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His neck was broken. The rope snared tight around his throat, it cut deep into his skin, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything. His body denied his command.
Shaw watched the world, swinging from an oak with limbs tortured and twisted, thought he could hear the tree scream from deep inside of it. The landscape was an endless sight of grey and white, giving no room for colour, no room for thriving life.
A gentle breeze brushed through the oak’s baren branches, a gentle hand to give relief, it set him in motion. The rope groaned in agony as he pendulated.
Beneath him he could hear a boy cry. His dead gaze fell to the ground to see the boy’s unwashed face streaked with tears.
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‘Why did you leave me alone?’ The boy said and Shaw remembered the voice. ‘Why did you leave me?’
Shaw knew those questions were not for him, but the dead body he inhabited could not answer.
Crows and ravens circled around the tree like birds of doom.
The boy rose to his feet, the fiery red hair lashing in the wind. ‘Answer me!’ He screamed. ‘Answer me!’ He punched the body which jolted and spun, but nothing more. Whatever he tried he couldn’t get the corpse to speak, nor return his father’s soul to it.
Defeated the boy collapsed to his knees, tears welling in his eyes.
‘I hate you,’ he said in quivering whisper. ‘Why did you have to leave me? I hate you. I wish I had been the one who had killed you. I wish.’
The boy sat in silence beneath the tortured oak until the blood red sun fell from the horizon and vanished beyond Shaw’s sight.
When the boy was gone, the crows and ravens descended on him with their wicked talons. They tore at his flesh, his eyes, his tongue.
The pain was excruciating, he wanted to scream.
But Shaw found that he couldn’t.