manchester_black

He is standing on the top of the tallest building on the skyline. His eyes scan the horizon, and all he can see is the sharp angles of the buildings and the chasms between them, the streets below constantly dimmed by the colossi. He strains his vision to search for a speck of green, some patch of life. For some reason he can't remember, he thinks of a dream he had of a bird when he was a kid. Not a powerful or majestic bird, or a bird of beauty, but of a primeval raven. An oil slick in the shape of a bird, with a song like an angel's throat being torn out with a pair of pliers. A survivor of an animal.

He awakens to a headache. To the feeling of a wrought iron railroad spike being driven into his forehead. He sniffles and can taste the copper tang of blood in the back of his throat. He tries to remember his dream, but the closer his mind comes to wrapping itself around the memory, a jolt of pain explodes from behind his eyes, scattering his thoughts like a glass thrown to the ground. He focuses his will and shudders his way to the bathroom, his nervous system shrieking its rebellion the entire way. His trembling hand snaps the medicine cabinet open, and his fingers wrap around the bottle of pills like a shipwreck survivor to a life-preserver. Seconds stretch to what feels like hours as he struggles to open the cap, the rattling of the pills laughing in mockery. The cap pops off and clatters to the floor, and with the frenetic speed of an addict he taps the open bottle to his palm. Instead of the even weight of the two small orange-red 200mg capsules, a slip of paper, written in the hurried scrawl of some ancient spirit for whom english is a forty-thousandth language with a simple, but ominous message:
"You are hunted"