Devil With a Smile

Preface

Once upon a time, you weren't alone. Once upon a time, you had a family, people you trusted, but that was before. Before they left this place, and left you behind with it. Once, there were kids just like you. Kids who had wings just like yours. Kids who were raised in cages and experimented on just like you. There were six of them. Three who were a few years older than you, one who was your age, a little boy, and a baby. But the doctor had helped them escape. He'd gotten them out, but left you. You never did figure out what you'd done wrong, why you weren't worth helping. All you knew was that they'd gotten out, gotten free, and you'd stayed put. It'd been two years since they'd left. seven hundred and thirty days of grueling torture, being cut apart and stitched back together, having giant needles slammed into your skin as you pulled against the restraints.

 You'd grown to hate them ore than anything else. You'd trusted them, made pacts with them to always protect one another, and they'd broken it. You can still remember the night you'd woken to the sense that something was wrong. You remember seeing them climb out of the cages, running for freedom as you reached for them through the bars and screamed at them to take you with them. None of them had even turned to look at you. At first you'd reasoned that maybe they just hadn't heard you, you'd been deaf since birth after all, so maybe you just hadn't screamed loud enough. It'd felt like the screams were tearing your chest open with their sound though, and even if they hadn't heard, wouldn't they still have looked to make sure you were following them? They'd known you weren't released from your cage, and they hadn't cared.