Burning Effigies

The glass breaks.

I'm open! Throw it here! Don't let it fall! Don't let it drop!

Don't let them hear anything in my head.

Running. Falling. Picking oneself off the ground. The wasteland is extended before you. Try and remember...

Remember...

You don't remember.

You can't remember?

It doesn't matter.

Now is the time to move.

And move you did. You ran down the street, jumping over broken and ruined husks of cars, smoke not yet cleared. The sirens ringing in your ears, you crouched by the gas station and screamed.

You don't remember.

Where are you now? Try and collect your bearings. That's a familiar street. But those aren't familiar people. You don't recognize them. You don't want to.

You. Don't. Remember.

So you run again. You're at the intersection. She approached you. Hands up, you don't have anything to show her. Screaming, screeching, reaching, you don't--

No.

Now you remember.

Hands down. She collides into you. You push your entire body's weight into hers, feeling her frail form stumble. She's cast into the wind, and then onto the broken asphalt.

It's your fault.

Feet thundering along the path that used to be a sidewalk, you become caught on an exposed weed. It's grown far too great for one of its species.

Nothing is typical. And that's typical.

Strange, how that works.

Or not.

No time to think about that. You pull yourself free. You only now realize you're barefoot. Checking the aching soles, you see little crags of glass and gravel sticking out from the weathered and torn flesh. Blood drips to the cracked cement below.

Running again. An old post office. You wrench the door open. She's there. Different from last time. Different her. Different world.

It's frozen and reincarnated, cut to pieces and faded out.

A smile crosses your face. She is made of cardboard. Reaching into your pocket, you remove the zippo lighter you were given on your seventeenth birthday. Gently moving it over and over in your hand, you look at the cutout.

Is it here? Is it now? Is this where the tumult ends?

You flick open the lid. Finger presses and plays with the striker.

You bend down and place the lighter against her foot. You click. It lights.

What a beautiful inferno.

When it's finished burning, you're not satisfied.

It wasn't her.

You can't feel it.

You can't hear it.

You can't smell the delicious scent wafting off charcoaled flesh.

It isn't the same.

It is not what you remember.

You leave the post office. Only one place left. Has to be there. Eyes set north, the shadow of the mountain heavy on you head, you see it.

The factory.

No one's worked there for years now. It's almost as if it's an entirely different world.

How long? How long? Fuck.

Fuck...

Let yourself fall to dreams. Fall to your knees.

Crawling. You need water. Your vision is blurry. You can hear the whirring. The crashing. The tree that took it all. A thick, sharp branch piercing flesh. A torn arm, barely holding on by splinters of bone and fragments of flesh. Cold, wet snow you are so unused to.

And you running.

Always running.

Never fighting. Never fixing.

Burning effigies.

Somehow you had crawled your way to the factory. The rusted iron skeleton of what was once proud, what once fed this island, drooping lone and scared on the side of the mountain.

You stumble inside, letting the dream take you again.

The dream was fake. It was a blister on the side of your arm, it was a nothing. It wasn't the scheme you had hoped for, and it was what drew all hope out of you. It was the rambling in your mind, it was the tick in your neck, it was the salt under your skin. It was everything, and it was something you don't remember.

You don't remember.

You can't remember?

Yes.

Yes, that sounds about right.

You grab a rusty fragment of a corroded girder from the ground, twisting it over and over in your hand. How marvelous. How miraculous. What a fortuitous turn of events.

There's no turning back. There's barely any time for correction. We won't let you edit the sad parts.

Charging forward, you thrust the metal in your hand against the wall. It shatters, rust flakes showering around you in a ferrous rain. Your mouth opens wide, caring not that it fills with inedible grains.

Carry it on. Carry it forward. Twist it in small circles, around like the universe and time, ignoring the creaking of your wrist.

Make yourself immortal.

You can't slow down. You're in the final stretch here. You can't disappoint them now that you've come so far. It's everything you were waiting for. The climax. The crescendo.

The explosion of light and sound that comes from the breaking of the glass will bring you forward.

Come! Cancer! Callow! Waggle! trerryo! terror! glass! fancy! Delirium! berry! cornologinate! goat! tongo! neuvo! baslo!

finished, finished, finished, finishedm finished. the crash. the bang. the finally. the final.

You don't remember.

That was some glorious broken pain you found yourself on the back of, my dear. The world spins twice, and then collapses into the sun. The moon, in spite of us all, falls into our vacant orbit and becomes us. It remains dead, a facsimile of what once was and a reminder that nothing will ever be the same.

When they all died, you were born.

How cool is that?

You remember.

You wake up on the floor of the abandoned factory, a sharp pain in your wrist. You had nearly lost yourself there.

But you are still alive.

In a trance, in a daze, in a hazy and bleary world of memory, you nearly float up the ruined stairs as you make your way to the top floor. The roof has long decayed, fallen in and revealing the beauteous night sky to you. The stars wink and twinkle, tittering in their cosmic way.

You scowl. Stuck up celestial bodies. You'd show them.

You look down at your body and arms. You are surrounded in the pale lavender aura of the night sky, having finally achieved the apotheosis you had dreams of.

Well, nearly.

You close your eyes, a light fluttering in your stomach letting you know that your physical form is beginning to fade out.

A smile on your lips.

Here you are.

You can remember.