Flight School: Predator

Best Tragedy

She could not help but admit: no one was going to help her. Nothing was going to move if she didn't. No progress would be made without a first step taken; no bird could fly without spreading its wings.

There was a voice playing in her head as she attempted to wheel herself over a large root for the second time—having failed once—and it egged her on. Her journey had been contingent upon the voice

The first time she turned back, having resisted the urge for thirty whole minutes, she felt the sinking of her heart to the very depths of her cage for the gate which she'd emerged from was still within sight. There was no one around except herself and for all Pipa knew, she could have been alone in the entire Box—awaiting an End that was close.

She pulled back her arms for the next meter or so, wheeling herself over undergrowth that had caught onto the spokes of her wheelchair time and again. Every push begged for double the strength of the one before and Pipa knew that she was pulling every weed out of the soil and crushing every dainty blossom in her path.

Her wheelchair, a contraption so unwieldy and demanding, fared horrendously in a terrain filled with obstacles. The conclusion was simple and within sight: she would not last. Pipa could feel the grains of sand, mixed with dirt and grime caked underneath her nails, cold and damp. Stopping to pick them out would waste another minute or so and only allow space for more of that to collect, again, under her nails.

Exactly how long she had been wheeling herself, the canary did not know. Her Avian perched on her shoulder, chirping every now and then to egg her on.

If only I could shift, or so Pipa thought as often as she breathed. There was no counting the number of times someone had to carry her while her wheelchair was being brought to the second floor; the number of times she blocked the path of others; the amount of space she took at a table.

The trouble; the trouble; the trouble that she was.

If only she hadn't volunteered to be part of the hunting season that very first time. If only she wasn't always helping others and being so stupidly insistent on being positive and happy. If only she hadn't been that cheerful, selfless bitch who knew nothing about the darkness of the world—

She caught herself.

The habit—it was surfacing again. Pipa shook her head in an attempt to clear the clouds that threatened to obscure her vision, returning to the task at hand. Her pulled back. Wheel. Pull back. Wheel. Back, wheel.

The thought of crawling crossed her mind. It seemed a whole lot faster compared to the rate that she was going.

Shivering in the darkness, she wheeled faster towards the light.

*

Dmitri was one who liked to talk.

He loved it; loved the ability to express his opinions, infatuated with the notion of freedom and acceptance—that were within his boundaries of course, or at least that was what he would have claimed—of being heard. It was very ironic of him. To like being heard but dislike the hearing of certain others.

He noticed a few weeks back that this trait of his was beginning to fade, panicking a little and experiencing what he called an 'existential crisis' (that really wasn't very critical at all, but still). Either way, Dmitri had always lived his life by a phrase that he found objectively true, 'do unto others as you would have them to unto you'.