“Mama Mama! I wrangled my first Angel! Come see come see quick before it whips around and pecks my eyes out!”
My hands were slipping on the ribbon I wrapped around its neck, its wings bound and bleeding from the snare trap I caught it in. I was gonna call it "Honey," its amber tears inspiring the name. I grin into the red eyes rolling around in its head. They sure don’t bleed like us, I think to myself.
This afternoon, I was making my rounds in the forest‒ short shorts, T-shirt, bandana around my neck, a blade to my waist, the tip tracing the ground behind me as I stepped in my dad's worn footprints indenting the dirt, following his breadcrumb trail while tracing a new one.
Then, somewhere to my right, my head snapped to the sound of a trap cracking, and in a breadth of a second, I vaulted towards the source of ensuing cries of pain, its warbling call like the whistling of wind against against hollow trees. I have never sprinted so fast in my life. I could feel the trees watching me with their gaping sockets, wounds from when Paw and I practiced in order to nail them fuckers. Yeah, the trees were my audience, the sky about to rain down my reward after I sacrifice it with the machete. Orders were to kill on sight, but I couldn’t bear to lose this one. I had cut the rope and watched it fall from the branch.
And now, feeling it struggling in my sweaty palms, its snake-like neck writhing, its claws grasping at the air. This is power. It done did scratch me a few times, but I sliced its toes so it’d feel them scratches, too, its porcelain human-y skin breathing through the cuts; it can't heal itself.
With the blood oozing onto the ground, I inhaled the sickly sweet smell, feeling the pump of adrenaline tighten my grip on the ribbon. Now, don't confuse my marveling of this bastard, for pity. I don't got sympathy for the fallen. No, sir. We just gotta eat sometimes, and playing with my food is always a helluva fun time.