Time Wars & other SciFi Tales by Gordon Rowlinson

Cool Killer Camouflage

by Gordon Rowlinson

“Camouflage,” Brad thought. “That is going to be my big advantage this year. That is what is going to get me a deer.” He was proudly wearing his new camouflage hunting jacket, pants and hat. It was a week before the deer season started, but what the hell. He couldn't resist going out early. There was a morning chill in the air as he trod several miles through the frost-sprinkled brush—finally reaching his hunting tree stand overlooking the forest deer path. As he climbed up to the tree stand, he thought the surrounding trees appeared oddly more thick and crowded together than last year.

“Maybe the trees grew a little bit since last year,” he thought. “That's OK. I am the invisible man this season.” As he leaned back against the tree trunk, his camouflage clothing perfectly blended into the natural color of the tree. For practical purposes, he became invisible.

As luck would have it after only 15 minutes, he spotted a large, unawares 12 point buck meandering down the deer path. Barely able to control his excitement, Brad gripped his rifle tightly and succeeded at remaining motionless. As his quandary, slowly approached, he noticed the branches of the large neighboring tree brushing against the branches of his tree. There was no wind. How could the branches move by themselves?

Then the neighboring tree's branches strongly pushed past his tree's branches straight to his hiding place. Within seconds the claw-like branches of the neighboring tree wrapped around his body pinning his arms. He dropped his deer rifle and it fell to the soft forest floor in a thud. The big buck fled.

Brad screamed as the claw-branches wrapped tighter and tighter digging into the flesh of his arms, side and face. Blood from his wounds dripped onto his boots. Then, like picking a small bread stick off a plate, the neighboring tree claw-branches easily picked him off his tree stand. The motions from the tree caused the thin bark colored covering to fall off some of the branches revealing ugly green-purple arms. As a huge maw opened in the tree trunk, Brad realized that it wasn't a tree that grabbed him. He has in the arms of a horrific multi-armed monster camouflaged to look like a large tree. He had time to briefly wonder if the monster would chew him with it's huge mouth or simply swallow him whole.

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Time Wars & other SciFi Tales by Gordon Rowlinson

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