The Night Vigilante

II. Cole

Chapter 2

      I watch as she falls from the tree.

      She falls like an autumn leaf drifting to the ground-slowly, then all at once.

      I don’t save her.

      I could’ve.

      But I don’t.

      “Humans,” Ulrich mutters beside me. He looks at the broken girl lying on the floor, disgusted.

      He was disgusted because she coudn’t fly-because she couldn’t save herself.

      It feels like the coldest day in winter.

      For as long as I can remember, I have been moving from one place to another. It was hard to do simple things like go to school.

          Ulrich says school is useless for people like us. Ulrich was years older then me, old enough to be my  father-yet he wasn’t a father to me.

      “That,” Ulrich says, pointing the crumpled form of the girl. “Is why you have to train harder. We’re expendable. You learn to survive. You learn to outlive everyone else.”

      “That’s enough,” Salem interrupts, a heavy hand falling over my shoulder. I can literally feel the rest of our small group behind us, their breaths mixing in the air.

      “Let’s go,” Salem says firmly. 

      I can’t take my eyes away from the small girl.

      We were concealed into the night, hidden among the trees. If we left, no one would even know.

      Let’s go.

      But I couldn’t.

      Not with her dark, inky hair flying in the wind. Not with her body shuddering-broken and bleeding.

      We’ve completed the job. Let’s go.

      I was shivering- and it wasn’t from the cold. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the small angel so far from the stars.

      How was the job of killing this girl called completing the job?  Wasn’t it  enough for them to just kill the father?

      No, they wanted to kill off the girl-his daughter.

      I can hear her soft moans of agony- a sound so fragilely human.

      I'm  falling, spinning and shuddering into a mess of thoughts and voices.

      Let’s go. I’m not saying it again.

      She is so small, lying on the cold and vast ground of the forest- swallowed by the night sky… endless in a sea of black dark.

      With a low growl, I push forward.

      Ulrich snarls something in disgust but Salem rumbles back threatening- backing me up.

      I was next to her now.

      She stares into the starry night, the flashes of brilliant and beautiful constellations in her glazed eyes.

      She was distant.

      Maybe dead.

      She looks at me, awake and alive.

      She holds onto my eyes, the honesty in her eyes making my body wrack with shivers.

      I back away, her eyes on my eyes. Her blood on my hands. Her breath on my lips.

      I feel like I'm tearing apart into little pieces drifting in the wind.

      I feel like i'm the broken pieces falling into the palm of her hands.

      I am-

      I am-

      -And then i see it.

      She is a little angel fallen from heaven onto a desolate earth.

      I see her in a way that I’ve never seen anything before.

      The rest of the group hides, restless, their lives mingled with the death of this girl-

     -and i stop it.

      I stop it all.