The Blinding Path

The cheap fire burned a familiar path down his throat, a harsh, comforting testament to his continued existence. He tilted the bottle, the last of its kind from a forgotten shelf in this transient purgatory of a hotel, and watched the amber liquid cascade. Saints could keep their halos; he’d take the burn, the sting, the raw, unadulterated reality of it. Loneliness was a cage, but he’d learned to pick its lock, one shattered shard of memory at a time. And the fetters, those invisible chains that bound him to the ghosts of forty-three, they were loosening. He was alone, yes, but not *lonely*. Not anymore.

He stood, the movement a little less jerky than usual, the room’s sickly yellow wallpaper seeming to writhe with a life of its own. It was a good room for bleeding. The stains, dark and viscous, seeped from behind the peeling paper like secrets too heavy to be contained. He’d watched them for hours, a morbid fascination holding him captive. Was this what it was to be cleansed? To have the filth of the world ooze out, leaving behind only the raw, exposed bone? He’d thought about it, about sitting there, letting the sickness drain from him, but the pain had been too sharp, too immediate. He needed a different kind of baptism.

He needed fire.