It was, he decided, a mutually beneficial arrangement. One that also suited the inhabitants of the little highland town where he’d been born, growing into something uncontrollable until he was ostracised to this lonely glen. Suited him, and suited the local police, tired of facing him after every violent episode.

“Fuck them!” He spat this last expletive out as he thought of the police, the regular beatings he’d suffered in the holding cell after each arrest. Nothing stuck, no charges were ever brought to a satisfactory conclusion – he’d made sure of that.

The tree loomed close now, dominating the otherwise treeless landscape. A burn bubbled alongside the track, heather clung to sparse soil, the purple flowers scenting the chill morning air. Higher up the glen, bright yellow gorse and patches of broom signalled summer’s approach and then a dark mass of cash crop conifers hugged the distant mountains until they too thinned out in the upper reaches. It was, in its own primitive way, quite beautiful. Oscar saw, but did not comprehend. He slowed down his approach. In places the tree roots lay exposed on the ground where the bike tyres had worn away the surrounding soil. He stood up in his seat to avoid having his bones rattled by the action of tyres over the uneven roots, and his head was at a perfect height to catch the near invisible wire noose that lay in wait.

The force of the impact caused the wire to bite deeply into his neck, almost severing his head from his body as his cervical vertebrae parted with an audible crack. The quad bike carried on without him, before a random stone tipped it into the burn, flooding the engine. The ensuing silence was broken only by the wet gurgling sounds Oscar made as he jerked uncontrollably on the wire, a percussive countermelody to the soft bubbling sound of the burn. Shit and piss stained his rough clothing as his bowels opened involuntarily, pooling under his twitching marionette body to mix with the blood pumping from a neck wound. The wire had opened his flesh to form a gaping red grin, a second mouth, mute and savage. The last thing he saw was the hanging rabbit’s quizzical death face, looking more like a final valediction of justice before his world faded into nothingness.

The kinetic energy absorbed by the tree destroyed the mechanical construction in the branches above. Carefully carved and engineered bone cogs flew in all directions, the wooden infrastructure turned to matchwood. The parts landed silently in the surrounding heather or fell pattering like tiny hailstones where they impacted the track. Only two steel wires remained, suspending the rabbit and Oscar aloft where they performed an aerial pirouette, bloodied bodies coyly facing each other then slowly turning away again. The sun shone through the branches and leaves, the dappled light lending a theatrical touch to the macabre scene. Before too long, the first flies scented the feast and nature began the inevitable process to reclaim her own.