Lighting the Darkness

The air seemed to rush past me and up, like a waterfall bereft of moisture and weight, turned on its head.  The trees around me glowed bright yellow and flashing red, the cold glow of the moon polluted by soty light while steam hissed and billowed around the scene.  I sat hunched with my head between my knees and my arms over my neck shaking with tears while the house crumbled to coals and ashes behind me.  I was six and no one had the time to spare for my comfort in the destructive aura of fire behind me.

I’d spent my entire short life in the house but that came to an end when my dad snatched me out of bed, yanking the window open to set me outside.  I could still hear the echoes of his voice in my mind screaming above the roar behind him, “Get away from the house!  I’ll be there as quickly as I can!” Then he was gone, pulled back into the thickening air drifting smokily from the open window.  My mind wasn’t even awake enough to realize what had happened.  The fire only entered my awareness gradually as I sat next to the trees alone in its glow.  Trucks, men and water all arrived without much notice of my hunched and weeping form.

I pulled my head from my knees and looked around.  I was hunched and sweating in my cot, surrounded by other children who found themselves alone in the world for various reasons.  It seemed that they were all awake, eyes glowing in some fashion in the dim light of the room.  They stared at me accusingly and I pressed against the wall, withdrawing as far as I could from the judgment of those glowing eyes.

I bolted upright, bestirring my two foster brothers with whom I shared the bed.  In my mind I heard the rush of air and roar of blazing consumption punctuated by the shriek of sirens.  I hit hard on my side and heard the voice again, “If you can’t be still and let me sleep stay on the floor!” Such shouts and blows had replaced my father’s rescuing hands and voice in the intervening time and again I hunched against the wall, crying eyes between my knees in the night.

I screamed my way into consciousness, frantically looking around me and seeing wide, staring eyes on all sides and hearing smatterings of chuckled mirth here and there.  “Mr. Sims, are you ok?”  came a voice from the front of the brightly lit room which surrounded me.  From behind me another voice cruelly smirked, “Nah, Mrs. Thompson, he ain’t alright, he’s crazy.” The chuckles turned into open laughter and it seemed that the wide eyes around me sparkled with delight.

The first voice spoke again, firmly, “Hush!  Edward, why don’t you go get some water?”

I left the room with voices echoing in my head, “Crazy, crazee, crazeee…”

I awoke yet again, this time standing on the sidewalk with my back against the bricks forming the wall of the abandoned store between the school and the rundown house where I lived with five other fostered kids.  Weeds grew tall in the crevice between the wall and sidewalk as well as in the multitudinous cracks in the concrete itself.  I hunched into myself again, seven boys, two of them foster “Brothers,” formed a tight semi-circle around me, each holding a lighter which he continually flicked and lit.  They pushed the flames toward my face and taunted, “You like the fire? You like it? Hey, crazy boy, you want to burn? Burn, burn…”

I sat hunched in the darkness, surrounded by nothing and everything.  I could see nothing at all in the lightless basement and yet small flames danced about me like will-o-the-wisps.  Sweat poured down my body, running over the unseen hands covering my eyes, helpless to block the vision of recall.  Fire exploded in the night around me, consuming everything and the remaining nothingness became the dancing flames held in the hands of other children which turned to  waving, sparkling rods and zipping rockets.  The rushing rockets exploded into an all-consuming flame which burned to nothingness with flames dancing in the darkness. Fire was everything and nothing, surrounding me, abandoning me.  It pushed me back and it dragged me forward, both embracing me and shoving me away.  White hot light cradled me gently and hurled me into a lightless abyss, roaring life and death, love and hate in a constant cycle, relentless in its torment and its comfort.

The dream grew.  Each night a new fire burned across my mind etching its image of loathing and love across my psyche.  I went to the basin to wash some of the sweat from my face and flame ran from the ancient faucet, swirling around the sink and dragging me into the emptiness of the drain, fascinated and repulsed by the raging darkness of light around me.  I stepped beneath the shower head and immolated myself clean in the rushing blaze pouring forth and flowing down the drain in the cracked floor.

I climbed from the hole beneath the old church.  I was tolerated there, allowed to hide in the cramped basement space from the flaming air outside in return for cleaning and repairing small things.  I wasn’t sure how to handle the people there.  They never laughed or pointed, never called me anything but Edward, sometimes Eddie.  I avoided them.  I entered the building as I did now, when it was empty and mostly lifeless.  I swept and dusted then sat in front of the bank of candles against the wall.  Only a few were lit today.  I never counted the full number but sometimes many of them were lit and there were always some of them burning.  I sat there staring into the flames, fascinated by their dance, watching them flow with the darkness around them.  Eventually I looked around in the dimness of the fading light in the windows.  What was left burned red through the stained glass and again I sat for an unknown time watching it die, then shook myself to a more wakeful state and walked outside.

Hot wind rushed into my face as I walked down the steps and turned left on the sidewalk.  In front of me, to the west, the burning red of sunset starkly defined the trees and building toward which I walked and a flowing corona enveloped the sinking inferno viewed through the dusty air.  It seemed as though I inhaled the dying fire of the sky as I walked into the growing dusk.  I revelled in the burning of my skin under the fading coal in the sky and hated the heat of the air through which I strode.  My stride jerked me unevenly along the walk as I alternately lingered in the glorious flame and hurried toward welcoming darkness.  I rushed slowly toward the beckoning evening.

The last flickers of the day’s dying inferno lifted me into the guarded box behind the register of the store where I worked.  Outside, several young men slouched against the wall, faces flaring regularly in the light of the cigarettes burning between their lips.  I watched, momentarily transfixed as a lighter flared in one’s hand, setting alight another tube of paper and tobacco.

“Excuse me, are you in there?”

My focus was shattered by the voice in front of me.  Outside the thick glass a woman stood with an impatient look on her face and her body tensed as though for battle.  On the counter between us sat a soft drink.

“I’m sorry ma’am.” I mumbled almost by rote. “Will that be all?”

“No that’s not all.” Her voice felt accusatory, “Gimme a pack of Marlboro reds, and pay attention to your job.”

I hated selling cigarettes.  Visions of glowing coals shifted across my vision as I lifted them from the rack, caressing them softly as they slid beneath the window to her.  She passed me a bill and I returned her change without another word passing between us.  She flowed out the door like a retreating blaze.

And so the night passed.  The fluorescent wash from above seemed to flicker between its constant pale, fluttering lifelessness and a warm yellow which resonated through my mind, beckoning me into heated, halting breath.  Cars came and went across the pocked and rutted pavement outside and people came through purchasing things I couldn’t remember.  Time passed in a meaningless and unknown stream until the vague wash was broken by a harshly jeering voice accompanied by the scratching of a key unlocking the door to the glass box in which I stood.

“Hey, goofy! You asleep on your feet again?”

A tall, gangling youth was entering my confinement.  I didn’t know his name but I recognized him as the kid who worked the shift after mine at the store.  He stepped up and snapped his fingers in my face.

“Wake up, man!  Damn you’re stupid, or maybe just crazy.”

Crazy, crazee, crazeee…

I ducked away from him, flipping a switch behind me as I turned.  I didn’t say a word as we changed out and I put things away to leave.  He, however, kept up a running monologue.

“Everytime I come in here you’re off in your own special little place.  You’re nuts, man, just crazy.”

Crazy, crazee, crazeee…

I pocketed one of the lighters from behind the counter as I made my escape.  Two hoodish looking guys came through the door as I made my way out.  One of them took a step to the side to crash his shoulder into mine as we met.  He shoved me roughly after the collision.

“Watch where you’re going you crazy bastard!” He shouted at me.

Crazy, crazee, crazeee…

I didn’t reply, just stumbled out the door, but I heard him chuckling with his companion and heard the kid who relieved me from work speaking, “Don’t mind him, he’s just nuts, man.”

Crazy, crazee, crazeee…

I pulled the lighter from my pocket and spun the wheel, watching the gas flare as the sparks hopped through it.  It was a small store and it took me five full strides to reach the pump island in front.  I laid my hand on top of the one to the left, striking the lighter repeatedly, fascinated by its flame springing up then disappearing as I released the gas.  I heard laughter drifting from the door behind me and a glance over my shoulder showed the two guys, their purchases in their hands, pointing at me.  With my body blocking it from the store windows, I slid the pump handle from its bracket and waited.  I didn’t need to wait long.  The pair, seeing easy prey for their humor, came out laughing and pointing at me.

“Man, you really are crazy!”  One of them cackled as he walked toward me.

I pushed the button on the pump and watched it reset to zero.  I’d turned it on before I left the booth and everything seemed to stand still as I turned around with the handle in my hand.  The thug coming toward me seemed frozen as I pulled the trigger on the pump handle.  Gasoline spewed in slow motion and I spun the lighter’s wheel, igniting it into a molten flow which engulfed the frozen form. 

I became my element.  For the first time in my life I felt whole, fully awake and in control.  The flame didn’t come from the nozzle, it flowed from my soul, a purifying essence taking with it the blackened scars of my life, leaving me clean and perfect.  I became fire and raged my distress into the night, driving back the darkness with a furious light.  For the first time in my life, I claimed my own being and shouted my exaltation to the heavens.

Crazy, crazee, crazeee...