An Afterlife Of Fire

Chapter One

Morro

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER INCLUDES BLOOD, GORE, DEATH, FIRE, AND SUFFERING/TORTURE. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.

Memories are strange.

 A string of sounds, images, tastes, textures, emotion, all woven together into something you can understand. Well, you can understand them until they spiral together in a bundle of chaos. 

I could pick out some memories, mostly the ones I could never forget: The day Wu took me in, the day Wu said I'd never be the green ninja, the day I died, the day I finally got to me the green ninja, and the day I died after death.

 It was strange, remembering your death, and not one but two times you've died. After death, I turned into a ghost and was banished to the departed realm- then I escaped and drowned. (If that's what you would call evaporating as you hit water.)

I should've gone back to the departed realm. That's what made sense; that's what should've happened. But this place that I was in was not the departed realm. 

Mostly because I've been through my memories about a hundred times, each time I hated myself for what I'd done with my life. I got two chances at existence, life and death- but I was a fool. I was a fool the way I'd used the time I was given.

I felt a memory shift into another, my weird state of reality adapting to the memory. Not this one. Please, any memory but this one! I'd already gone through this pain too many times.

I remember the heat. The heat burning every cell in my body, the only air in the cave was dry and held no moisture for my dying lungs. My eyes were blinded by the amount of tears streaming down my face, both from heat and a desperate will to live. My skin was being burned and I could see the third degree burns patterning my body. My lungs screamed for air, but the only air left felt like it was on fire and held no oxygen.

 I hated the way my memories felt so real, the fire eating at my skin and pulling the air from my lungs. A loud and sharp ringing continued in my ears, my sense of hearing and sight gone except for the sound of crackling fire underneath my screams and the blurred sight of blood and heat waves radiating off the fire. 

 My head was light, in fact my whole body felt numb- like after so much pain my body could no longer interpret the cries of pain from my nerves.

I was able to block away a few more tears, my sight now allowing me to see my hands, burnt raw and clawing at the rocks that blocked the cave's exit. I tried to stand but any strength I had left was just enough for me to haul myself against the side wall of the cave. 

My eyes now lacked the ability to generate new tears quicker as the fire could disintegrate them along with any flesh it might've been on. 

The fire was closer and I could feel my burns becoming not layers of skin scorched off my flesh, but whole parts of me. My right leg was burned so badly that I could clearly see bone among the bloodied and burnt muscles, ligaments, nerves, and skin. 

Those were the final memories of my living life. I remember afterwards I could stand up in the middle of the fire and feel nothing. I remember the pain in my heart and the horror in my eyes as I watched the fire eat away at my corpse.

I tried to close my eyes, if this strange existence I was in would let me. I tried to imagine myself in a better memory- any memory would be better. I would take Wu abandoning me over this. 

I just can't- I can't handle this anymore; the pain, the smell, the experience itself, the fire. Man, I despised the fire. Why did I have to die like that? I'd done some pretty awful things while I was alive, but surely nothing bad enough that made me deserve this.