Fiction

Nothing But a Flame

A heart-warming story about a boy and a flame. Being kept in the dark for so long makes it even better when you see the light.

May 16, 2021  |   6 min read
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Nothing But a Flame
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Isn’t it funny how you never really feel alone when there’s no one around? As a child, I wanted to ask my parents why, why we had to stay huddled together in the dark, no blossoming flowers at our feet, why we couldn’t see each other’s faces and why the only things we had to eat were the unlucky insects that scurried into us. But reality shouldn’t be questioned when you’ve never been told otherwise, so I’d sit, I’d sit in the dark, where I was I would not question, and even when my parents finally perished, I still sat: Sitting was the only thing I knew how to do. I was prepared to sit until moss formed around my arms and legs, and the world thought I was a dead corpse just waiting to decompose, but then I saw a light. Seeing a flickering flame in the distance after spending sitting in what seemed like an abyss, in what seemed like if I got up, I’d just walk into an endless black hole of nothingness did more than just surprise me.

 

 I stared at the dancing flame; how could I ignore it? It wasn’t a black piece of nothing like everything else I’d known, and as it came closer, I started to panic. I looked down at my hands, expecting to see nothing as usual, but it wasn’t nothing. My hands were visible. If at the time I knew what I was seeing then I would’ve been ecstatic, but this wasn’t the norm for me, what I was seeing wasn’t normal. The flame was still there, placed in front of me. I was scared, my eyes wide open, staring with fear at the unknown light that stood in front of me. I used my newfound hands and tried to swat
the beast away, but I couldn’t. The closer my delicate human flesh got to the flame the more pain I felt, the beast was indirectly hurting me, and I didn’t like it one bit. I had no idea how to stop what was happening from happening, I looked around, my eyes staring at the rocky texture of the place I was in. I was just a child at the time, thirteen years old to be exact, but the fear I was experiencing seemed like it would turn my hair grey.

 

The fire that lay in front of me glowed brighter than anything I had ever seen, but this was mainly because all I’d ever seen until then was darkness. The flame seemed to stare at me, looking at me like I was the weird one. I continued to sit in place, but unlike how I’d been sitting for the past thirteen years, it wasn’t because it was the only thing that I really knew how to do, but because I didn’t know what to do. The light then began to hop around the place, I was startled, the beast’s sudden movements made me back away, but ever so slightly. I was cautious about taking my eyes away from the not so dangerous creature, but after spending my whole life in darkness, it was hard not to look around at the place I had been sitting in for so long. My eyes scanned the rocky textured semi-circle that I was in, to the normal eye, it would’ve been just a cave, but to me at that time, it was amazing, mind-boggling even. I kept looking around at the now visible ground that lay below me and the rocks just above, but before long, the light suddenly started to fade away, I couldn’t
make out what I was just before seeing. I speedily redirected my attention back to the playful beast. Apparently, the cave had gotten a bit boring for it, and it was trying to squeeze itself through a microscopic crack in the wall. If I knew how to speak, I would’ve shouted at it to wait, but I didn’t even know how to walk.

 

I clawed my way to the end of the cave, but it had already gone. For a few seconds I sat in shock, I sat, knowing that I would never be able to sit seeing nothing, knowing that I could see something.

 

It had been a week since the flaming red beast stumbled into my abode, I had tried time and time again to stay in one place like I had before the flame had come, but I couldn’t. Every five minutes I’d look back down at my hands, hoping that I would suddenly be able to see them, but no luck, and after a few more days of this, I came to the realization that I wasn’t going to be able to see what I saw ever again; that was until a few days later the flame came back. I didn’t know how it got inside, but I was grateful. I began looking around, staring at things like the many insects that lurked in the corners, but then the flame started to leave.

 

I panicked. My hands grabbed a nearby stone, and I threw it at the ghastly beast. To my surprise, it stopped. At first, I was blown over by a gust of relief, but once it turned around, fear was the only thing that was circulating through my blood. Despite the fact that the beast didn’t have a face, I could tell that it wasn’t happy in
the slightest. I wanted to get up and run, but how could I, I didn’t know how to run, heck, I didn’t even know how to walk, so as it charged towards me, all I did was sit. I sat, eyes closed waiting for the inevitable, but nothing happened. I opened my eyes to the retina shattering sight of the red flame, but instead of reacting, I sat there and stared at the beast. The creature stared back, and suddenly it started jumping around the room. I crawled towards it, but as I did it seemed to look at me, as if to say, “who walks like that?” I looked down at my legs and decided that I was finally going to stop sitting and start moving.

 

I struggled to my feet, I stood for a split second before falling to the ground. The flame seemed surprised as it walked towards me. It began making small gestures with its so-called feet. Despite the fact that it didn’t have any limbs, I got what it was saying, and after a few hours, I knew how to walk.

 

The creature stayed with me for a few weeks, playfully jumping around the claustrophobic cave while I chased it. I spent so much time with the creature that I didn’t get how I sat for so long, isolated. I began growing to love the creature, and that was a first for me.

 

It had been a few weeks, and I was feeling better than I had ever felt before, but that same day was when it all went bad. I chased the hyperactive beast around the small cave we lived in when I saw it. A black substance. It started to engulf everything surrounding us. What it was was unclear to me, but seeing the way it
engulfed everything in sight, I could tell it wasn’t good. The black substance pushed us up against the wall, and just as I concluded that we weren’t going to live much longer, time seemed to slow down. I grabbed the flame and hugged it. The heat singed my skin, slowly burning it. I screamed out in pain, and before I knew it, I saw the light. But wasn’t seeing the light all I really wanted to do, so now as I sit here in heaven, I’m always wondering, maybe I should’ve died earlier.

 

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