Survival Of The Fittest

"A-alright," he said, looking back at the cellar. It would take some work, but Angelo might be able to push it out of the way on his own. If not, he might be able to yell and someone would move it. Or maybe they could come back in a day after maybe he'd --

Quinn was bolting.

"Christ on a cracker," he mumbled. "Sorry!" he yelled back, and then went after her.

((Colm Forsyth continued in Feel Good Inc ))

If Angelo heard anything, it was only garbled noise. All the higher functions had shut off already. Lights out.

His body moved of its own accord just once, almost rising. One hand left the khanda and found his head, grasping along the misshapen part, fingers tangling in hair. A spasm traveled up his arm, the last dying sparks of muscle impulse ripping a chunk of bloody hair from his temple. Then he fell still again.

It would take him more than a day to actually die.

Or maybe that was wrong; maybe everything that actually mattered, everything that was him, was already gone, crushed into oblivion when the impact broke his skull. What was his last real thought? The last coherent thing that went through his head? Something before he bothered to lift the sword, at least.

He had no sense of how long he laid there on the dirt and stone, of the cold seeping into his body on the cellar floor, stiffening his muscles. Blood seeped from the contusion on the back of his head, congealing into his hair and bandages and the floor. Maybe the rats would wait until his last breath actually left him to start chewing on him, but then, maybe they wouldn't.

At some point, he might have heard Tenshi's name, as though coming to him from far away underwater.

At some point he might have heard, said, done a lot of things. If he could have seen himself, he could have laughed at how he looked, sprawled out at the bottom of the cellar steps like the obligatory allegorical crucifixion shot in a movie. He could have taken longer to hear Quinn out, take her words to heart in a different way. Whatever she might have thought, he wasn't pretending. That was often his problem, whatever happened. Maybe another time, he might have learned to lie better.

Might have, and wanted to, and shoulda-woulda-coulda.

When he'd thought about these things before, however briefly, Angelo always thought he would have liked to have a speech before he died. Something to rally the people he loved, the people he would have said that he fought for. There would have to be some kind of audience for that. Technically, he had an audience of hundreds, thousands, behind the cameras.

For all that, he still died alone in the dark.

S082 ANGELO LEE: DECEASED