Feathers That Won't Fly

Chapter IV Maybe We Are the Monsters Part II

Dark, snaking tendrils coiled themselves around a pulsating heart. The heart of the beautiful Oliver. Undeniably, losing his little sister was worse than losing his mother. There is something tugging and awful about the loss of a being who has not lived long enough to feel hurt, love, loss, or gain. This fact holds true, even during the end of the world. The tendrils tightened around his heart, and multiplied, engulfing the organ. But no, his heart was no longer an organ, it was a black pit of nothingness.

More tendrils grew from the pit of a heart, covering his ears, making the screams of Azlyn seem to be coming from a million miles away. The beautiful Oliver looked up, his vision blurred with tears. When he wiped the tears away, he wiped his emotions away with them. He couldn't feel. I explained to you earlier, that I absolutely despise characters with a self-pitiful ego. You may have assumed that I now despise dear Oliver, but I don't. The poor boy was not self-pitiful; he merely felt pity for those who would dare to cross his path. The poor boy was on the evil side of good, which may just be worse than the good side of evil.

Something warm wrapped themselves around the shoulders of the poor boy, tears dribbled down his back. (No you stupid reader, his back was not crying.) At first contact, the tears radiated heat, but as they tumbled down they turned cold. The tears of his dear friend, Miss Hunter, meant nothing to him.

Poor Oliver could not hear with the tendrils clogging his ears, so I must switch the point of view.

"Haddix, it's okay. Remember how you told Lilly that she would see her mommy later? Well, she's there now, and she'll be there with her mom, right?" Azlyn softly told him. She spoke into his ear, her words desperately trying to tug away at the tendrils in vain.

"Right?"

"Mm."

"Right?"

"Mm."

What was wrong with him? He usually handled things much better than this. Then again, he had single-handedly defeated several arch-humans in a surge of triumph, only to find it had all been of no use. But there was something different about him, something wrong.

"Come on, Ollie," Azlyn said, lifting him off the ground. "You're going to help me figure out how to get up these broken stairs with my broken ankle."

Oliver walked alongside Azlyn who was wobbling, unbalanced, towards the stairs. When they got to the last intact stair, Oliver picked Azlyn up, and dropped her a few stairs ahead, on another intact stair. He then carefully jumped over the hole.

When they got upstairs, a funny feeling tugged on Azlyn's brain. She looked at the kitchen, then across from it. No closet. Funny, she could've sworn--

"Let's go. I want to get out of this place," Haddix urged. At least he was talking.

Tom was waiting in the car. He had already told Lisa and Mr. Haddix the news, saving the pain of Oliver having to tell the story. Lisa looked as if she was about to say something, but Azlyn shushed her. The tendrils wrapped around Oliver's former heart would surely not accept any comments on the subject of his sister's death.

"I guess it's straight to New York then," Azlyn mumbled. She didn't know what she could possibly do there, she couldn't even control her perceptions. Scratch that, she couldn't even control her thoughts.

Looks like I was writing in little Lilly's blood. You worthless child, if you had just paid the girl more attention, you wouldn't have caused sweet Oliver to suffer so.

You always ask yourself: What did I do to deserve this? You stupid girl, you know what you did. No matter what you do now, you can never erase what you did six years ago, or how you left your adoptive parents to die, or how you got little Lilly killed. You had a chance to save not only Lill's life, but the life of the handsome man as well. Not to mention you have killed sweet Oliver's heart as well.