Black Ice Flames

James Ash walks into the dark town late at night, the lone traveller awake in the sleepy darkness. His car is left on the side of the road, not quite a mile from the town. 

There is a lighter tucked in the pocket of his worn coat, metal warm and buzzing under his grimy fingertips. His eyes flicker black as he passes under the lamppost that stands outside the market. 

He stops, cocking his head to the side, as if he heard a voice that didn’t make it all the way to reality. He stops outside the market, and he waits. 

In the morning, he is still there as the market opens. His fingers close around his lighter, and he steps into the store. 

There is a young woman behind the counter, a single streak of purple standing out in dark hair, strands falling out from behind her ear, casting dim shadows on copper skin. Her eyes narrow as he steps through the door. 

She does not know James Ash. She knows everyone in town. This is terribly conflicting information to her, and she scowls. 

Nobody ever comes to Hawke Falls. 

She was born in Hawke Falls, as everyone else was, and she will die there, as all the others have. Nobody leaves, and nobody comes. They are alone in their lives. 

James, in his defense, has not figured out how he arrived in Hawke Falls. He was meant to be in the city last week, and he somehow found himself irreparably lost along the way. 

The cracked asphalt of the faded road led him here, and he has no means of leaving. He has resigned himself to his fate in this dirt town, and he has experienced enough to not protest. 

The young boy who stands on the sidewalk gives James a strange look as he passes. His younger brother, a boy who looks like a smaller version of him, climbs the railing of their porch. 

The boy has a soccer ball tucked neatly under his heel, and he rolls it around as he watches. 

“Who are you?” he asks, in the way that only a child can. 

James Ash pauses, fingers wrapped around his lighter, which fluctuates between frostbitten and scalding. His eyes meet the boy, black edges quickly retreating as he turns. 

“James Ash,” he tells the boy, almost mechanically. The boy bites his lip, frowns, and narrows his eyes the slightest bit. 

“Why are you here?” he asks, youthful curiosity winning over the still-developing instinct to stay away from strangers. 

James can hear the boy’s voice in his head. 

Nobody comes here. Where did you come from?

He shrugs. 

He continues walking, aimlessly wasting his day as he wanders the town, time passing faster than seems possible, as if the world around him warps to his very will. James Ash is a wanderer of dark nights and stormy days, and he is not one for sunny skies overhead. 

Night falls, clouds covering the silver stars that still hang somewhere in the abyss of sky. It is a true darkness that falls, and James Ash grins, a faint uptick of the corner of his mouth, sharp teeth and inky black eyes. 

There is chatter about the town, and parlor lights stay on behind drawn shades as he walks. The town is suspicious, vague hints of fear lurking behind their abrasive front. 

They are suspicious of him because he is new, and he knows that. He is hidden away enough to know he does not garner suspicion on his own. They should fear him. 

He is an entity of nightmares and faded memories of trauma. He is darkness and flickering fire of black ice flames. 

Suddenly, as he walks, there is a puddle before him, slick with oil, faint color edging in on darkness. 

He has no reflection in the puddle, and the water curls around his boot. 

James Ash falls into the puddle, the dark of night surrounding him as he goes in resigned silence. The darkness cushions his fall, warm fingers catching him. He can see nothing, and he does not mind. 

There is a window in front of him, a house on the street where he had walked. The curtains are drawn, the lights turned out, and the streetlight behind him illuminates his reflection in the window. 

He stands on the sidewalk, worn coat and fraying shirt. His eyes are empty darkness, stars hiding in their onyx depths, and trails of black blood tears carve down his skin, burning ice. His jacket shifts in the breeze he never noticed before, revealing the gaping hollow of his chest, heart torn from his very being, crudely cauterized edges of woven strands of shadow. 

James Ash is standing in the town that is not his home, and he is falling into the obsidian puddle. As he falls, his fingers find his dinged metal lighter, and a sharp smile that doesn’t reach his eyes of ice crosses his face in a fleeting moment. 

Fire leaps from his fingers, surrounding him as he falls into darkness. 

Nobody comes to Hawke Falls, the eerie voice that lurks in his mind tells him. Nobody leaves. Everyone dies here. 

Everyone dies. 

The town succumbs to an eruption of flames. 

Everyone dreams of burning alive, it tells him. 

When the sun finally pokes its weary head over the dark horizon, light filling the gentle country and the towering trees, there is nothing left. There is a vast expanse of charred ground and empty ash, and there is a road that, despite its cracks and faded paint, seems to have never carried a single car. 

There is a broken car sitting in the grass at the side of the road, a wandering walk away from the nothingness that once was a town. On the seat is a metal lighter, soot outlines of fingers curling around it. 

The voice that spoke in the head of James Ash emanates from the lighter, an echoing whisper, harsh and cold. 

Everyone dreams. Everyone dies.