She was kneeling in front of him. Tears shining in her eyes. She was begging him. A twelve year old girl. Bob thought he’d never seen anything so pitiful in all his twenty four years. God, why does she have to make me feel so wretched?
Bob had wanted to help her. He had tried to help her. He’d only picked hunter because she had told him to. She’d betrayed him. That was the simple truth. Why was it so hard to remember that through her shattered, retching sobs? What would happen to her, he wondered.
An inferno was blazing around them, the sky shifting and swirling with red sparks and everywhere a great wind howled and howled. This here was a new world. A darker world. A crueler world. But it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to her. What kind of man was he? Would he throw everything away to save some girl who’d probably just laugh at him for his stupidly? That was a hero alright. Oh and Bob knew nothing had really changed. That she didn’t care a straw for him. She was just desperate. Trying out every last trick she knew. Hell, he would have done the same. He would have done worse. He would have got down on his knees and rubbed his face in the dirt.
And that’s why he hesitated. He was no saint, no storybook hero. But he had a heart, knew pity, felt enough emotions to make stupid decisions, now and again, too often even. And so he wanted to save her if he could. He really did.
She was mumbling, telling him how she was sorry, how she hadn’t meant it, how she really wasn’t a bad girl; she started rambling on about her white pet rabbit, Trix, who sat in his cage all day and grew fat on lettuce and carrots, and then about the boy who sat next to her in class and who was super annoying and kept bothering her, see, she always tried her best and had only got As this year, well except for that one history test where she’d confused Henry VI for Henry the VII, but how could she help it when they all kept reusing the same names, and then she came back to her rabbit and told how soft the rabbit’s fur was, and how she liked to sit at her desk with the rabbit on her knees and let him sleep there.
It all washed over Bob like he’d known her her whole life. He thought about George and he sighed, and maybe they weren’t so different after all. Everything was silent. Everything except for her voice, her sweet childish voice, repeating the same empty episodes to him over and over.
“I’m sorry,” Bob said, swallowing and looking down at his feet as he reached out his hand to pat the girl on the head, “I’m sorry,” looking down so that he didn’t have to see her pleading eyes turn to despair and then fury, looking down and failing to notice when she leapt savagely at him and bit down hard on his finger.
> A hunted has been eliminated.
>
> Two remaining...
“For the love of God,” Bob howled, jerking his hand back but she was gone. Blinked away as soon he’d made contact. The process unfortunately lasting just long enough for his index finger to suffer the full impact of her teeth. The incident actually went a small way towards steadying Bob’s nerves. That girl was psycho. She’d only have grown up to be a terror on the whole of humanity. At least that what’s he told himself, but he couldn’t quite get himself to believe it.
He had to win now. He just had to. 10 minutes left on the clock, no overtime, no sudden-death. It was do or die, death or glory. He hurried out of the room and rushed back to the market square. The bull was grumbling about there on the far side. It still hadn’t managed to knock off the plastic bag. The animal pawed piteously at its face. It charged about in circles. It moaned and moaned, before finally slumping down and whining. Bob had a feeling it had probably swallowed down a little bit too much carbon monoxide with all that running about. It was all to the good.
Well Bob here’s your chance to prove yourself, to make a man of yourself. 7 minutes on the clock, counting down. Despite the time pressure, Bob decided on a wide detour around the boundary of the square so that he could approach the bull from behind. He moved with exaggerated slowness, like he was a pantomime villain. The bull continued to lie on the ground, now and again half-heartedly tilting its head, as though the bag might just drop off.
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Bob was in the penalty box now, the goal wide open, everything to play for, and Bob slowed down even further, each step edging him a little closer to the animal, three more steps he judged, three more steps and he could reach out and tap the slope of its back. A part of his mind was screaming at him to dive forward. Now was his chance. He only had to make contact and the beast would flash away. He was close enough already. He could do it.
He hesitated. The bull trying once more to trap the bag under its left knee. The horns tilted and the bag rose up and... off. A gust of wind had caught it and the bag floated gracefully away. All that thrashing must have widened the hole. The bull was free and its beady eye snapped round to the figure of Bob frozen solid two yards behind its back. Bob lunged and… missed. How a beast of that size could move so fast, it wasn’t fair.
The bull had sprung to its feet like black lightning. It was starting to wheel, to position itself, to point those mean-looking horns at Bob’s soft, vulnerable places. Bob scrambled forward, trying to get a finger on it, and smack, Bob took a whip-like blow to face and went down. Ah, he couldn’t see what was happening, he groped backwards, crablike, crawling blindly away from the towering black god, except, ping
> A hunted has been eliminated.
>
> One remaining...
Bob’s vision cleared enough for him to see that the bull was no longer there. He blinked and gently padded his cheek with his fingertips. Everything stung. He tasted blood in his mouth. No doubt he made a pretty picture. What had happened? His thoughts were still a little blurry. The bull’s tail. The tail must have whipped around as the animal tried to turn. Lucky or unlucky, it was hard to tell these days. But no time for complaining Bob, you can complain later, don’t worry you won’t forget. He stumbled to his feet, three minutes left, and there, unmoving, undaunted, regal against a molten orange sky, the pigeon surveyed the scene from his perch.
Bob’s first and final adversary. The last boss. The demon king. The monster had already beaten him once. Humiliating him and forcing him to slink back to his den. But not this time. This time he’d have his vengeance.
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Three minutes and counting, one hundred and eighty seconds. Pigeon 342017 was perched high up on top of the broken wall. He was unfazed by the whirlwind of fire and smoke. Only a little longer now. He watched the helpless human with wide, mocking eyes. What are you going to do now? What hope do you have left? Nothing more than a measly wounded human.
The man hobbled over to the wall of the building. Would he try to climb up? Futile, meaningless, it had taken him ten minutes to get up last time. He’d never make it. Didn’t he understand that. But the man didn’t climb. No, he was bending down, he had started shoving the wall. Pigeon 342017 laughed. As though the man could push down a wall of solid masonry. But then the wall trembled, a hint of surprise and annoyance flashed through our pigeon’s eyes. The wall teetered, the bricks were all loose, like someone had chipped out the mortar holding them together. The whole structure shuddered and then started to collapse. Two minutes left.
It was all immaterial. What a pointless struggle, the bird mused, didn’t the man know, (our pigeon couldn’t fathom the psychology of these land-locked creatures) he would just take to the air, he would hover above the man and watch the seconds tick down. The pigeon unfolded his wings in a clean, practiced motion, he took off, he stepped out into the air, except, but, he was falling, his legs wouldn’t budge, what was happening, he yanked at his feet, he was spinning down in the air, wings flapping wildly, dragged inexorably down. He hit the ground hard. He felt dizzy and distorted. He’d never fallen before. Our pigeon looked up and there was a two-legged creature standing over him, the man-beast, a brute drenched in mud and blood and dirt. And the man was laughing.
“I knew it the moment I first saw you. The moment you gazed imperially down at me from that high perch. You were infernally, unbearably proud. And so I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the pleasure, the poetry of returning to that very same spot, to your unassailable perch, and watch us mortals in our dirty and unseemly struggles.”
Our pigeon trembled, trying to drag himself a little further away, shedding feathers and blood for every half centimeter, as he pulled against the stone weight glued to his feet. It wasn't fair. He was a creature of the air. A majesty messenger of the heavens. It wasn't fair. “I never had a chance. God knows I never had a chance. That’s why this gives me a special kind of pleasure.” The man bent down over him. There were only ten seconds left. If he could just put a bit of distance between them. He could still do it. The bird pushed, he struggled, he could feel his legs being pulled out of his sockets. He would be free. Free!
“No you don’t.” The hand came relentlessly down. A flash and everything went dark.