“We missed it?” Rory pouted at his friend, Kyle, the pair of eleven-year-old boys perched on the top of their bikes outside the local church. Nothing was left of the annual summer barbecue but a few loose scraps of food and a few small shreds of tattered clothes littering the picnic tables behind the tabernacle, the ghost of delicious smells of meat teasing the two about the meal they missed.
“Don’t blame me I thought they’d still be here at ten, I’m sure they would be!” Kyle defended himself, pointing at the empty picnic ground accusingly, “Look, I didn’t want to get here too early of we would have had to sit through the stuffy sermon they always do first. They must have left early for some reason.”
Rory let out frustrated sigh, his stomach mirroring the disappointment with a loud grumble. “I didn’t eat lunch today. I was saving room for this…”
“Stop complaining, it’s not my fault!” Kyle ordered with an exasperated huff, hopping on his bike before slowly beginning to pedal away, “I think my parents got some frozen hotdogs back at home – heck, there might even still be some venison left from my dad’s last hunt. They’re traveling this weekend, so if you stop whining, I’ll make you some and we can play video games, okay?”
Rory zipped his lips as he sat back down on his bike, following his friend through the moon-lit streets. What else was there to do? The town where the boys lived was located deep in the mountains, a small town made up of less than three hundred people with so little going on that the church’s Summer Barbecue Bible-off was a highlight of the year. It was the doldrums of later summer and even though the sun had gone down an hour ago, it still felt sweltering, uncharacteristically hot for a normally cool town hidden deep in the woods; an uncharacteristically silver-looking full moon lighting the boys’ way as they traveled to Kyle’s house for the night.
As they pedaled up and down the hilly streets, Rory couldn’t help but look around, the moonlight illuminating objects in the dark in a strange, alluring way. His eyes caught a glimpse of something that looked like a white crystal in the ground, but upon closer inspection… it was a flower. Rory plucked it from the ground and appraised it, finding it unlike anything he’d ever seen. The plant had pale-looking, delicate pedals; droplets of dew trapped in the pedals’ ridges seeming to give it that strange diamond-looking shine that caught his attention in the first place.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.” Kyle called out, making a U-turn to drive his bike back towards his friend.
“Why?” Rory asked back, still mesmerized by the brilliant blooming flower, “This looks really cool, I didn’t know these grew here in this town”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen these in like seven years, back when I was really young. But I remember my parents saying what they were – they’re Jubilee Flowers.”
“Jubilee?” Rory recalled vaguely, twirling the stem in his fingers, “You mean… like from that ancient Jewish holiday they talked about in church that one time?”
Kyle gave Rory a blank stare.
“You know, the day the debt-collectors freed all the poor-people’s debt.” Rory continued, “The celebration where they were all equal - just for that day…”
The boy brought the flower up to his nose, the stamen tickling the tip just a little as he huffed in its scent. Earthy and fresh, it smelled almost juicy somehow… as if biting into it would taste sweet and satisfying like a berry.
“You actually pay attention to that stuff in church?” Kyle giggled, patting his friend on the back, “All I know is that my parents told me they’re poisonous.”
Rory flinched, suddenly letting go of the Jubilee Flower, letting it twirl down to the pavement. “Well, you could have told me that first before I sniffed the stupid thing!” Rory sniped back to his friend.
“Relax, I sniffed a few before Mom and Dad pulled me away too, back then. You’re not gonna die.” Kyle shrugged it off, “Now come on, let’s go.”
The pair continued, less than a quarter mile away from Kyle’s house as Kyle sped up, outpacing his slower friend as he raced back home. Rory huffed and puffed, trying to make it over a steep hill before relenting, hopping off his bike and choosing to walk his bike until the slope was more favorable. As he carried his bike up the hill, his eyes caught a glimpse of more Jubilee flowers, but this time whole patches of them. Patches of the things suddenly came into view as if they were sprouting up from the ground suddenly, pale glowing bulbs beginning to unravel and bloom in the night. As he neared the top of the hill, a tiny rustle sounded out behind him, causing Rory’s head to dart back behind him, the boy shocked by what he saw.
Hidden nestled between a blooming bed of the Jubilee flowers was a fox and a rabbit. Rory suspected that the little creature was about to be done in, but he blushed as he saw it was really quite the opposite. Illuminated by those silvery pedals, the rabbit was on top of the fox, the smaller animal’s hips grinding with wet plaps against the fox’s rear. The predator lifted its tail for the prey letting out giddy pants against the Jubilee flower’s sweet leaves as its sharp teeth idly gnawed and chewed them as it was apparently loving getting mated by the prey animal.
Rory staggered back, face reddened by the sudden lewd display as he watched the fox and the bunny mating like, well… rabbits. For some reason, a thought about the holiday of Jubilee drifted through his mind, “Debt-collectors equal to debtors… predators equal to prey…” The boy’s eyes glazed over a little as he thought, the forms of the animals blurring as he could have sworn he saw the fox’s form change, somehow becoming…
“Hey, slowpoke, we don’t have all night!” Kyle playfully shoved Rory.
“Kyle, quiet!” Rory shooshed him, “Check this out!”
As Rory pointed to the flower bed, he managed to glimpse out of the corner of his eye, things were different. The fox was gone… all that was left was two horny rabbits wildly rutting each other.
“Come on, dude.” Kyle laughed, “I didn’t know you were into watching this sorta stuff, let’s go before these two get you too horny.”
“I’m not horny! There was a fox just a second ago!” Rory called back to his friend as Kyle sped away on his bike, trying to convince the other boy he wasn’t just watching too animals have sex. Rory made it up to the house’s driveway, hopping off and walking his bike up the slope as he ran to Kyle. “Seriously, I wasn’t just watching rabbits fuck, something weird was happening!“
“Whatever, man.” Kyle chuckled, holding open the front door as he entered his house, “I mean… you’re not wrong. It’s sorta weird that too animals wouldn’t just high-tail it out-a-there when they see a human watching them bang. We humans are the apex predators after all – I’d think practically everything out there’s learned that and would probably dart off just seeing us.” Kyle turned to Rory as he stepped inside the house. “By the way, can you set my bike in the garage? I’ll start boiling water so we can get to cookin’!”
Rory nodded, taking hold of both bikes to walk them into the garage, still a little flustered that he couldn’t convince his friend that there was a fox there at first. As he walked, the boy peered out at wide meadow the house stood in, peering out into the forest and the nearby farm that were so close by. So many of those Jubilee Flower patches had sprouted, he could practically smell their sweet aroma from here. Dark figures darted this way and that – the forms of all sorts of animals illuminated for a moment by the flower’s glimmering glow only to quickly fade back into the darkness of night.
A small part of Rory wanted to venture out and see what was happening. Afterall, tonight seemed like a special night… something that only happened every seven years maybe, but then again, having animals that were completely unafraid of humans like those rabbits were… that could be bad.
As Rory set the bikes on the garage and walked back to the front porch to head inside, he heard a flurry of clopping steps just behind him on the paved driveway – a huge shadow eclipsing his tiny form. It was a deer… and not just any deer. A buck – a huge, brawny buck, easily as big as a horse with antlers that would make any hunter blush. It advanced on Rory slowly, sweat and moisture practically steaming from its body as it strode forward confidently, that earthy musk of animal stink making a visible haze around Rory as the preteen ran to the front door for safety.
Rory ran inside, closing the glass door, letting out a relived sigh. He peered back out at the gargantuan bestial figure still looming towards the front door, the huge cervid stepping onto the front porch as the floorboards creaked in pain under its massive weight. As its head neared the glass pane that separated boy from beast, it huffed out a blast of warm breath against the cool glass, fogging it up as the large creature sauntered passed it, his broad side now on full display for Rory.
And then he saw it what the creature wanted to show off. Two large orbs the size of oblong grapefruits were pendulously suspended inside a taut blanket of fleshy pink scrotum that hung between deer’s hindlegs. There was also a sheath, a fat tube of animal skin covered in white fuzz attached to his lower belly – an inch of hot-pink staghood peeking out, fogging up the glass with its sheer humid heat as it neared it.
Rory wanted to look away, yet despite his shock he was completely enthralled by the strange courtship ceremony the buck was performing. The boy couldn’t help but stare at that deer penis, the buck lifting his hindleg a little as if to give the preteen a better view. The glass barrier between them kept the buck away from Rory, but it didn’t protect him from the heat – from that smell. The boy could feel that deer meat radiating with warmth and lust. Rory could smell that shaft. Hot and earthy, but most of all savory – mouth-wateringly masculine. The smell of the Jubilee Flower he’d sniffed resurfaced too, mixing with the stag’s scent to only intensify it, making Rory feel… receptive – receptive to an animal.
The preteen boy could feel his prick inflate to a chubby, sensitive tent in his pants. The promise of a thick venison sausage mere inches away from his drooling maw almost made him open the door there and then. It almost made him trust the buck, ready to venture out into the night with any dangers that may lurk outside under that strange, silvery moon, just to get a taste of what the stag was offering to him.
“Hey, whatcha lookin’ at, man?” Kyle called out, walking up to Rory, “Weren’t you gonna get the TV set up for Call of Duty?”
Rory did a double take, watching the randy deer gracefully hop off the porch, darting into the wilderness as the steam from the window made the glass opaque – hiding the sight of the huge animal from Kyle.
“Y-yeah, it’s just…” Rory stammered, wiping the drool from his mouth, the smell of that virile buck still lingering in his nostrils. “It’s just… I don’t think I closed the garage door… is all. You keep getting the food ready, I need to check to be sure it’s closed…”