The Burning Man

Charles is younger now, younger than he ever has been. Not in a Benjamin Button way, but inside, you could feel it. Youth. Eternity. Not a fountain — but fire.

When he first woke up after the accident, he was weak as hell, barely able to turn his head on the hospital bed.

        -Do you remember what happened?

        -No.

He remembered nothing, it seemed, and neither did anyone else. When everything is lost, what do you do? Yes, you make shit up.

        -Do you remember what happened?

        -(nodding) Yes. I was burned.

        -How?

        -Terribly...terribly burned.

He made headlines. He was numerously interviewed by all types of personalities and qualifications. The hospital buzzed with curiosity and rumors. When his mother visited him, after flying in from Arizona, he looked happy. She looked endlessly concerned. Wrinkles were visible, and a routine scowl melded into an expression of profound sadness and grief.

        -Why do you look like that, mom?

        -I’m worried. And scared.

        -About me?

        -(whispers) Yes.

        -You always tried to control too much. It’s ok.

Everything will be ok. That sentences echoes everywhere. It was raining fire once, up in the hills of Colorado. A woman was screaming and crying. Her husband held her tight, weeping silently. And then an old woman, standing about ten feet away, told them those words. And the crying stopped. The rain of fire continued, but their eyes were now dry.

Don’t fight the burning. Burn now, phoenix. Burn now, and rise.

There were no burn marks, no visible injuries when Charles left the hospital, a little over a month after the incident. All smiles, but once he entered the familiar rooms and walls of his apartment, he felt a little empty, and deserted. Everything was quiet. Charles thought he could hear the crackling of fire in some phantom fireplace beyond the living room wall — where there was supposed to be nothing but insulation and invisible life.

An old friend visited in the afternoon. His name was Neil, and they knew each other since middle school. They sat around the kitchen table and chatted over coffee.

        -Been one helluva month, eh?

        -Something like that.

        -How are you?

        -I feel...youthful again.

       

His backache was worse, Charles realized, getting out of bed the next morning. The sun was out and it was already past 10am. All the cars were gone from the side of the road. He remembered very little of last night — darkness and flashes of round, yellow lights. Dancing. Noise. But that was all gone now, and almost completely forgotten. The window looking out of his living room out into the street was dirty, slapped with dirt and smog. Charles looked out and saw in the pale reflection a woman he once knew.

        -Can you see me?

        -If only I couldn’t.

This is many months later. Charles held out a knife; a simple knife, and raised his hand to his face. The knife shined in front of him, glimmering and teasing. He made a careful, slow incision across his left hand, from the bottom of his index finger to the diagonal corner on his wrist. Wincing — and the blood, aching, seeped out and dripped down, smoking, sizzling…

He burns from the inside. Charles discovered the stomachaches, the headaches — all persistent with new intensity and searing pain. He saw a doctor — and then several. He had a fever, for unexplained reasons, and bloodshot eyes that were menacing to look at. Endure, and let it run its course: down the river of fire, and the slopes of the volcano. Charles: from head to toe, cloaked in skin, concealing the embers of glory and immortality. Power. He clenched his fists in agony.

He is the burning man; the sacrifice, the saint, the martyr. It was no accident, nor it was any particular act of fate or of divine cause. People saw him for who he was, and what he represented. Charles spoke very little, partly because he did not need to. His pained expression told enough of persistence and courage, and when he held out his hands, everyone went into a frenzy.

        -He is amazing.

        -He is the embodiment of _____.

        -He is all, the everlasting.

But at home, Charles still felt insecure. The crackling of fire never ceased, hiding under the floorboards and behind the clouds. It drove him mad. You see, the sin, the other’s envy, full of wrath and gluttony. Charles knew this; the consumption of flames, undoused by water, like Greek Fire. Smoldering at the surface. Melting on the inside.

Charles checked himself into the hospital, a quarter past 2am on a Sunday night. He said his throat hurt. Or rather, he pointed at his throat as he was on his knees, forcing out raspy attempts at words. Nurses put him in a bed, and a doctor comes.

-What’s wrong.

-Me.

-...But where?

-( - - - - - - - - - - - - )

A long exhale croaks through, creating a stream of hot air, rising and blossoming out. He bleeds profusely, from both hands, and from the ankles. And like his crown of thorns, the blood burns. And like air, like death, he rises.