Flight School: Predator

ERROR

He watched as the moving chest—once ugly and rapid with death—slowed to a stop and remained very still. It wasn't clear which had stopped first; the heart or the brain, for Io never really learnt about the functions of the organs inside. Never really understood how they worked together and kept the candle alit.

There was no struggle; the popular notion of pain and anguish painted across the features of figures in paintings as they fell, clutching at their chests as though the creature within was tearing out of the cage—a cage of flesh and bone, no. There was no struggle.

The head lolled to the side in an angle that was not humanly possible, eyes rolled to the back of their sockets and the neck unusually long.

His body hung on the wall from his wrists, like a pig ready for slaughter. That, or the treasured wings of Hunted birds plastered across his walls back home when he was a boy, young and ambitious. He died young and ambitious. In fact, he died the same person he was nearly ten years ago and that made him look quite the masterpiece indeed.

"You don't seem like someone who would enjoy stories, Reux." The moon phoenix sat cross-legged on the flagged stone floor, rocking slightly. "You seem to like tragedies instead."

"Should you think that tragedies are easily written, you are wrong."

"I think that is what you were thinking then, and even now, isn't it?"

"That you've created in this world the greatest tragedy of all...a masterpiece." He stared at the eyes that would never open. "I thought you were merely misguided, Reux."

"That you were born into a world that wouldn't allow you to see it otherwise but now," he raised his voice, urgent and enraged. "But now, you dare take every credit for what I've caused?" He rose to his knees and dealt a blow to the gut that was empty.

"It was never you!"

Another. There was a dull thud each time his fist connected with muscle and fat but the sound satisfied the roaring creature within and fuelled its destructive qualities, wrecking every word in sight.

"I brought this upon myself."

"I WAS THE ONE."

"I WROTE MY TRAGEDY."

"I CHOSE TO SUFFER."

The moon in his eyes emerged from the darkness that was its eclipse, shedding its light on the body that was empty of its owner. His emotions took arms against the wind and every part of him burned with the notion of misunderstanding, wielding swords and spears with rage at the forefront of it all. He explained to the dead body what he'd never know or understand as the ultimate form of tragedy—the way it had nestled in his cage, here to stay for the rest of eternity but which he was glad the other did not know.

"HOW NARROW IT IS, THE PATH I WALK—"

He could feel something tear from within. A muscle, stretched thin before the tendons that held it together snapped with a sound so sharp it left a scar.

"HOW ALONE AND—"

He tells him about the narrow road before losing his mind in his rationality that darker than sky the was but hear him no one could for he always alone was so he cries and wishes that the body would wake so that he could kill him again or at least