Between the wrench of the rope and the heft of the animal, the noose cinched taut around its throat. Jerked to its hindlegs in the stranglehold, the goat bucked and thrashed like a grotesque puppet dancing on its strings.
Fernando laughed raspily, unhinged. The rush of savage triumph demented him. As the goat exhausted itself with its futile struggling, he slackened the rope. He slipped it down from the branch as the goat slumped forward. On bent forelegs it slid into the undergrowth.
Gathering up the excess lead, Fernando dragged the sluggish animal upright. When it wouldn’t budge, he smacked it on the haunches with the flat of the machete to get it moving. The goat stumbled forward a few steps. Its horned head bowed. Fernando smiled. Lowering the machete, he turned back toward the beaten path.
Against the shadowy penumbra of the trees, the way back seemed a tunneling darkness to him. Peering into that brooding darkness, Fernando saw something surreal, like a tangible premonition. An augury of rebellion that materialized a split-second before the tension in the rope gave, and the black billy goat charged him.
In the span of this protracted moment, Fernando pivoted slowly, as if in a dream. The coiled rope fell from his hand. The horns lowered to ram him glanced him instead. A bright line of pain scored along his ribcage.
Fernando exclaimed just ahead of it. The flashlight spun off, whirring pale light into the shadows. As they swallowed it up, he whipped around. He brought the blade of the machete along with him, slashing out in a vicious arc that bit deep into the goat’s hind leg. The animal swerved, crashing partway into the brush. In a furor of sheer, bloody panic, it scrambled back up again, and went caroming away senseless into the depths of the forest.
Gasping, Fernando dropped the machete. He clapped a hand to the wound in his side. Hot blood flowed freely over his fingers. But the slice was shallow, scarcely deeper than the rip in his shirt.
Dazed, he bent to pick up the machete again. He spied what he hoped to be the dull cat’s-eye glow of the flung flashlight in the brush. Adrenaline spiked through him, stoking the simmering cocktail in his veins. The world around him skewed as he groped his way toward that dubious point of light. It was the flashlight. The wash of relief he felt as he closed his hand around it made his vision swim again.
Crouched on the ground, Fernando gave his hammering heart a moment’s rest. When he rose and shone the light on the dark spatterings of blood not his own, his fierce resolve returned with a vengeance.
“You black bastard,” he snarled under his breath, lurching off through the blood-streaked palms, deep into the abyssal heart of the jungle.
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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy