I have a bit of free time on my hands at the moment, so I’ve afforded myself an hour (and half an hour for editing) a short story off the bat. Here it is. Thoughts?

 

“This is too much… Too much”. The words repeated themselves in his head with elevating volume and vitriol. They wanted to force themselves out of his frozen mouth, but he resisted. He had to. To make a sound, any sound, would spell his long drawn-out and tortured death. Death didn’t worry him so much as did the terror he’d feel and the pleasure it would give them to see it. He’d seen it happen to others. Strangers mostly, but also every temporary companion he’d acquired in his day-to-day existence. He rarely met a friendly face, few remained, but when he did he shared all he could with them. He worked with them and tried to have their presence inspire him to see the best in things. He couldn’t resist a glimmer of hope on those scarce occasions when he realised that there was someone else like him in the world: a good man; just one maybe, but still one more than him alone. That way, he wasn’t the remains of human goodness – he was only half of it. But they’d all died the same way. The chase had ensued and where he’d escaped, through cruel experience and quick-thinking, they had not. He’d watched each and every one of them scream and cry, so profusely sometimes that he wondered where they’d been storing the liquid. He’d watched the pursuers grinning and laughing, wild eyed and excited at the capture of their quarry. As expert as he had become in escape, so the hunters had become in torture, and so every death – accompanied by screams; coughing; gut-wrenching; blood; deformity and weeping – lasted deep into the night, each watched by him from his hiding place, from which grim experience had taught him never to move until they’d had their fun and left.

But something was different this time. His companion was not human; he was instead a stray dog. Once a family pet probably, but somehow a survivor in this decrepit world. He didn’t know why, but this struck him more deeply than all the previous losses he’d suffered. Somewhere deep in his mind, he felt that all humanity was to blame for the current state of things. Not all had turned to the monstrosity of the hunters, but it was the human species that had permitted the world to reach its sorry state. Every human being, from their privileged position as members of the dominant species on the planet, had partaken in the downfall; and so each was to varying degrees, accountable. But not this dog. He’d played no part in bringing about this suffering, he knew nothing of its causes and potential avoidance, and now he was going to suffer unimaginable torment at the hands of those who had. It was tragedy.

The idea growing in his sub-conscious terrified him. His body began to shiver and he felt the adrenaline begin to course through his body, making him jitter. As he desperately tried to suppress his movements, the sudden urge to action was becoming utterly unbearable. Was this really what he was going to do? It would mean that today was the day he would die. He had considered it before, but suddenly the reality of it was filling him with bitter distaste and dread. He’d thought previously, in calmer and more contemplative moments that death was nothing to fear. Life was no more than survival and suffering now anyway, there was no inherent worth in existence for existence’s sake. Why not die? At the time, in his philosopher’s daze, it had made perfect sense. It even seemed quite poetic. But now it was confronting him. It wasn’t a hypothetical consideration, it was the next thing that was going to happen to him, as real as the previous escape had been, as real as the rusted sledgehammers and sharpened shards of metal they wielded below.

He’d always wanted to believe in his bravery before, when the world was happier. He knew he wasn’t fearless. He wasn’t the type that would spit in the face of a Mafioso, defiantly laughing as petrol swashed over his body and flames lit up his surroundings; but he thought in cases where he could see the good and the bad. Where it was undeniable. That he would rationally stand up and do the right thing. This was finally one of those cases. Would the dog live long after his rescue? Probably not. “It doesn’t matter”, he found his brain interject. The alien answer to his question suddenly reminded him of his mother. As complex as he’d always considered his own moral considerations, hers were always shockingly simple. If destroying an aeroplane full of passengers to potentially save a city was a difficult issue of practical ethics to him, it was an elementary problem for her: “killing is wrong” she would say, and it would be as simple as that. This, saving this dog’s life, was one of her calls, and the realisation made his heart twinge. He wanted to cry but he couldn’t. The decision was made; his self-respect would not allow anything less. There was no going back.

The next question was how to do it. This was a time sensitive issue, and he’d already wasted enough of it with his deliberations. Most often they carried out the kill right where they’d captured the quarry, but sometimes they moved them first. If they moved the dog then any chance of a rescue would be over. The word struck him with its ridiculousness. This was less of a rescue than a trade. And it was a trade in which he knew he lost out. They’d rather a human quarry anyway, and in fact if he simply offered to hand himself over on the understanding that they free the dog; they might even take him up on it. But then, why make it so easy for them? If this was his death, if he was going out today; now; then he wanted to inflict all the suffering on them that he could. For a moment he noticed how counter this was to all his previous highfalutin moralising, but the sense of rage and defiance soon overcame such considerations. How to hurt them was all he cared about now.

Trying not to make any sound, he looked around. He was lying prone in what was once an upstairs flat above a shattered shop below. The apartment was as desecrated as everything else, but remained mostly intact aside from the crumbled front wall, which corresponded with the shops storefront, from which he was watching the scene below. Thinking back to his escape, he tried to recall anything he’d seen as he’d run to cover. Suddenly it struck him; the shop below sold household goods, and had seemed fairly well stocked – at least aside from the items that were routinely looted for shelter or sustenance. If he could find flammable products, his chances of success in his mission could rise exponentially, depending on just what was on offer.

Crawling backwards he slunk down the steps and into the shop below, the same route he’d frantically sprinted earlier, only in reverse. Gently pushing open the battered wooden door, he began to examine the shop’s contents. Over on the opposite aisle furthest to the left sat rows of plastic bottles filled with purple liquid. “Potential” he thought as he made his way across; crouched low and wary of the scene outside, of which he caught glimpses as he moved between the aisles. Reaching the bottles, he excruciatingly carefully took one down and slowly rotated it in his hand. There it was: that beautiful orange symbol that signified flammability and his ticket to a fiery and spectacular death. A grand ‘fuck you’ to the murderers outside, as well as to any others that cared to look in his general direction. So many had died whimpering he thought, “But I’ll be laughing”.

He managed to hold six bottles comfortably. He could probably have taken eight, but the potential of dropping one and having his location exposed was too much to risk. Six was probably more than enough anyway. Gradually making his way upstairs, he re-entered the flat. It was ugly and brown, but still someone’s home. Or it had been. Suddenly he felt like a vandal, like one of the louts that had caused all this. “Snap out of it” he told himself scornfully, he wasn’t one of them and never would be. He was the opposite. And if this was vandalism, then it was for good reason; not mindless destruction like theirs had been.

In the flat his sound was muffled, affording him the opportunity to work with a degree of rapidity that his earlier acquisition hadn’t. He quickly glimpsed outside to see the four men still gathered around the terrified animal. The dog was whimpering, but the torture proper had not started yet. They enjoyed letting the fear build before they began their grim surgery. While they waited they indulged themselves in booze and scrapping, each taking the occasional drunken kick at the dog before returning to their loutish revelry. He still had time.

Spinning around, he removed the white child-locked cap from one of the bottles and began to douse around the top of the stairs and down each step: the only way out of the apartment aside from a jump through the crumbled wall out of which he’d been watching. The stairs consumed the bottle in entirety and so he quickly moved to the kitchen counter to open another, instantly dousing it over the carpet; walls and furniture. As each bottle glugged to emptiness, he discarded it onto the sofa behind him. So he continued until all six bottles were empty and the entire studio flat dripped with alcoholically pungent fuel for his would be funeral pyre. He’d been worried that he wouldn’t manage to cover everything, but in truth he’d had plenty. In fact he’d had more than enough and had used the final two bottles for little more than unnecessary top-ups. “Why save them?” he’d thought. Finally, beginning to believe he stood a chance, he removed his flip-open lighter from his pocket and steeled himself for action.

All that was left was to call the killers to him, and then to spring the trap, revelling in their deaths as he embraced his own – for he knew that forcing the men to remain within the inferno until it engulfed them would also entail his own presence and demise there. He turned to the broken wall, readying himself to shout out to them, to curse them with all the rage he had built up inside, to tell them what they were and to show them what he was: a good man in a world full of terrible ones. Leaning against the wall, he took a deep breath and attempted to calm his nerves. He felt his fear had almost entirely expired, replaced with excitement and a strangely eager anticipation of his pending death and revenge. Was he happy again? It was as close as he was ever going to get. After a moment, exhaling, he stepped out with his right foot and swung his body round into full view.

They were gone. The dog was gone. The truck was gone. All that remained was a small puddle of blood that the dog’s wounded leg must have left before they’d hauled him to his doom. A chill crept through his body. The adrenalin expired and weakness engulfed him. For all the calm he now felt, he knew the awful suffering must have commenced elsewhere, and that it would continue for hours to come. It was happening right then and there, and there was nothing he could do about it. If he’d only been faster. Why did he watch for so long? Why all the pointless philosophising? Why use all the containers when he knew he’d finished the job at four? He hated himself. There was no relief, it wasn’t over – it was still happening. He’d let it happen.

He moved backwards, feeling his way to the floor until he was sitting, legs bent and arms perched on his knees. Then, reconsidering his position, he allowed his upper body to descend, his hands sliding off his knees and falling next to his prostrate frame. He looked up at the black ceiling, and felt the flammable liquid slowly drip onto his face. He watched the drips come together out of the reservoir drenching the plaster, and then descend, sinking into his skin as they collided with his frozen form. Motionless, his conscious sensation gradually transferred to the hard warm metal surface of his lighter, clenched in his right hand. Empty of thought and stoic of state, he flipped the lid with his thumb and held it aloft for a moment, watching the orange flame flicker as it danced atop the silver lighter, he was reminded of the past. Of his grandmother’s fireplace and him sitting next to it watching the fire quietly consume the wood. Closing his eyes, he loosened his grip.

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