More deeply, it’s about the low bar so many of us have for tenderness, and how that low bar can act as a fatal snare.
I won’t say anything else, other than—for now, at least—it’s my favourite of my own short stories.
Hoping you enjoy! And that April has been kind.
‘Til soon,
Sue
Candice Lin, System for a Stain, 2016
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A Hunter Calls
The first time he came I could smell it on him; the kill was that fresh. Iron-scent wafting thick from under his clothes. I was in the kitchen, mistook it for something spilling in the studio; preservative in a vial, pigment in a tub—something I’d put down at a careless angle. The kettle was nearly boiled on the hob. I thought, If I’m quick there’ll be some dregs I can salvage. So that’s what I was doing, when I saw him. Turning around, readying to dash to the studio: squeak of my heel on the floor.
And there he was, what women are trained to fear: an inexplicable stranger in your home. A man come to ravish you, gorge your insides. Use your blood to paint the name of a false god on the walls. But was he a stranger? I looked at his cheeks, at his very straight nose.
‘I’ve seen you somewhere before.’
His hair was so blonde it was silver. The whites of his eyes were very bright around their brownish orbs. He’d a big jaw and when he spoke it sounded like the tongue inside it was swollen.
‘I’ve been watching you,’ he said, ‘maybe you’ve seen me out the window.’
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