We awoke to wolves snarling, fangs glinting through thick slivers of darkness, pastels of night. The whites of our eyes, the sheen of our teeth shone brightly, our ebony skin assimilated in darkness. We had been hunting the white man since Thursday and we still were hungry, crazed with a euphoric buzz. The hum, the quiet electricity became collective within our unconscious. We were enslaved to this white man; caged by an archaic familiarity. The wolves, baying, necks outstretched, silhouetted within one another’s ivory fangs. Echoing in the concaves, pockmarks of the moon; reverberating in craters, the size and condition of small barren countries. Clad in resilient polyfiber, armed to the bones; eyes wide smiling, we broke camp.

            For this expedition, we had decided it would be quite sporting to use primal weapons instead of long range firearms. Spears hewed from maple, blades with bone handles, bear traps for effect. This kill would be up close and animal, stone blades pressed into flesh, we would hear the final palpitations of life escape, hugging the body close like a lover until it fell limp, sharing their last breaths, feeling more alive than ever  before. One can’t come close enough to kiss a victim through a magnified scope, closing the gap between scientist and blood cell.

           The ritual brought us closer to the sacred, the divine. Sport aside, this was holy. We interpreted the unexplainable in our own way through the hunt, a communication between the great questions and our profane existence. It brought us together, giving a sense of community; we were subjective to this transcendent act of sacrifice, gave ourselves willingly like a virgin to the sword, blade to hilt. Here was something we could all participate in together, generation after generation until every last white man was dead.

            Not a word was mentioned about the society based on cyclical parallels, the one we’d left behind for this hunt. Years had passed since that period of brief equality, though that was not productive, efficiency dwindled. Our grandfathers would tell us the great uprising, spreading from the streets to the ghettoes, from the ghettoes out to the suburbs, from the churches to the state buildings. The ruling class fell, flesh gutted with gunpowder, cremated in explosions. The minority became majority in a multicoloured tsunami, crashing down on the sickly white shade. We had taken back what had never been ours, never was meant to be ours. And since the beginning of the hunt, our lips had been sealed, communicating through adrenaline we rushed, remembering not the foundations, focusing on the rite alone. Here and one with the pine needles, frostbite and living decay.

          Chewed through our cheeks in our sleep, rears of our palates hacked through by nervous molars, tips of tongues flicking, probing open wounds. The hangover washed in waves, our enamel swimming in the salivary aftertaste of stomach acid and whiskey. The strain that travelled through our muscles ignored, the blisters and open sores forgotten, bruises absorbed into our mocha flesh, scrapes and slices had sutured themselves shut. Immortal in the thrill, the rush, all cares falling off and around like drapery.

           The white man. Slack-jawed and barbaric, clothed in nothing but a soiled tunic, he ran, shitting himself and urinating down the side of his leg, leaving a trail of droplets the size of jellybeans. He walked with a plastic cane for the blind we had given him, covered in a dermic salve of dropper acid and light adhesive. Soaking into his skin at every touch. Loaded with lysergic acid he ran: feral, touch and go with brief snapshots of reality, pocketed mental polaroids evaporating as soon as they materialized. The silence crushed him and every break (the potato bug’s crawl, a collapse in photosynthesis, the cacophonous decay of the natural world), he would cherish each decibel as if it was the last thing he would ever hear, everlasting in his mind. And the wolves were a symphony to his ears, undulating inflections, splitting the silence, played forever.

         The white man. The alabaster pig, an animal and nothing more. Venom washed through their veins, they were the lowest form of life, separate from the chain altogether. Despicable in every sense and we indeed took great pleasure in despising them, oppressing them. Their ignorance was irritable, their flat existence boring, and yes, they had their uses, but their uses alone hadn’t kept them alive. Held closer under the microscope we’d found a live carcass, devoid of sense, a drone for implementation. You’d find them in soyfields, municipal services, but never in the houses of the holy, never clothed in nothing more than a tunic, never existing outside of function and necessity. A noble savage.

          Picked him out of the genetically modified soy fields; his back bent at ninety degrees, plucking the bounty with calloused hand; with mindless, obedient determination. Strands of brown hair swiped across his face as if finger painted by a grizzly, perspiration dripped in thick globules, soaked into the earth that grounded him. A beacon of white on our plantation. He knew why we had come, and like a ghost he followed. He was a man that could let go, find relief within an acid trip. And he swallowed it down, ten drops, dancing chemistry within a single glass of water. Liquid in movement, a lithe mind and a rubber body, he filled every requirement. He was perfection for once in his life.

          We last saw him yesterday, three hundred yards away, performing idolatry, bowing reverently to a pine tree. The peak of his experience at hand, he needed to find a god, a reason for being. It was too soon, so we waited it out, watching, sharpening the blade against soapstone, polishing the caps of our boots with spit.

         We had fantasized around the fire nightly, swilled bourbon and wondered: the colour of his corpse? Would a new spectrum manifest itself within his final minutes? The morbid sensation tracked us as we stalked the Caucasian. Three hours had passed since we last snored, dreamt, hacked up phlegm. The rising crescendo of daylight began to explode through the curtain of night, shooting fragments of harsh radiance through the coniferous veil, blinding us, distorting the vision we coveted, required.

        Morning gnats parted in droves as we trudged on, relentless. Our steel toed caps slicing through the dew that hugged the field grass, the hems of our pants soaking it up, pulling us down and we walked. Daylight ran from one end of the sky to the other, watching us, pendulously waiting, and the dusk crashed in, and the time presented itself in full; naked, unadorned, beckoning with intensity.

And we had caught sight of him twenty yards away, crawling on his hands and knees in a clearing like a mangy mutt. Twigs and decay snapped and split underfoot as we approached, and in a moment of clarity, he realized what was about to come to pass.

And it was him and I alone. The sacred had left us, a voyeur. He crawled on his rear, hands digging into moss, nails filling with dirt, propelling himself him backward, his eyes mirroring the fear and immediacy of my own. His face a death knell pallor, fear and fear itself had unified our heartbeats. My hand, resting on the bone handle, ready to rip from the blade from its sheath. And it flew out like lightning, caught the web between my thumb and index finger, drew blood, spilled plasma, stained the blade, hit the ground between us. I was no longer one with the faith, the constraint, the weight that I bore on my back like a cancer.

           It was him and I alone. Whimpering softly, he shielded himself with outstretched fingers, tears dripping from his face, he saw the darkness of the figure before him, juxtaposed against the grey sky. The red splashing from my hand, hitting the ground, dripping on his soiled once white tunic.

             He lashed out. Desperate, thrashing intuitively, his hand only met the blade I held out in front of me. He fell back again, crying, and for the first time I noticed something. Something I had never seen before. The knife fell from my hand and I crumpled, knees buckled, the universe revolved around this one sacred spot. Night had fallen and the wolves opened their throats to the world again, a moonlit choir painting the backdrop. Our eyes locked and we, the white man and I, bled blood coloured blood in concert.