Hunting Yourself

I had a bad day today again, so I couldn't muster up the energy to write something completely new, so here's something from the days of old. Concept wise, its one of my most favorite stories I've made. It even utilizes the often ignored second person perspective. Anyway, enjoy, its copy and pasted from an old word document so the formatting will probably be off. It was originally written September 18 2009, I haven't edited since then either so watch out for mistakes! I don't like using old stories like this for my blog as I would rather come up with something new, but its nice to dig up the old archives every once in a while. Enjoy the story!

Hunting Yourself

You were your most difficult prey. You couldn’t use guns, nets, boomerangs or arrows to catch yourself. None of those mundane tools would work; you had to catch yourself with your bare hands. You were close, very close, but when you saw yourself approach the edge of the woods you feared the chase was over forever.

You saw the forest as your last route of escape. Looking in the distance behind you, you saw yourself barreling towards you. The hungry eyes of yourself struck fear into you. The idea of that predator catching up to you scared you, and that was all you could think about.

Your belly rumbled as you wanted for yourself, only you could end your own hunger. As a person dying of starvation, your gut twisted when you ran into the forest; luckily you had the energy to follow.

The forest became obviously the last place you wanted to escape into. Because, in fact, the woods were yourself too. The stream was your doubts, flowing through you, the rocks your morals and values standing strong. The blades of grass were your loves, gently tickling your feet. As you saw the trees, your growing desires, blanketing yourself in shadows, you realized that perhaps inside yourself was the best place to hide from yourself.

The chase could not stop; you needed to be fed, to have yourself be yours. When you started to hide inside yourself though, the pursuit became far more difficult. Whenever you got ahead, you doubled your pace to keep up. Yourself seemed to know the way around yourself better than you did. The running had started to wear away at you. Your legs began to feel like they were stabbing themselves after every step.

You were filled with hope when you began to falter and stumble behind you. However it wasn’t long before you began to feel tired as well, you fell into a stumble just like yourself did moments ago. Eventually you had to stop, luckily, you had to as well. You and yourself both collapsed in the Meadow.

The Meadow was the center of yourself, the river, the trees, the rocks the grass, they all met here becoming your heart. Now you and yourself were trapped inside you.

You looked at yourself and you looked back. Both the predator and prey gazed at themselves in confusion. You knew you would get back up eventually, and yourself as well. A truce existed only as an impossibility, you could never trust yourself.

It was then when you entered. You looked upon yourself and yourself and around at yourself, feeling only pity for yourself. You stood clothed, while yourself and yourself both lay on the ground cold and naked. You didn’t realize your nudeness until you looked at yourself wearing some clothes of your own. This only situation made you feel very embarrassed and very alone, with no one but yourself to keep you company.

You cupped some water from the river from yourself and brought it to yourself and yourself. You drank it hastily and thanked yourself. It was then that you left yourself to think about yourself, in all that loneliness. You didn’t even have yourself to keep you company anymore, only you was there. You could think only of yourself and how far away you were. This eternal chase scared you; this impossible run strained you too much. You cried.

Then you saved yourself. But you could not by ending the chase that could not happen. You saved yourself by realizing there was no chase. You stopped looking at you in the distance, or you all around you. You just looked at you. You realized that the only way to find yourself was to stop looking.