Stoke the Promethean Flame

By Joseph Lawton

 

Pushing back into his feet with some divine-like quality, the ice-cold concrete only furthered the rapidity with which thoughts came and left that room. A myriad of fragments that were not really fragments but more like individuals with their own beliefs and desires. It’s always the same in there, lining up the walls like some kind of crude highlight reel. Is it an attempt to try and formulate an escape? A forced imposition of self-reflection? Whatever purpose it held, all it everdid was torture the poor soul within.

In a hollow attempt to calm himself he sucked in a deep breath. His chest expanded and for a moment all was quiet. But it was as if he had taken something which was not his to take and the serenity of this moment was revoked by the echo of bullets with which his shaking out-breath rang. Even as primitive an act as breathing served only as some missionary for further torment, shackling him to the memory of hiscrimes. He sighed a cry of desperation and denial. The sigh was of a similar irony. Youthful in its nature. Like a child lost and alone. Like a child lost and alone and in pain.

The sheriff walked in, he stopped and looked in the cell. He gave a similar but huskier sigh.

“It’s time”.

The sheriff put the key into the lock and twisted it to the right and swung the door towards him. He stood against the wall straightened his back and sleekly flicked his neck upwards.

“Up”.

Little motion ensued.

“Come on up now” he said, his voice betraying a certain exhaustion and reluctance. He didn’t particularly enjoy hanging and he never revelled in having a dead corpse hanging at the centre of his town either. Least of all one this young.

The boy rose and walked through the iron doorframe. He was barely half its height.The sheriff decided not to cuff the boy, not that he felt the boy deserved freedom, but this was going to be frightening enough for him.

The sheriff checked the cell.

Five faces of concrete he thought. Given some of the sounds that came from that room, he always relieved not to find something else in there. Something beyond him. He noticed the crowd forming through the outer bars. Next to the window, a small figure had been scratched into thewallthat he’d not seen before. He thought about itfor a moment and then exited the cell. He pushed the door shut and twisted the key to the left and put the key in his breastpocket and he had already forgotten all about it.

 

The sheriff guiding him down the hallway looking at him occasionally as if in conversation but no conversation was to be had. He walks like in a dream. His feet carry him but neither his mind nor spirit plays any part in the exchange. He is young but he is older than the sheriff. He is older than all in that crowd. These are not the facts, but what he has seen is beyond that. All is beyond that.

 

* * *

Upon exiting the jail, the sun blasted down upon him. Raising up his arm he realised he hadn’t been restrained. As he was led onto the platform his senses were further strained by the immense roars of the crowd. The platform felt unstable and wobbly under his feet. Once in position his senses finally adjusted to the scene, as if to ensure his punishment was fully realised. The sheriff spoke some words to the deputy, his back to the boy and the crowd.

There he stood looking down at them. All yelling for his demiseafter what he’d done. His eyes swept across them. He gazed down upon the outer bars of his cell, almost like it held nostalgic value for him. Recalling the room, he came to realise that the pain he endured in there was of an almost purgatorial nature. Perhaps that was the purpose of his stay, of his collage of memories - to cleanse him of his sins. A wave of optimism surged through him and he let out a small smirk. From something in his peripheral, the smirk was returned.

The crowd was shouting and pointing but the figure remained still and unseen amongst them, smirking back at him. Panicking he looked away, like an awkward onlooker who’d seen caught staring. But like in some nightmare his vision was snapped back onto the figure and he could no longer turn his neck. His head felt tight and queasy. The boy’s lips moved and formed words without his consent.

It was doing something. It was doing something with its hands. Conjuring. Like a harbinger of some unspeakable reckoning. The tightness of his head was released and he was free to look away, but to no end - the figure was now burned into his retinae. It began to grow in size and its smirk dropped; the true hell was then revealed. The boy gave in. The roars of the crowd were fractured, their breaths stolen away by a splintering sound of which none had ever been met with in their once naïve reality. An air of chill worked its way through the crowd. They could do nothing but watchas the boystood there, mouth wide open, screaming in terror.

The sheriff grabbed the boys arm but he continued to scream and struggled free of his grasp. The boy was not strong but he was frantic and the sheriff lost his balance on the rickety platform. Now on one knee the sheriffhad his back to the boy, he raised and turned expected him to be on the run, but he was wrong. The boy wasright where he had lefthim, still screeching. Desperately reaching for the coil of rope. Trying to wrap it around himself. Around his own neck. He was trying to escape alright, just not from death.

 

The sheriff intercepted and grabbed the noose back. He was stunted as to what was happening and decided to just be done with it. He began wrapping the rope around the boy, speaking to him as he did so. He did not suppose the boy would reach heaven but spoke of it anyway. The crowd was completely silent during the exchange, serving only as poor witnesses to the otherworldly shrieks being released. The screams seemed too large to have come from one so small.

The noose was tied. Now holding the boy with both hands he continued to speak of heaven and tranquillity, yet such things only seemed to further terrify the boy.The sheriff slowly stepped back in awe. The boy tried to reach the edge of the platform, the taught rope pulling him back like a dog on a leash. He retaliated byjumping on the spot as if to break through the platform. He resembled a child throwing a tantrum, but this was clearly no child.

“Just drop the damn thing!” the sheriff yelled, shook to his very core. The platform was finally released and the boy fell, killing him instantly.

 

** *

The silence that followed not even the birds wished to fill. The only sound present was the swaying of the rope. Forward and back and forward and back.The sound echoed across the crowd, breaching their ears and resonating down through them like some parasitic entity looking for a new soul to reside in and desecrate in a subtle blasphemous display. Nobody spoke, but everyone knew they had witnessed something truly unholy. A small number excused themselves to bathe in the river, as if to eradicate this diabolical event from their very skin. The rest of them scurried back into their homes and prayed. Every single one of them.

“What did the boy say?”A voice asked quietly, as if not to interrupt something though there was nothing to interrupt.

The sheriff turned to look at the deputy. His lip was quiverring as a childs does when scolded by an authority. He turned back to the gallows. The swaying had stopped and soon a distant chirping of birds and rustling of branches could be heard and it seemed that nature itself was now eager to move on from this event. A lone dog could be heard barking. He let his gaze drift up to the corpse, hanging there in all its blight. The boys words were in his head, they were that of a clairvoyant, detailing some ineffable approaching chaos.The sheriff opened his mouth to speak but caught himself. Evidently the world does not take kindly to those with such foresight. Man was chained to the rock, and the eagle will return again.

He spat in the ground and replied to the deputy.

“Go on home son”.

He turned and walked over to the jail and slammed the door shut.

 

* * *

God darn hangings. I ain’t never had a good time at one, the concept has always haunted me. I watched my own damn father hang you know. And my fucking brother. Hell, I pulled the lever myself on that bastard. It’s how I’m gonna die too, I know it. I think that’s partly why I took this job, to try and shield myself from it. God I’m dumber than hell. That boy though. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done it, maybe he was too young and it weren’t meant to happen. Hell, it definitely weren’t meant to happen like that. I ain’t gonna repeat what came out of his mouth, I aint. I don’t care who you are. They’re my words now and I’ll take them to the grave. I don’t know how I’m gon’ clean this mess up. I shoulda just cuffed him God damn it. Oh yeah like that would have made it any more pretty? Hell, even I’m losing it now.

You know it really seems to me that the world is changing these days, people are just getting’ crazier and crazier. Feels like just livin’ a pure live isn’t as simple as it used to be. Yeah, people have always seeked madness, but now it feels like the madness has got a mind of its own, like it’s a damn predator on the hunt or something. Shit, I don’t know, maybe I’m just gettin’ old.

I’ll tell you one thing though. Just the other week we had this science lot come on through. Some Germans or other. Anyway, this guy was talking at me about this very thing, he called it order and disorder, or something like that. Didn’t sound much like science to me - these types always like to fancy themselves larger than they are. I ain’tlisten to most of it but I do remember one thing.

 

This disorder he speaks of he says always increases. Once something is done it is done, he says. He says we’re on a road of ever-increasing chaos, and there ain’t no turning around. I been thinking about that ever since. I didn’t believe it much at the time, but now, I look at shit like this happenin’and I can’t help but think: if that ain’t the fucking truth.

 

Joseph Lawton from UK is an emerging writer with a deep interest in exploring themes of existential dread, the human psyche, and the boundaries between order and chaos. Drawing inspiration from classic literature, mythology, and the natural sciences, their work often delves into the darker aspects of the human experience. When not writing, Joseph is a Physicist who is also very interested in philosophy, as well as the ever-evolving relationship between humanity and the unknown.