Into The Furnace

Chapter Four

I've lost all five of my fingernails but, what does that matter. Penrose never pitched. Tayter untied me and carried my tired body to a table. Laid me on it and pinned me down with the other guys. Green came in with a chainsaw and sawed my left arm off. My voice was completely lost in a shrill scream. Never did I know I could make sounds so loud — so straining on my throat. I lost all sense of reality; I was going to die. The blood sputtered out of my arm like it wasn't real and for a time, in the instance, it wasn't. It felt like one of my blurry dreams — the ones that reel around my brain when I have my eyes closed. Like an Isidore Isou film, weird, unfocused and sometimes scratched over like lotto tickets. But the twinge was concrete. For the first time in my life, I actually felt like I had a bone. All of us know we have bones but none of us can feel them inside of us. Only when I lost half of it did I perceive it. The agony pulsated through my body and rendered me powerless and lifeless. I begged for death regardless of the consequence. Whether I have done good enough to ascend to heaven or not, I didn'tcare. It just had to end. Green stood there letting my blood stain her like it was a simple summer shower. It was when my arteries stopped sprinkling, she started to believe that they were wrong about Penrose. That maybe... just maybe she was just another blond girl with blue eyes. But that didn't stop them from giving me one last pounding before leaving me to die in the back of a shady alleyway, bleeding out into darkness. Little demon children crossed the light at the end of the alley, unaware of my withering state. Life simply went on whether I was in it or not. As I faded away, I could feel my insignificance in the weight of the universe. I may be human, inheritor of the earth but I am just a dust mite. God, gods, devil, evil, good, hell, heaven, Penrose, all had no concern for me. Surely, I wished she was a demon so she could come to my rescue but the warm day and blue sky faded from sight.

Every night when I look up at the sky, the stars remind me of the freckles on her face, glittering her cheeks and temples like constellations. I wish it could be night so I can see her again, see her remove her scarf and let her hair flow in the cold breeze. I wish it could be night so I can imagine her better, one last time. I wish to be the breeze, just brushing up against her gently. She will acknowledge me because she always lets me know when it's windy or not, like I don't know. I wish to be anything but what I am just to see her again...

....

A crackle of a fire. A fire's warmth licks at my bare feet and blankets my ankles. The sound of metal slices something, a knife, clinking with rock. The world was dark and hollow for a very long time I couldn't tell if I was conscious or not. But now gravity has a presence once more, I am on the ground. Grime, sand, dust, the soil is dry. I can open my eyes and do so. The sky has darkened and the stars set it alight. Bright and full is the moon. Little stones in the ground beneath me prick into my skin, I try to shift but they are everywhere. The back of my head still aches. I reach around with my left arm but it aches as well. When I look over at it, I gasp involuntarily. My heart skips a beat. Half of my arm is a ghost and the other is wrapped in bandages. A redness colours the tip where my elbow should be. I can feel the absence of the bone, it's abrupt ending. So exposed and sensitive. My other arm to pushes me up. My body is out of balance as I sit up.

The large fire casts the floor under it's tiger skin light, dancing shadows into many shapes. A figure on the other side of the fire arches it's back, slicing something against a rock.

Slint! Slint! Slint! A continuous unprovoked momentum.

It suddenly stops. The crickets take over and it moves forward, it's large arm sliding into the light — a man's arm. He's huge and dark brown.

"Do not be afraid," his voice booms loud and deep, like an echo from an unseen cave. A base so deep I feel it in my chest. He speaks while knitting his words together, making it sound like a single sound — a single sweater.