I
chose the middle door, and as I walked through it it shut behind me like a trap.by Nowick Gray
I
chose the middle door, and as I walked through it it shut behind me like a trap.
Matt and I stood not five minutes down the mud-and-shale bank just below the pass, looking at the ground. The bearshit steamed in the cold morning mist, just at the point where the flowers began.
Our progress had come to a chilly halt at the fresh sign. Our eyes swept the landscape, near and far. No bears. I wondered what this grizz had eaten, and how recently. It likely owned this mountain ridge, sniffing and browsing every inch of it, in time.
Which would be worse? was my paranoid query as I followed Matt's lead, creeping down the slope. For a bear to kill Faron and Suze, leaving me without them? Or for the bear to snap me in half like so much dry spaghetti--leaving them to grieve? Maybe, I dared to hope, our love so fresh and strong would keep the bear away . . .
But no. The sound was just below us. In the boulder slide, large rocks knocking together--with upwards of a thousand pounds of grizzly tipping the balance. We saw the animal at the same time as it turned its head up to us; it snorted with a loud HWMFF.
Sweat broke out on my neck. Matt gaped up at me with an instantaneous look of fright. It was the first time I'd seen anything but experienced confidence in him. He was experienced, all right; and something about that bear's behavior . . . but then Matt's eyes softened with what I perceived as the gentle acceptance of the saint.
The bear charged. It leaped up the hill, practically flying with its enormous bulk over the boulders and onto the adjoining mud-and-shale slide. Matt was closest. He knew, I say, about bears. He instantly fell to the ground, clutching his head in his curled arms and squeezing his knees up against his vulnerable belly.
Ursus horribilis pounced on him in an instant, growling and whoofing, cuffing him back and forth with its huge paws. The stiletto-like claws tore Matt's vest to ribbons. The escaping down floated around them both like a cloud of tiny angels . . .
This flurry seemed to amuse, then to infuriate the bear. It first sat back on its haunches, waiting for the feather storm to subside (and while doing so, stealing a quick look at me, frozen up the bank twenty human paces away). Then with the quickness of a cat, or a rattlesnake, the bear's muzzle clamped shut on Matt's neck. The severed jugular spouted all over the cursed place; Matt's poor waste of a body was left to flop about like a beached fish.
The bear stepped back until the death throes were complete; then it nosed forward to lap up a taste of the blood. Faint from the shock of what I had just witnessed, and what I feared was in store for me, I lay on the ground still immobilized, knowing there was nothing I could do. No more choices, no more plans. Nothing more to worry about going wrong, on this so-called adventure. No more rendezvous with Faron and Suze, nor Harris and the gang, nor anyone but Dr. D.
Then the beast, already bored with its lifeless prey, turned its glittering eyes and red mouth my way.
DREAMBOX--To return to cabin Press 