An Offer of Escape

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Mundacity. Your life, such as it is, boring.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

A daily grind of disinterest. More dull and lifeless than the gloomy skies.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

Ennui.

Such is your lot. The lot of many. Those who toil the land each day. Who work by the flickering of tallow deep underground. The bodies upon which the nation of man is built. Drudging peons, tireless scribes, servants and vassals. Your spiritual kith and kin. The lowly. Them.

Adventure would be welcome. Tales of dragons and derring-do come on the whispered words of strangers. But they touch your life not. Mentioned and forgotten. Fleeting like a dream. Only to be replaced by the grinding bleakness of your station. Your world inside these walls.

Grey. Grey and cold. Damp. Never enough wood for the measly fire. How it flutters and gutters pathetically. Choked by the cold. The incessant drip of the rain. You blow on your fingers (like you do everyday). Stretch them, sigh, adjust your spectacles. Routine. Monotony.

But it doesn’t have to be this way...

Drip. Drip. Drip. This so-called life drudges on.

There could be so much for you...

Drip. Drip. Drip. Colourless, dull.

All the richness of this world...

Drip. Drip. Drip. You. So meek, accepting, pathetic.

I can give you meaning...

Drip. Drip...

I can make you...

More.

They say it burned for a whole day and night.  Flames licked the sky and the inferno could be seen for many a mile.  Only the lacj of further fuel stayed the fires.  And the ever looming clouds soon put paid to the rest.  A smouldering ruin all ashes and damp (as such, so close to it's prime).

Amongst the tumbled stones and fallen walls all was charred and broken.  Smoke hung thick, black tendrils rose everywhere, mingling with the unsettling stench of burnt flesh.  For all the souls who took residence there were consumed utterly.  Their wretched remains a grotesque mockery of the life once found therein.

The luckiest had died to the smoke, sleeping silently in their beds.  But where once people had huddled in groups for safety corpses now lay charred and black.  They had found no escape from the ruination - all were duly damned to the flames.

And none so more than I.

Fire.  We fear it’s unbound power and flee from it grasp, yet crave it’s warmth as we huddle round our hearths.  It is the red-haired trickster.  A god with two faces.  Homely comfort and primal carnage.  Life and light, death and immolation.  Stare into the flames and you see our oldest friend, and our mortal foe.

But when you sit marrow-soaked, wet and cold, they give you promise of comfort.    As they dance in the dark, the fingers warmly writhe.  Hear their crackling voices sing.   Stare into the flames and see...

Your salvation.

Bacon? Nay. Not quite. A joint of pork? More like it. With crackling cooked and crisp and piping hot.

The very thought of it. All that meat cooking. Fat dripping. Sizzling in the flames.

It’s true you see. Long Pig they called it. The Other Grey Meat. The tribes in the hills were supposed to eat their own. It gave them power.

All it gave me was sickness. I could barely keep the smallest piece down. I’d retch and heave. But trapped as I was there, I had to eat. Didn’t I? My bones twisted and broken. The stones upon my body. I had to. Just a little. Sustenance. Enough to keep going. Maybe someone would have seen the flames. Surely someone would be sent along the road.

Alone.

... and broken.

Broken, yes.

But I can make you whole. Body and soul. That you may never feel hunger again.

The pain?

No more.

Promise?

You have our word.

The flames!

Our gift. Your salvation.

They burn!

Eternally.