FOXSYLVANIA

     The Other Side    (a story of mine)  

The hunter may have been driving too fast that first day of buck season, or maybe he was drunk.  At any rate, he lost control of his pickup on a curve, and left the road.  Branches whipped and slapped against his windshield as the hunter struggled to regain control of his vehicle.  Then a tree trunk blotted out his field of vision, and everything came to a dead stop…including the hunter.

He floated weightlessly down a long, dark tunnel…it was rather pleasant, actually, almost relaxing.  He found himself drifting towards a bright white light at the end of that tunnel.  Eventually the hunter was drawn into that light, and he found himself standing in the dazzling brightness, shielding his eyes against the glare.  Gradually as his eyes adjusted, the hunter perceived something in that brilliance…to his wonder, it was several extinct and endangered animals, and even more remarkably…they were seated around a table, playing cards!

“Hello, Jerk!,” greeted a bison with a toss of his enormous head.  He held cards in his hoof. 

 “Welcome to the Other Side,”  said an extinct passenger pigeon to the hunter.

“The Other Side?,” answered the buffalo, sarcastically.  “What is this, Main Street that we’ve crossed over it?”

“Well, we’ve expired,” said a Dodo, an extinct species of flightless bird.

“Expired?,” tormented the buffalo.  “You mean like a magazine subscription?  Does that mean we can’t be renewed? — You may want to ask a Hindu about that!,” he snorted.

“What my friend means,” explained a Great Auk, another extinct bird, “is that we’re deceased.  But you’ve slaughtered creatures for pleasure, without true need.”

“So I’m screwed,” said the hunter, becoming concerned.

“You got that right,” agreed the bison.  “So we’ve sentenced you to a therapeutic experience.”

“Unhappy landings!,” added the Dodo with a wave of his flightless wing.

Immediately the hunter felt himself sucked up and drawn backwards through the tunnel away from the light, traveling at great speed.  He was rudely propelled back into the flesh…but it was the flesh of a deer, not a human!

His new animal senses perceiving something dreadfully wrong, the hunter turned deer began to bound away…but a steel-jacketed rifle slug pounded through his lungs, driving him to the ground.  As his life ebbed swiftly away with his blood, the hunter was again driven from the flesh…but this time his spirit was bound for the Outer Darkness rather than the light, where there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth…

In the dazzling light of the Other Side, the buffalo pondered the fate of the hunter and considered his own winning hoof of cards.  He had been one of the few really good Buddhist poker players in life, and now he was going to take his associates to the cleaners but good…