Written for the game Snap Shot–Writing Prompt #8

 

My skin boils at the very sound of your name. A violent reaction, spreading from nerve ending to nerve ending, racing across my synapses in a gruesome fight to see which one can cause me the most pain the fastest. My blood boils away leaving only charred skin in its wake, a tumbling cascade of crimson steam, flickering across the sky and nursing the night lights into a new dawn.

I weep in pain, but I stand strong. This is my life now. Caught in the caterwauls between an old hell and a new one.

The chants re-enter my swirling consciousness, though the battle rages between my brain and its subjugate’s pain and suffering, willing me to block out all around and submit myself to the sweet agony of white-hot existence.

The drumming reaches its grim climax, and through the shimmering waves of my reality I can see sweat billowing from concerned foreheads. I’ve been them before, stood far too close, unwilling to break eye contact, at once terrified and relieved, disappointed and elated. I’ve felt the heat whip me across the face before, my outsides complaining at the unmoving pain. That small pain seems so far away to me now.

A thousand new pains erupt every second, and yet another round of chants emanate through to me, crashing around me like waves of support, but I care not. All I can feel is the heat, all I can hear is the Ones Above calling my name-song. All I can wish for is the sweet release of their embrace and all I can seek is their forgiveness.

In a final, ecstatic, pain-ridden scream I release my entire being into the air, one single guttural name, the true name of that which binds me, binds us all to this mortal realm. I speak the name of Fyr.

And then I am gone.