In Cold Blood

It wasn’t the cold air that stopped me, or even the local peoples, as I have been on their good side for years, it was the guilt. They say money doesn’t buy everything, but I guarantee it comes pretty well damn close.  I’m a black market smuggler you see. I specialize in Arctic animal products. The typical stuff...polar bear furs, baleens, the occasional taxidermy, but most of all I focus where the money is tusks. This time it is where the real coin lays, the Holy Grail of Arctic products, maybe for heaven’s sakes all products, the narwhal tusk. The unicorn of the sea. The horn that would’ve given me plenty.  

It was only a week ago, a regular Arctic summer morning, where 4 in the morning and night only differenced from how the sun faced our old shack. We were a population of three, living in an old NORAD testing hut. Bryan, Anthony and I. Bryan and Anthony were there for their knowledge of the land, or should I say sea. I was there for the money and my mouth to get the tusk across the big blue back to the Emirates, where it would act as a great mantle piece to some prince or high society elite, I didn’t know who the lucky 27 other people were to get these crown jewels, frankly I don’t care as long as I get mine and my 20 percent commission. The mating season was still early and we only needed 6 more. Bryan stated that we could easily be done in two or three days.  We loaded the boat like every other morning. We loaded our rifles like every other morning. We loaded our stomachs like every other morning. I just didn’t load my sense, or maybe it was the first time I did.

As we parted from our inlet and preceded up the fjord, I looked around and saw the same glacier we passed every day, the same walrus colony, the same gull cliff, but for some reason maybe it was the way the sun hit it, maybe it was just because Brian and Anthony were somewhat quiet. It seemed like all that was around was the animals and the noise of the boat speeding up the fjord. I was snapped from reality when I heard the rifle go off. I literally guess the ol’ narwhal literally swam into its death. As I heard another shot leave Anthony barrel I seen what we actually came into it was an entire colony. A jackpot. Literally like walking up to the winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk. Then I froze, not from the shrill wind, but from what I felt inside. Being a murderer to these creatures overcame me. It must’ve been the way the glacier looked or the waves crested. As I repeatedly yelled to stop and to stop and they just wouldn’t, I did what was right for the narwhals, instead of what was right for us. I shot them both just as they shot the whales. They just didn’t have a tusk to take.

Now I will die at the mercy of my employer. Not for killing Bryan or Anthony. For not killing the whales.