FindingPhantoms

Fire, bright flames engulfing the boy’s very frame, peeling and burning, the thick muscle and beads of fat shiny and hot under his bubbling flesh.

He squirms violently, moving his arms and legs about in a panic, trying to rip the biting, untouchable element from him, screaming and sobbing like a small child, kneeling down as he attempts to pull himself up from the crush rubble of the stairway, his fingers leaving thick marks of blood on the splintering wood, his fingernails ripping from him with a thick, wet shlick and embedding themselves into the frame of the house.

“Help! Help E-”

The words ring morbidly in the boy’s ears, barely noticeable as his very own screams die out, replaced by another’s which causes him to go limp with the biting failure of being unable to move from this fixed, trapped position, a young girl’s.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.

And out of the corner of his eye, the boy notices two feet clothed in midnight black shoes, thick and painfully familiar as two dark, mask-covered eyes watch him, he coughs violently, the unable to speak, smoke filling his lungs in a thick, black smog, his eyes clouded with large, wet tears, stinging the horrible burns crisscrossing his face as the masked figure waits for a few brief moments, observing him with cold sadism, before walking away in relish, for it’s goal has indeed, been completed.

Finally, as fire eats away at the home which has seen far too much misery, laying the anxieties and terror of it’s residents to disappear in the sleep of death, not only are the physical object s layed to rest in the ashy ground it is being pounded into, the story of the boy as well, disappears within the neverending abyss of bright yellow and flickering red.