Baptism of Fire

He was the last of forty-four. Forty-four souls forged in the crucible of the world’s most elite killing program. They said they were the best, then they broke. Forty-three went into the stone, into fluorescent burrows where teeth bared and numbers meant nothing until only one was left breathing. Me. It should have been two. We flipped a coin, like drunks in a dive bar, the fate of two lives decided by the spin of tarnished metal. One takes the tags, the letters, the names of the fallen. The other stays with the sun, with the promise of a final, blinding release. A fusion bomb, hand-detonated. I don't know if I won. I'm alive, still, technically speaking.

But the room eats silence whole. It’s a ravenous void, and I’m its sole, unwilling feast. Shadow screams behind my ribs, a phantom limb of grief, a symphony of dead men’s cries. I turn around, expecting nothing, and yet, you’re there. Always. A cigarette trembling in your hand, cheap ash clinging to your lips like a desperate prayer. Then I blink, and you’re gone, swallowed by the hungry dark. Dreams lie like bar mirrors, warped and distorted, showing you what you want to see, then selling you the lie with a sharp, bitter twist.

I searched the alleys of sleep, my fingers scrabbling for purchase on the slick, dark walls of my subconscious. Your name, it slipped through my grasp, a phantom echo, a whispered regret. When it was time, you vanished. To prove some brutal splendor, some final, undeniable truth. I never bet on miracles. I miss you before I even know I’ve lost you. Like hunger, a gnawing emptiness that begins before the first bite.