As the fire toddler hugged himself and rubbed his stomach something red appeared in his bellybutton. Kattar lowered his head for a closer inspection. Wriggling from the innie was a crimson worm, plump and writhing, projecting itself to explore the air, then retracting.
“Oh,” the fire toddler said. “That’s Twentytwosix. Mummy gave him to me to tell me when Father is coming.”
Kattar looked the child in the face, then jerked to his feet, eyes wild around the floor.
The fire toddler giggled. “Don’t worry. Twentytwosix isn’t saying Father is here—he really wiggles when Father comes. He tells me other things as well. He says that you’ve done a bad thing.”
Kattar gazed at the fire, the voice a digital echo. Transmission received. “Everyone has done bad things.”
“Twentytwosix wouldn’t tell me if it wasn’t really bad. But he says you are nice as well.”
“Oh, really.”
“And that you can be saved.”
“Saved from what?”
“Father, and Mother, and me.”
“Tell Twentytwosix that I appreciate the offer, but I’m doing fine and don’t need any help.”
“He knows how to get out of here. Only Mummy knows the way, but she told him. He won’t tell me, because Mummy doesn’t want me to leave. I have to make everyone understand me. Then I can ask them the way to go.”
The burning figures glided in their perpetual waltz, temporal objectivity a case of restraint. A machine of barbarity, devoid of memory but pregnant with the incitement. This had not always been the way, and the notion struck Kattar as viscerally as a clean tear to the gut.
“Mummy told me a story about a clever doctor who when he was in the war got a very bad wound but instead of dying he chose to use himself as a test, and he treated his own wound and lived a long time with it all open for the world to see. Twentytwosix says that is a lot like you. Everyone sees your wound. But you don’t want people to see so it festers and weeps inside of you, until your blood is nothing but the sick tears the wound has been crying.”
“Look, I just want the way out kid.”
“Twentytwosix might tell you. If you tell me what he says I’ll give you Fohnemaz.” The fire toddler held the object up, presenting it as a profound treasure.
“I told you I don’t want it.”
The child slowly lowered his arms and said, sadly, “Then I won’t get Twentytwosix to tell you.”
Kattar stared ahead, flaming figures moving in and out of his unfocused gaze. He couldn’t stay in this place, could he? Become one of them? They had gone blank but continued to dance with existence. The kid may not be able, or want, to transform him into a burning man anyhow and he could end up cognisant and fleshy, stuck on this floor, forever.
“Alright,” Kattar said, and stooped back down to the fire toddler’s level, “I’ll tell you what he says, I promise.”
“You’ve promised now. If you don’t tell me I’ll be upset and tell Father on you.”
Kattar nodded and cocked an ear near to the child’s stomach and the crimson worm. The worm wiggled and emitted a quiet scratchy sound, followed by a series of grating clicks. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand it,” Kattar said.
“Get closer. Twentytwosix finds it hard to project his voice,” the fire toddler said, a smirk in his tone.
His ear almost touching the waving worm, Kattar listened intently. Amid the clicks a word formed, then another. “It sounds like he’s saying ‘wub wub’.”
The fire toddler giggled loudly and sprightly danced away some steps. “I knew it! Mummy was lying all along! She was only playing tricks. Silly Mummy.”
“What’s wub wub?”
“It’s when nothing makes sense but that’s all that makes sense, like when you’ve lost all your words and all that comes out is noises, but the noises are what is real and true. That’s how we find the way out! I need to stop talking now. You won’t think I’m rude, will you?”
“You do what you have to do to get us to the exit.”
“That’s right. I will.” The fire toddler scurried to Kattar as Kattar once again rose to his feet. “Here,” the child said, and presented the Fohnemaz to Kattar. “You take this now. Remember it’s a key. I don’t think I’ll leave yet, not without Mummy. Father would be alright, but Mummy needs me and will cry if I disappear.” The Fohnemaz shimmered darkly in Kattar’s palm, a low hum emanating from within it. “We need to charge it up now and there’s only one way to do that. It sucks in beautiful voices, the voices of the spheres make it grow. You want to see? It’s my other job here, but this one is fun.”
Kattar nodded and the child reached for his hand, which he gave, the Fohnemaz secured and vibrating softly between their meeting palms.
The walls of fire receded in one corner of the room, an open throat gaping blackness before them. Espe dragged Kattar forward, the child’s tiny steps patting excitedly towards the tunnel entrance. Raw flames licked high around the edges as they passed into the void to be enveloped in a black that retracted like an surprised anus behind them.
In the dark they wandered forwards, the child’s candle lighting the way, though the glow didn’t reach very far. Burnt panels shone in carbonated dimples along the walls, visible only a few feet ahead, ready to tumble their charcoal at the slightest touch. Kattar breathed shallow, the tart smell of old burning repulsing him. The floor was stripped to concrete and scorched as if a torrent of fire had swept it in a rage. He followed the tiny candle head that waved gently side to side as the child walked on toddler legs, bobbing the light like a blink. Water dripped somewhere behind the walls.
The low sound of machinery came from up ahead, growing louder with every footfall until the child wriggled its hand free—leaving the Fohnemaz with Kattar—and rushed its candle along the hallway to illuminate an immolated door. The fire toddler stood and raised its arms, elongating its candle flame until a lick of fire was tall enough to extend its fiery finger to a blackened knocker placed centre doorframe. The stream of fire wrapped itself around the cruciform idol and slammed the body against the door’s surface creating a resonant and deafening succession of bongs.
The door crumbled and the fragments flew away from them, darkly careering into a vast space filled with black fire and tainted metal. Through the outline of the doorway Kattar saw megalithic structures looming in the distance shrouded in acid smoke. Pistons thrusting and cogs turning, oversized mechanics structured as an affront to complexity, their simplicity holding the devil’s best trick. It’s that simple, it really is.
Crow mowed flagellated wings striking vestal bodies in a feather tempest. Down with the squirters there are no reprobate delineators carving out bloodbaths with behoven fratricide. Drown in your tempus fugit you contemporary wraiths, climbing an antediluvian manhole. Every fleapit on the line has its stitch, star carrion plexus prostrates the twitch.
Kattar followed the child into the open field, wincing against the extremity of exposure, the dust and swirling stinks. Rushing between percussive metal, the shrieks of the abrasion jarred his innards. Ears ringing, he caught up to the excited toddler, who skipped from foot to foot, the candle flame buffeted by demonic breezes, lighting up like a matchbox. An idiot laugh came from the toddler’s flame, wilful with ignorance, scatological, simpleton blueprint. It beckoned Kattar with a stumpy arm, small fatty hand waving him on. The way back was on fire.
Between ruinous brickworks they scampered, great rushes of rancid miasma flung at the release of revolving joints, the heaving industry trapped in perpetual thrusts of mutual benefit. Above seemed open to the heavens, clouded in thick putrid mists that hung dryly to choke and smother. Espe led Kattar around a corner, little feet hurrying, voice ejecting the energetic grunts of the dimwit. The child crawled up a set of low steps and onto a platform carved into the side of a thick and crumbling brick construction. Kattar paused, overwhelmed with tiredness, gasping for air after the short jog. He raised his head, now able to take in more of the scene. A parade of figures waited in the low yellow smoke, blackened, stripped of clothing, their skin crisped to a dark crust. They swayed in a queue, apparently benumbed and suspended from all consciousness of their surroundings.