ignem feram

Living inside one's own mind can be dangerous, especially when what occupies your mind are dangerous things.

I've accepted long ago that I'm such a person - drawn to the darker corners of human nature and endlessly curious about how far one might dive into the abyss. I always thought I was above the millennia-old-saying that looking into such darkness would mean that darkness would peer into you.

I was just an observer, after all, taking inspiration from what I witnessed; what I dreamed. And my dreams weren’t of darkness itself - primarily they were of fire; of how it moved, ate, and slept on whatever it touched.

These thoughts were my own; my fantasies safely tucked away behind my skull. They only lived as far beyond as a page, as ink between the lines, turning dreams into stories.

There is nothing unsafe about writing these dark thoughts down, to turn them into tall tales. It isn't destructive in nature. You simply draw shapes in ink, and they say something - paint a picture in imagined time and space. There is no life - no soul - to give to invoke malcontent.

Passion? Yes.

Heart? Abundantly.

But to turn lines on a page into bones inside living flesh is ludicrous -insane - something to be conjured by madness.

Yet, as I sat in that lecture hall on a rainy Tuesday afternoon wallowing in papers upon papers of course work and already regretting the half-finished cigarette that I had tossed out, she appeared.

I would recognize her anywhere, even though she had only ever lived in my mind and existed in the ramblings of my half-formed drafts.

She cut a dark, imposing figure at the front of the lecture hall, looking other worldly among the mundane, modern surroundings. She was shrouded by a black wolf's cape, covered head to toe in rusting iron chainmail and sporting gleaming, heavily engraved dual axes around her hips.

To anyone else, she might be a historical reenactor - or maybe a very dedicated cosplayer, but one look into her bleeding, black eyes, and the ruse would be ruined.

I slowly stood, accidentally toppling over a textbook on my desk. I looked around, but the few other people here had their heads down in their own work. One person was looking directly at me, but given their annoyed expression, it was probably from the noise my falling book had caused.

Hastily I bent down and picked the book back up, but when I returned my eyes to where the armored woman was, she was gone.

I blinked several times; the book held limply in my hands. Memories swarmed me like flies, buzzing insistently in my ears. Pages of text flipping by: sketches of warriors with eyes of ink; a woman with weapons dripping in blood and ash; thousands burning; and then nothing.

Just blank, empty pages and a mountain of guilt.

"I need a smoke," I muttered to myself, gathering up my textbook and coursework papers before walking up the steps of the lecture hall and opening the back door to the outside courtyard.

The air was heavy with moisture, the cloudy sky grey and oppressive, but I breathed in deep. My head felt like a living, writhing mass of thoughts, and I needed to calm it.

I took a far corner out of sight of any others beneath a giant oak tree and dropped everything on a stone bench. With shaking hands, I took out my lighter and my box of cigarettes. It took several tries, but eventually I lit one up and took a long, deep drag.

The smoke filled my throat, my lungs, and slowly but surely, that buzzing in my mind ceased. Pulling the bud away, I stared at the end of it where the embers blinked and danced. It was endlessly fascinating the way the heat ate away at the cigarette, slowly turning paper into ash.

I still couldn't figure out if it was the smoking or the image of the flames that soothed me.

That was when, sitting on the bench next to me, she appeared again.

I jumped, cussing and dropping my cigarette in shock.

She didn't stare at me, rather she looked ahead at the empty courtyard.

"How many must I burn today?" Her voice was like bricks dropping from a ten story building - loud cracks with each and every word that shot into my ears.

"W-what?"

She turned to me then, slowly standing up from the bench. Her black eyes - like voids in the stars - bled ink-stained tears. "Do you enjoy the slaughter?"

"No, no you're not real," I insisted, taking a stuttering step back. I looked around, over my shoulders, across the courtyard, but there was no one else here to confirm my suspicions that I was hallucinating.

That was when she grabbed me by the throat, and all sense of what was real left me. Her grip was ice-cold and burning all at the same time. It felt like I was being branded.

"End this, or I will end you."

Impossible, I wanted to say. I created you! Yet, somehow, I was struggling to breathe as this imaginary woman crushed my windpipe in her hand.

She growled. "Then burn, devil."

White light tinged in the tell-tale red of fire rushed over my eye-lids, and then I was choking, not from a hand wrapped around my throat, but from smoke filling the lecture hall.

Fire - fire was spreading rapidly up the walls, across the carpeted floor. Across the room, a small inferno roared from what was left of a trash can.

I coughed violently, shaking myself from sleep. I passed out while studying. The woman, the interaction - was that all a dream? It didn't matter. The hall was on fire, and I had to get out.

I ran for the back door, leaving my papers and book behind. Halfway up I tripped over an object on the stairs. The smoke was so thick now that it was hard to see, but I knew from the shape that it was a body.

The fire was fast approaching, but there was realistically time to grab them and get out. Yet, those thoughts - that darkness, crept in.

What would their flesh look like after it had been burned?

"Burn, devil."

Her voice was inside my head then, and I could feel her judgement like the brand she had left on my throat. That draft, that story - her tale left untold, her purpose to bleed and burn everything. Friends, family, men, women, children - and for what? To indulge in my own sick fantasies? To live out what I dared not express out loud? To excuse them in a different scenario?

To hide from the truth?

I gritted my teeth, shoving away that abyss, that cliff that called to me to step off of it, and scooped the body into my arms. It was a woman, the same person who had glared at me in my dream when I dropped my book.

She was so tiny, so helpless in my arms, but I would not let this chance go to waste to save us both.

"I got you!" I shouted, hoping that if I said it aloud, I could make it real. Then, with the woman in my arms I raced for the door.

As I passed the final set of steps, I saw her in my periphery, watching me with those ink-filled eyes as the fire and smoke enveloped her form. The tiniest, barest shape of a disgusted smile graced her flaking lips.

And then I was pushing through the door, and breathing in the smoke-free air of the courtyard.

I don't remember much in the aftermath - whether or not the woman made it, or the questions I was asked by the firemen. Call it shock, disbelief, or the inconsistent memories of a mad man - maybe I just didn't want to remember.

I didn't want to remember those flames, remember the hands of my creation branding the skin of my throat - the guilt manifested in her black gaze.

I didn't want to remember the lit cigarette I had tossed into the trash.

But she would remind me, as surely as I would continue putting ink to paper, and setting fires to satiate my fantasies.