where the fires burn 3 | fiction

part three story

Back in the room, each hour spent in isolation only further exhausted the man’s patience. Time felt static, reminded him of long days spent at the government building mopping corridors as a boy. As a man, inactivity ached bones, spasmed muscles, cramped limbs. Pain became a companion that clung to him like a needy child. When pain was extreme the man pleaded for muscle spasms to stop, begged bones to heal. A dull ache turned his stomach until bile filled his mouth. He would listen to what was happening outside as a form of kinship. Within the suffering cries of others came an understanding of what now bonded humans together, in a world that was no longer the world in which they were born into.

Outside beggar cries softened as night came to host the big flames. Soon after black sky cries gave way to sobbing. Tribal rituals of the nomadic people reserved for the gone too soon followed: on their knees, chants with hand waves before a ditch burial goodbye. Prayers for more rain or a seed harvest to rise again. Bodies washed themselves in ash and clay. The man waited between cracked walls for word of another bus to spread though the nomadic community like a plague, hopeful of finding a new destination, one that offered something more than what he had found across the Nowhere Lands.

Consumed by a fever that made it difficult to track time, a new day was recognised by a thud on the door.

‘You pay day rent now,’ a voice would speak. ‘And food drink order.’

Sluggishly, the man made his way from a mattress soaked in sweat to the door. He gritted teeth as he pressed a hand against rib cage. Taking a knee, he pushed an envelope through a crack at the bottom of the door.

‘No go. I check now.’

‘Where would I go?’

‘You wait.’

Satisfied the one true currency was accurate, the owner of the building told him food and water options for the day. On day one, two and three it was sky water, on day four and five permafrost from cooling factories built for harnessing star nuclear. Food would be bug noodles or spice soup with stiff bread from the unknown growth fields. The man ordered what he could afford. Then he pressed an ear against the door and listened as the owner of the building banged on another door, along a corridor with a bare lightbulb that flickered on and off.

The man lay on his back in pain. On a carpet covered in blood stains and cigarette burns he counted cracks on the ceiling until he slipped into unconscious. He counted cracks the way he had counted sheep as a child until night came and smoke seeped into his mud hut. Each night, alone in the room, the man woke to an unquenchable thirst that made it hard to swallow, feel cruel to breathe. This told him that the fires were at maximum flame rise. Rising from the ground, he opened the door to collect what food had been left on a tray. He ate what he could stomach, drank until dry mouth subsided enough, he could roll tobacco and smoke away time.

In the room, minutes became hours became days. The man with curly blonde hair and hazel-eyes a nomad once told him looked like ghost marbles, began to grow impatient with isolation. Until one day his fever subsided and stomach pain went away. Mustard yellow skin returned to a more olive complexion. His bearded face became stubble once strong enough to sharpen a pocketknife and hack away at his face. Bites from black bugs covered limbs and looked like measles, but no longer itched him towards insanity or bulged veins to the point of rupture. Inspecting his skin, he studied bites that contained the detail of snowflakes. They are evolving, he thought.