The voice went so far away.
Up to the suited man, his cries brutal, throaty, facing his truth. No fun.
Kattar felt strangely protected, as if the act of observing excluded him from involvement. His role was the witness. Screw that. He bolted for the shadow door, praying like a fool, acolyte of survival instinct. His advantage was that he wasn’t the centre of attention.
The suited man screamed in fits that became gargles, raspy struggles, floundering higher, soaring to the rafters. Make him sing, Mr Wayfarer.
Make him sing.
The door in shadow was a mock, a simulated doorframe. Kattar dug his nails into the flimsy plaster, which rained away in flaky chunks. If the noise died anymore he’d be in trouble, Mr Wayfarer would be turning his attentions and heading his way. Was all silence when he was upon you?
He glanced at the stage for a freeze-frame. All was red.
Adrenaline unleashed the last gasp attempt and he severed the door from the wall, hauling it ajar just enough to wriggle his body through. He turned and with strength diminishing to its last twitchy residues, dragged the broken and crumbling fake door back to imperfectly meet the wall.
dek tri
Kattar stepped backwards, eyes intensely scanning the outline of the resting simulated door. It would be no barrier to My Wayfarer if he should choose to follow. No lock to be had, only crumbling plaster around the edges, broken and uneven now, letting the light through.
The tangled light.
He flinched against the air, fitting into sweats, turning his back to the fake doorway, leaning his weight against it to block the way. All strength had left him. If Mr Wayfarer knocked at the door, he’d push Kattar over with the slightest thud.
Orange flickering striptease down the walls. The place was magma. Waves of glancing upright flame. Cuboid boulders cracked with smouldering red fissures. Another floor, this time closed to the world, encased in vertical brooks of glowing fire. Female forms writhed in and out of the walls, burning as the flowing lava sculpted them, sometimes whole-bodied, sometimes only glimpses of parts, sensuous and fleeting, melting to return to the fire. Occasionally a face would cohere, roll in the heat, open mouthed, made of white flame, a spectral cry barely there, consumed by the churning, the dark hum of liquid fire.
Figures made of flame wandered the floor over black tiles and between desk-sized boulders. Towards the farthest end of the floor one of the burning figures lay on a magma desk, letting out a scream, waving arms dementedly as if someone had their frame pinned down, but no one else was there.
A tall burning figure walked towards Kattar, then started to push a black desk along the dark tiles in his direction. It screeched along, leaving bright scratch trails. Polished tiles mirrored the flame people walking above, the glass world beneath catching the figures in fire, cooling them in reflection. Kattar gazed into the black glass beneath his feet, the endless writhing flame walls receding. A chasm of bottomless nothing. Kattar stepped aside and the tall burning man wedged the dark desk up against the faux doorway, then wandered off dreamily. It didn’t seem like enough protection, but Kattar felt better anyway.
Kattar strode a few paces forwards, unknowing if the figures even registered his presence. They moved as if locked away, oblivious to anything but their place on the floor. The tall burning man had appeared as if responding to the environment, to the intrusion of the fake door, a new entryway that wasn’t supposed to be there. Not in reaction to Kattar’s entrance. Not to him as a person.
The burning people milled on delirious pathways, never intersecting. Sometimes they’d sit for a while, facing the walls, but it was impossible to know if they saw or recognised the streaming fire or not. Kattar’s only heat was from within, from exhaustion and the frantic flee. This place was cold.
He reached out to probe a burning figure as it approached and glided past him, poking at the moving flame as sparks licked around his fingers. It felt like dragging through flour.
Halfway across the floor, equidistant from the corners, he approached a desk. A small ball of fire peeped around the bottom corner of the black boulder. Then it wavered, its ball head a hellish candle flame, paraffin fed. Unlike the other burning people, blue light gleamed around the edge. The small figure shuffled out from behind the smoking boulder. Dressed in a disposable nappy, it was a fleshy toddler from the neck down, dirtied with soot, and only its head was a flame, the candlepower draining life from the body below it.
“Don’t snuff me, mister,” it said, “I didn’t mean to do it.” The voice was infantile and robotic, like a digital transmission run through an intercom. The candle flame shrank a little, its wispy head withdrawing. Interlacing burn marks decorated the child’s shoulders, scalded by stray spitting sparks, the flame fuelled by the child’s fatty cherub torso. “It’s in my blood. Mummy told me.”
Kattar lowered himself to the fire toddler’s level and rested on one knee. “What did your mummy tell you?”
The toddler shimmied shyly, clasping podgy hands together.
“Come on, you can tell me. What’s your name?”
“Espe,” it said, in a thin weedy voice. “Mummy said that if I spoke properly and clearly that everyone would understand me but now everyone is on fire.”
“I’m sure it’s not your fault. Tell me what happened.”
The fire toddler sniffed, digitally, inside its flame. “Mummy said that I should go and speak to everybody. She said that I was special and that there was a magic way I could talk to everyone. I went up to every desk.” The sniffs rose in volume. “Some people were nice and spoke back to me, but some stared at me and looked away and pretended they didn’t see me. Then I ran away. But I couldn’t find Mummy any more. I went back to the desks but the people were arguing. Then they went on fire.” The fire toddler sobbed, lowering its little candle face. Black oil trickled in tearstains, to be lit up and consumed by the burning flame. “Where’s Mummy?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“You find her!”
“What’s her name?” A burning figure brushed Kattar’s elbow. He flinched as it tickled.
“She’s called lots of things. I can’t remember. I only remember what she told me to do. She wants me to give someone the Fohnemaz.” The fire toddler stood, quieting now. Kattar felt observing eyes on him, coming from inside the candle flame, illusory and scheming.
“Do you want it? It’s heavy.” The fire toddler reached into its disposable nappy and extracted a tiny pole, about the size of a draughtsman’s pencil, but thicker, shiny and black. “It doesn’t smell, I promise.” A pulsating sound accompanied the object’s reveal, but it sounded farther away, somewhere under the floor, subterranean.
“I don’t think I should. You keep it. Your mummy might want it back.”
“No!” The fire toddler stamped a foot. “Mummy will be mad. If you take it she might come back.” It then paused and tilted its head. “Do you have a passcard? I can swap it for a passcard. Then we both have something.”
Kattar shook his head. The passcard had burned away, outside of the building’s influence. All he had were the ashes. However, maybe he’d made a mistake, and this was his chance. “What is that thing?”
“It’s the Fohnemaz,” the fire toddler said, proudly. “Mummy gave it to me to look after. She said it’s a key and that everyone in the world can use it. Which is silly.” The fire toddler giggled, but then stopped. “Don’t tell Mummy I said it was silly, will you.”
Kattar felt around in his pocket and pulled out some tiny charred fragments, still smouldering. “Here.” He offered them to the fire toddler. The child bowed and nudged his flame to suggest Kattar should drop the fragments onto the fiery crown. They fell and fizzled brightly.