The music of the box was annoying to my ears, if I still had them – who knows? – or whatever way that damn tower made me hear things.
But… it was soothing to the girl, so I let her play it. It's the least I could do.
Some of the children that succesfully ran past me – and into that damn city, lured by the pale light – would think that I was mad, like The Doctor or The Teacher – and don't get me started on The Broadcaster – as if I expected my family, propped up with stuffing at my table, to still live.
I didn't. I saw what was happening and I knew that they were corrupted – one of them was scribbling the tower onto the wall for gods sake – the moment they visited me out in this hut. I only did what I had to do.
The music box was always my old favorite toy. I remember stowing it away as I left here, to become a hunter, just as clearly as I remembered cranking that lever before I went out back to pull the trigger.
And pull the trigger I did, right after putting a sack on my head so the last thing I saw wouldn't be the last thing Ma did.
And then I woke up, moving with a body that shouldn't be moving, frown permanently etched onto my face, or what was left of it.
Pushing the log back up again was always hard, but I always, by the skin of my teeth, made it. I hope one day the tree stopping the old log from crushing the children would break, so not a single one of them had to live within the horror of the city, being chased by monster after monster.
As if I wasn't one of them.
As if I wasn't made for this hunt, this trial before the city. Everytime I tried to stop the children with traps that they would never see coming, traps they could never get around, I woke back up behind the house, fresh blood leaking into my sack.
A stick was pushed into a bear trap, and I readied the traps as I left that little portion behind.
Trip wire re attatched, pile of acorn stacked, boxes and roof repaired - although on just enough to function, I still needed some more time on that – and all traps for the trial re armed, I smiled, proud and sick of my work.
And the girl was still cranking the music box, just as my face was still set in that frown.
And then, all of a sudden, the music stopped.
I didn't care, of course, as it had nothing to do with me. If she chose to crank that lever around and waste her energy for an attempt at escaping, then that was her busniess. A pity, maybe I could have stopped a child without killing it. Or would that just have led to me waking up again?
And as I dug back into the corpse, doing what I did as a hunter – I'm not quite sure what I was doing, body moving on instict, but I'm sure I was a good hunter before the tower – as my body lurched around, moving with speed that could only mean one thing.
A chase. A trial to see if they were worthy – ha – of being consumed by the tower or it's slaves.
So, gun in hand I gave chase as the child, no, children ran from box to box with agility that had long since been take from me.
And then they were out of sight, but not out of mind. The tunnel beneth my very feet, a place that I hid in so many times when this hut was a vacation home, before I grew far too large to use it.
It made me wonder if all adults – as if I wasn't one – were this tall before The Tower.
But I suppose it doesn't matter, stuck in this eternal nightmare.
The children though… they were smart. I would have to corner them in the old hut- pain.
Pain beyond any other, as an eye greater than eternity itself glared at me, spoke to, at, or perhaps to someone else entierly, what to do.
And I did as it said, frowm etched on my face as I set up watch in the fields.
The children were good, very good.
Box after box, piece of roof after piece of roof I missed, although barely. The boy in the paper bag… he was something else.
Something else entierly, something so free, so chained, so paradoxical, that it almost made me smile.
And then they were cornered, in the old hut, so old the tree door would splinter as if it wasn't even there. The old hut, the one that Pa told me to never enter, to never go close to.
Why? Why did they have to go here, why did they have to make me show The Tower the one thing I had kept hidden?
And so I struck with misplaced rage as I tore the old door down, a small crack soon widening into a hole, one I stretched my head and only my head into, The Tower wanting to desecrate that one last place of mine and-
A barrel, like my own, and I understood why I wasn't meant to go here, and hope fills me for the first time in ages.
And just like that pain tore through me, throwing me out the door as The Tower – The EYES – tried to make it's servant escape even as the servant tried to hold it's head against the barrel.
But the pain was nothing compared to what The Tower had brought on everything, on everyone in this city, perhaps even the world.
Maybe The Tower was a victim like me, but that didn't matter to me in this insant, as I felt the life slip out of me.
But I don't because just as I hear – not see – the two children flee my body twitches. Once, then twice.
And then I stand up, and walk back to the old hut, my hut, wishing I could cry.
The sack has two holes in it, but The Hunter still Hunts.
And then I wake up, not in a hut or behind a hut, but on the floor, and I move sluggishly, as if wading through molasses.
As if the infinite power of the tower wasn't filling my veins.
And I run, even as I feel my heart trying – and failing – to beat like it should, but it doesn't matter as I run and run and run, and then I see it.
A city on the horizon, great and horrible, is falling.
The Tower, once standing tall and proud in the middle was falling, and I smile.
I smile and I smile and I smile, because it all ends.
And my mind fails me, but I know deep within that The Tower is eternal.
It is so grand that I can't begin to comperhend it, and it has lived for eternity in a single moment, and I also know that the child I tried to stop is the one that will let it, but I still smile.
I smile even as I know my failure as a hunter has doomed a child to eternal suffering, because mine has ended.
And so I grab that old gun – my father's – and add a third hole to the sack, this time with a smile.
I don't wake up.