Burn

A deep, stately orange flickered and flashed across the thin,

Sallow face and in the depths of the onyx eyes,

Sparkling with shock and fear and disbelief.

Their clothes were on fire.

The velvet plush beneath their ass,

Burning with a heat that forced sweat down his temple,

Down his jaw, down his neck, into his already stained collar.

.

This was my doing.

.

Unmoving in the middle of a fiery storm,

Guilt gnawed at his hollow belly curved inward

From too many starving nights and grieving mornings.

Bones, already split and healed and broken again,

Creaked with the weight of his exhale as the figures in flames

Slowly shifted from flesh to ash.

They were still sitting at the table, magically bound and dead.

.

Waiting for dessert.

.

Getting to eat the venom of their cruelty instead.

The fire devoured their silken clothes fast but the gems,

Those laid comfortably on their searing flesh.

A thump and a soul rotten as rotten came fell to the floor,

To the white marble already scarred from the commotion.

It was dirty in the dark eyes and the sight was colossally wrong

In a way that tore the man apart, shredding his heart and soul.

.

A voice called his name.

.

He was too focused on the sight of his unmoving friends.

Friends. Friends. Friends who slipped poison into his drinks

And antidotes under the table.

They were all there, everyone who had thought to love him

And lived to tell the gruesome tale.

Whispered across the burning, screaming, crackling room,

How did this all come from me?

.

Tears pricked in his eyes.

.

The lingering smell of Christmas pine and summer berries

Left alongside the cologne, the bourbon, the cigar.

They had taken him in when he was nothing but a raw wound.

Gentle hands guided his actions, formed his thoughts,

Comforted the bruised corners of his soul and soothed

The most frightened pieces of him that the world wanted to kill.

And he repaid them by delivering their death.

.

“For fuck’s sake!”

.

The voice couldn’t penetrate the fog but the hand

Yanking on his collar certainly had the right effect.

The flames retreated as his boots scuffed against the marble,

Trying to right himself or throw himself back into the fire.

Where he belonged.

Traitors deserved the worst.

That was certainly the worst.

.

I am scuffing the floor.

.

And the man with long hair, burning at his ornate table,

Hand-carved by generations of the same sort of man,

Loathed scuff marks.

He hated raspberries for their seeds.

Despised non-magical folk.

But he hated death most of all.

There was no more terrifying nightmare than losing it all.

.

Green grass under him as he fell, black night sky above.

.

The fire burned in the mansion.

Ceiling crumbled and walls gave way.

Smoke billowed as the orange teeth tore it apart.

“Heavier than you look,” the man beside him spoke with a ghost’s voice.

“You should be dead.”

Wind howled, flipping direction and carrying embers onto his lap.

A lock of blond hair from the man at the table settled, unburned.

.

“I’m not dead.”

.

Which meant it was a lie, all of it.

The way the man described the teeth ripping into flesh,

Blood pouring from the poor man’s muscles,

It was all just a farce.

One he fell for with such confidence

That he could cast the spell with confidence to slaughter his found family

And burn their legacy to the ground.