Roaring

I made sure today was another day.

I did not venture upstairs to see Dante, or Ig.

I put on my coat.

I grab my mask. Turning it over in my hands, seeing the lack of ash... That makes my jaw grind. That makes my fists clench. 

I fetch my crowbar, and I leave Dante's house.

It is not an especially long walk to the nature trail, even as the snow falls. Despite the city's best efforts to preserve nature within this winding park, the snow is still darkened by smoke and pollution. The broad river may be frozen over, but beneath the ice, the water is still all murk and stink. Wherever Smoke has lain, it can never be pure again. So Dante said.

A bridge spans the river, thick concrete arches supported by a web of steel beams. It is a great almost-wall, cutting through the valley, joining the near-cliff of a complex of apartment buildings and condominiums with the gentler suburban slopes on the far side of the opposite bank. Subway trains rumble across, sending motes of dirt and dust drifting down to whoever walks beneath while the rail-borne thunder rolls by overhead.

Or upon the heads of those who live and work below.

There is always someone. Maybe a homeless person, huddled up by a small fire, trying to keep warm. Maybe a few criminals shaking someone down, or fighting, or doing drugs. Maybe even a dealer, now and again.

I finish trudging through the snow and gravel of the trail, and step onto the pavement below the bridge.

A homeless man crouches beside a dying little pile of smoking sticks, desperate, trying to fan the fire back to life.

I put my mask on.

If he can hear my footsteps, he gives no indication, frantic as he blows and fans and does everything he can think of to bring the fire back to life.

He does not know what burns within me.

I let the crowbar slide, until I am holding it close to its straight end. I am within spitting distance of the homeless man. He reeks of booze. I planned on waiting for him to notice me. I planned on giving him the choice, the standard routine. I even considered chasing him off and waiting for someone else to walk by.

But that smell, and the dark beneath the bridge, it lets me know I have to burn out the fear again. Hate has to well up faster than terror, or I will be weak and frozen again. I will be trapped once more.

So I swing at the homeless man.

I bring the crowbar down on his head. 

I bring it down again, and again, and again, until my arms are singing and stinging and hot. I am lost in the crunch of bone, the ache of muscles, the sweat, the ringing in my ears.

The homeless man is no longer moving. Dark, cold blood begins to pool near his head, extinguishing his shattered attempt at a fire. Just as the rage brought me heat, the dark returns. I realize I have walked deeper into the shadows under the bridge. The light is far away, now, and harder to see. Smoke billows up and around me, filling the cold space, clouding my vision.

I see a large shape in the shadows.

I know it is crouched, and waits to spring forth. I know it is chained, but those links are broken. It is still, but I have never tasted such violence  as that which oozed from it. Its eyes were darker than everything around me in that gloom and haze, deeper.

For a moment, I was a little boy again, trapped in a basement bereft of windows, devoid of any light source besides a single bulb which was broken long ago. Alcohol fills my nose, and the barest outline of a man steps forward, the source of that smell, and raises a fist. I want to flinch, want to run away, want to cry, but I can't seem to do either, or any.

But it is only for a moment.

This shape is not that man. 

It is both without and within at the same time.

It is a boiling heat I know well. 

It is kindred. It sees a piece of Itself in me, and I see the source of the fire in It, and It reaches a long, thick arm of smoke towards me, and I reach for It.

In that moment, We are One, and my world is only Smoke.