Overview
The narrator of “Hunters” is an unnamed runner who lives with his longtime friend Blake in Reseda. He is the story’s viewpoint character and the person who first meets Alice during jury duty.
Biography
The narrator works at a medical office in Encino when he meets Alice in 2022. He and Blake grew up running cross country in the East Bay, and they share an old interest in occult ritual centered on Glycon, an ancient snake deity referenced in the story. The narrator has occult tattoos and describes himself as wanting more from life than ordinary daily experience offers.
Alice’s interest in being physically sexually chased draws the narrator and Blake into the first hunt. The narrator records Alice describing what she wants because he is worried about legal consequences, then marks her with a triangle before the chase begins. Afterward, he becomes preoccupied with the ritual and with both Alice and Blake.
The narrator later offers himself to Blake as quarry. He also becomes physically intimate with Alice outside the hunt, which changes the group’s dynamic before Blake arranges a formal ritual in a desert cave. There the narrator takes part in the prayer, marking, and sacrifice that he experiences as binding the three participants together.
After the sacrifice, the narrator leaves the medical office for machine-learning startup work. He remains an ongoing member of the ritual group with Alice and Blake, continuing their private sacrifices every six months and believing that Alice’s planned larger ritual will succeed.