Predator.

Hunting. Quarry, tracks. Blood. A hunk of red meat.

Hunting? Red meat? I'm in front of my freezer, looking at a piece of steak I bought from the store long ago and never cooked. Next to it are several packages of leftovers, of food my mother cooked for me long ago, much of which I haven't eaten either. Then everything starts to rumble and shake. Earthquake? The lights flicker on and off, cabinet doors pound open and closed, I fall, start to roll...

Actually, I'm in a bus going down a long, steep, bumpy hill. I start to feel the pressure change in my ears, but it keeps getting stronger and stronger, much too strong for the actual descent we're making. My eardrums threaten to explode...

Wait--it does hurt, but it's not pressure--it's a poking sensation. Ah, it's my mother cleaning out my ears with Q-tips. I really hate that. I always try to tell her about how you should never stick anything smaller than a football in your ear, but she never listens. The doctors tell me she's deaf.

No, that's not right, she's not "deaf", she's "dead". Of course a corpse isn't going to listen. What am I thinking? I'm at her funeral, and the room is very cold, the air conditioning blasting into the small congregation, into my face.

I'm cleaning out my freezer. Last year one of our reptiles died. We decided to put him in the freezer so that we could donate him to a taxidermist, but we never got around to it. Somehow having his dead body in there next to all my mother's leftovers tainted them, made them unfit to eat. I should throw away the leftovers and bury the body.

Pink coffin. Flowers. Eulogy. Nobody we know here. The priest motions. "Let us pray."

Prey.