Fire

Week 21: Written May 26, 2016

Nelson was tired.

He was tired of shoveling coal, and wiping sweat on his shirt. There was a giant, brown stain on his sleeve where it should’ve been white. His job was destroying his wardrobe — along with everything else.

But what can I do? he thought. I’ve done this for so long, standing outside this furnace, my hands gripping this old shovel so tightly I’ve worn grooves into the wood. I don’t know anything but this shovel and the fire.

It was true. Nelson stood for a moment, taking a deep breath as the fire consumed its meal, and he couldn’t think of…anything. He couldn’t think of friends, or relatives, or hobbies. He couldn’t think of shows he watched or books he read.

He couldn’t even remember where he lived.

He could think of nothing but shoveling coal. And burning fire.

Nelson panicked. He looked around — left, right, behind — and saw nothing but darkness. It was pitch black in all directions, except for the furnace.

He began to wonder: how did I even get down here?

“Hello?” he called out, and his voice bounced off unseen walls, reverberating into oblivion. After a few minutes, the echoing ceased, but by then the paltry fire was calling for more coal.

What if I don’t feed it? Nelson thought. What if I just let it die?

The flames wilted and shrunk, peeling back like leaves on a rotting flower. Nelson realized, as the fire fell silent, that soon there’d be no sound at all. All he could hear, in that vast empty space, was the fire, crackling and snapping and burning away.

And as the fire quietly died, Nelson felt his heartrate drop, too.

He could hear, like a giant drum, his heart beating in pain. It reminded him of a hostage slamming his fist on the door of his cell, slowly but surely coming to terms with the futility of escape.

He was shutting down.

“Okay!” he finally said, the word popping from his lips like a cannon. “Okay.”

He grabbed his shovel and scooped a mound of coal, the largest he could handle.

“Is this what you want?”

Nelson flung the coal into the fire. It roared back to life, and he, too, felt stronger. He took a deep breath, a reaffirming breath, filling his lungs with smoke and sparkling embers. His lifeblood.

He waited for the furnace to wane and want, and then scooped another mound of coals into the fire. Then he waited, and then he scooped some more. He continued this routine endlessly, hoping to eventually hear the sound of other voices, or footsteps, or anything to prove that he wasn’t really alone. Even the horrible screech of some wobbling cart getting dragged across the floor would’ve satisfied him.

But he was confident that none of those things actually existed, not in this world. His memories of those sounds were just fairy tales, illusions. He was nostalgic for lies.

Because there was no life here. Only fire.