where the fire burns 2 | fiction

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The man woke on his back in a pool of sweat and bile as heat rose to caustic levels. The way heat always did at night once the big fires had been lit. Smoke rose from a heart-shaped ashtray and hovered like fog in the room, static as a cloud on a windless day. He focused on a crack in the ceiling that reminded him of rivers, hummed a song once sung to him by a community mother. He imagined the things he missed most before the fires came. The taste of sugar on his lips, clean clothes, the soft touch of a loving woman. All the things he had grown up knowing without there ever being a time he didn’t: nature, song, care, now as absent and unreachable in his daily existence as the sight of stars. Stars long since vanished from the sky. Stars that now belonged to Masters of the Faraway Lands. Controllers who had found a way to turn the of glow stars into nuclear reactors. The man lay in pain knowing his pain was nothing in comparison to those who slept outside. He also understood he was unlike others.

A dim lamp glow ambered an otherwise lightless space. An absence of natural light and home comfort. The sense of something missing accompanied the man wherever he travelled, and this sense became a companion. The room was largely empty. A mattress with springs that pierced his skin as if undergoing acupuncture, a bedside table riddled with termites. Something rotted in a bin placed in a corner. Pink wallpaper peeled from brick and revealed black mould. The space could accommodate little more than the width and length of the mattress. The ceiling was six-foot high and when stood, the man’s curly hair met a yellow stain that had grown in the hours since his arrival. A goo dripped like tar and formed a puddle on the ground. The shape of the stain reminded the man of a seal he had once spotted swimming alongside his canoe as he rowed through blood red waters in search of safer land. Light flickered on and off and gave the man a headache. Where is the comfort, the man thought.

The room was the size of a storage cupboard he had worked from as a boy. Back then, he would wake as a crimson sky beamed rays of light soon consumed by smoke caused by the land occupation wars. As a boy, the man would dress in rags and make his way to the storage cupboard, turn on a light and fill a bucket with brown water. If the tap ran cold, he understood it would be a much longer day spent cleaning the corridors. A concern he may miss the only bus back to camp and would have to walk through the dead trees was a daily one. Concern grew throughout a working day like vine up a wall. The boy would add ammonia or bleach to the bucket of brown water and use the mophead to mix chemicals. If the tap ran hot, he preferred ammonia as it stung his skin less than bleach.

Floor sixty-three was the floor where the most senior members of staff in the government building worked. In the two years that the boy mopped floors, he never saw another person enter the building. Still, each day on arrival, muddied footprints covered the corridors. This confused the boy, but he had learnt in recent years that there was much in the world that could not be explained. It had been several years since he had touched fresh mud.

One morning at work, Law Enforcers arrived at the government building. Dressed in black jumpsuits, face masks and tin helmets, a Law Enforcer marched over to the boy and told him they had come to shut down the building. The boy heard them arrive in steel wheel machines with loud engines. As they climbed stairs and marched along the corridor towards him in single file, he closed his eyes, held his breath in fear of being gassed. Silently, he counted the steps it took them to reach him. It was the first time the boy had counted passed one hundred and this realisation distracted him for a moment. Law Enforcers moved towards him slowly like rain clouds on a breezy day. Rain clouds the boy hadn’t seen since a very young boy. Each thudding step the Law Enforcers made reminded him of when they had come to his village years earlier with guns to take elders and betrayers away. The elders and betrayers had refused to leave until they faced the consequences of their refusal.

How is it possible that blood can run through a village like flood water? The boy had thought that fateful day.

One of the Law Enforcers approached him and pointed a gun in his freckled face. It was a black gun like all the other guns the boy had seen in his life. The gun was heavy looking, had a long pipe shaped barrel, a hook trigger and handle several inches long. The boy wondered how such a small hole could cause so much pain in the world. Guns reminded the boy of burnt sticks he would find and pretend was a gun with other boys from his community in the woods near his childhood home. Wood now reminded the boy of how easily fires can start when a group of people control power.