We’re as bad as each other.

I’d come here knowing my intentions weren’t heroic. Accepting my selfishness of keeping Eleanor for myself and removing my brother so he couldn’t ruin our future but...what sort of future did a man like me deserve?

By doing this, I’d just condemned myself because how could I ever claim a happily ever after now? How could I sleep beside Eleanor and believe myself to be worthy of her after I enjoyed the sick pleasure of watching my brother bleed out?

Fuck.

I’d been kidding myself.

Sighing heavily, I stood to my full height and scanned the hungry beasts waiting their turn. Interspersed with bears and hyenas were shadows of so many other animals.

The darkness came alive with four-legged and feathered.

Ants and beetles, crows and vultures, deer and badgers. Rabbits from labs and apes from cages. Mice and beagles, guinea pigs and rats.

And they all had their eyes locked on Drake.

Drool dripped from jaws and cackles of hunger sent a shiver down my scale-covered spine.

Seemed I’d created an illusion that’d taken on a life of its own.

An ending I couldn’t stop.

I smiled at my brethren, bowing respectfully. “Our task is not yet complete.”

A growl from a bear; a wing ruffle from a vulture; a bark from a dog.

“Each take a piece. You have my blessing.”

“Mwat?” Drake shook his head furiously, rubbing his bloody stumps over his mouth to try to rid himself of the spider’s webbing. “Mooooo!”

“Goodbye, Drake.” I unfurled my wings and swooped backward, avoiding gore splatters—relinquishing my sibling to them.

Only once I nodded again did the creatures move in mass. They were a part of me. Figments of my psyche, every painful memory, every doomed stray. Each of them made up Drake’s destiny, ready to tear him into nothing.

I clenched my hands together, almost as if I worshipped at the church of carnage as a bear lumbered into Drake and knocked him onto his back. With a bared snout, he buried his teeth into Drake’s belly.

My brother did more than howl.

He howled with his entire body. His soul screamed in clamour, tears spilled down his cheeks, and he wailed as he endured the cracking of his ribs and the wet mastication of his kidney as the bear burrowed deep and tore out one of the iron-rich organs.

Once the bear had swallowed, he moved away, granting a smaller animal to take his place.

A swarm of ants covered Drake, fire stinging and swift.

Drake shrieked as they poured into his abdominal cavity, reappearing a few seconds later with pieces too small to recognise. They marched into the eerie forest, each holding aloft micro pieces of what I assumed were Drake’s intestines.

Gritting my teeth and feeling my fangs dig into my chin, I never took my eyes off Drake as he slowly turned from man to misery.

A deer nuzzled next, pulling out Drake’s liver before tossing it to a hyena to eat. A chimpanzee hopped close, wrapping its dexterous fingers around Drake’s cock and yanking it clean off his body. Balls and all.

Drake screamed louder, his throat shredding with ear-splitting screeches.

I winced as the demolished manhood vanished into the monkey’s mouth.

Both herbivore and carnivore systemically broke him apart, representing so many dishes he’d chosen. So many lab tests he’d approved.

Time lost all meaning as Drake’s internal organs slowly vanished into the mouths of beasts. Shreds of his flesh were torn off, revealing his skeleton beneath.

His heart pumped with terror in an open hole within him.

His screams turned to wails and finally fell into whimpers.

His body jerked as each creature approached, chose, and chewed.

A spurt of lava erupted from the encrusted ground, rumbling with warning that a volcano bubbled beneath our feet, ready to wipe this fantasy clean once Drake had been consumed. Once his evil had been spilled. Once he was no longer capable of surviving.

I stayed and watched it all.

My wings kept me propped up when my heart stuttered and buckled beneath Tritec, warning I’d reached critical consumption. The stacking effect, keeping me strong and functioning, had reached its fatal toll. I was at the pinnacle of my power. The crest of my strength. The only way forward from here was the inevitable shutting down of my body that could no longer survive on lies.

Tritec-87 was designed to give high strength and whip-quick intelligence in bad accidents requiring self-evacuation. It did precisely what it’d been designed to do—stealing health and vitality from other parts of my body, conning the brain into believing all systems worked perfectly.

But the brain was too smart to be lied to by adrenaline for long. Eventually, the neural network kicked back in, revealing the extent of injuries and exhaustion, prompting a rapid contingency plan to stay alive.

It was that contingency plan that killed the host. A cannibalistic side effect of the brain taking back control. The chemicals it released, the attempts at self-repair, all rapidly increasing the pressure of a system that already operated at max voltage.

The result?

A fried circuit—a stroke or heart attack caused by the very same body you’d been trying to save.

I could feel the distancing already, the strangeness of acknowledging I would soon be free of this form. Not just freed of this fanged monster I’d created, but the shell I’d been born into.

I sighed as the wolves returned, awaiting their final snack once the furred and feathered crowd had had their fill.

Not much of Drake was left.

His inner organs removed. His eyes pecked out by vultures. His tongue chomped on by a beagle. His torso the only thing left with no arms or legs.

“Wait,” I whispered, splaying my membrane wings and swooping to stand over Drake.

The wolves paused, sitting on their haunches as I did the same and cupped Drake’s cheek.

Sticky with blood and ice, ice cold, Drake mumbled with a tongueless mouth something I couldn’t understand.

His empty eye sockets couldn’t relay a message.

His missing lungs couldn’t draw breath.

He was well and truly my prisoner, unable to run, beg, or strike. For a man who’d been spoiled and privileged his entire life, being reduced to nothing but a pile of viscera and bones was a savage and fitting end.

“I’m leaving you now. I’m leaving you within this nightmare where you can never die. That is your true punishment, Drake. Not being mauled and devoured but never being whole again. You took so many pieces of my happiness. You never let me be who I could’ve become because you took so much of my trust. This...this is my attempt at showing you how it feels to exist with parts of you missing. Parts you need to be a functional individual. Parts that are integral to being human.”

I scanned the animals, their peace granting me peace. Their satisfaction doing its best to fill the emptiness within me. I’d done my best at plugging up my holes by caring for those far more innocent than me. I’d fought my love for Eleanor because it showed me just how much I’d failed at life.

This was the burnout I’d been running from. The absolute acknowledgment that I couldn’t be saved. That I didn’t want to be because I hadn’t done enough to be absolved. My lack of trust had been exhausting. My life of loneliness had been miserable.

If this was the end...at least I would be free of such things.