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It was all moving too fast; a reckless, impetuous rush of petrol fumes and torn ligaments scraped off the pavement. In spite of the nauseating dodge and swirl drowning my senses, the wicked bile remained lodged within the acidic cesspit of my stomach. Creaking whispers and white-washed expressions further condemned the shiftless lump of fluid.
One leg over the back of my motorbike. Hitting top speed in a matter of minutes was such a glorious feat it might have been pure ecstasy.
On any other occasion.
But there was a pollutant burning in the petrol, and—for once, or perhaps the hundredth time in my life—I was willing to succumb. The cold. The wind. My aching legs. The rancid stench of death. The hollow stare of glass eyes. It all rushed upon me until my lungs were thoroughly saturated with blood. In many respects, I had become as lost within myself as I was to the world.
Lawrence, only those wish to be lost really are.
It wasn’t true. I had no intention of being lost at all. If anything, I wanted to be found; to be settled into a pitiful, utopian form of existence.
Ah, but existence is not life.
No, but it was a variation. Bitter and faded in comparison, yes; yet, true perfection of any kind had always cracked at humanity’s touch.
Less than a half hour later, I caught the first clean breath of air; a roof of ageing shingles edging above the treeline. The jagged outline—subtly bleached by decades of sun—cajoled my motorbike to a more respectable pace. Eventually, the road turned slightly away from the cottage; obscuring the view behind a hill of crumbling rock and shrubbery. I was not concerned; however, for I had seen it and whatever psychological association had been tattooed to its memory. Aspects of the past few days—the impending trial—suddenly became less pressing. Or, at the very least, their horrors were now quite so insistent in hammering against my cognitive thought. The odds had finally balanced toward sanity. All was well.
Until the cottage came fully into view.
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I EXPLODED THROUGH the front door and into the hall, where smoke had already invaded all oxygen. Black, belching clouds wreaked fear and torment as I turned into the first room I could reach. The fire was well up the study curtains; lurching further and further from the shattered window. Wild. Monstrous.
Uncontrollable.
I stripped off my jacket and smacked at the horrid tongues as they lashed violently upwards. With each swing, they momentarily lessened before roaring back in full force.
Heavy clock torn from the mantle.
Ticking machinery heaved against the curtain rod.
Down it all came in a pillar of fabric and flames; a sight not unlike the undoing of Lot’s wife.
But I was not motionless salt.
Wrapping my jacket around the metal rod, I launched the stripps of fire through the remaining panels of glass.
The plague; however, had already spread from several bottles broken across the floor; each leaking oil-soaked rags and consumed by blue flame.
I grabbed what I could from Keane’s desk—papers, letters, photographs—and threw them onto the doorstep. Then the drawers. Documents. Essays. Certificates. Reports. Anything I could lay my hands on was launched to the stones in a pale flock of dying birds. Books—wrapped in leather and ink—smacked the top of the pile. The rarest, more sentimental of the volumes went first, while the others gradually cracked orange at the corners and burned in shrieks of smoke.
Then to the stairs.
Two at a time.
Gagging at vaporous bowls of hatred and stupidity.
Windows were thrown open as loads of clothing dropped to the ground. More books. Paintings. Bedsheets. A stash of jewellery passed along the more wealthy of Keane’s relations was stuffed into my pockets, along with the cufflinks I myself had gifted him several years before. I had scarcely managed to salvage the last of these when sirens screamed mercy from the adjacent road. Only a minute or so until they arrived.
Possibly less.
I stuffed a few more articles into an overnight bag when my foot caught on something beneath the bed.
Something that moved.
That breathed.
Barely.
Still.
Silent.
But not yet dead.
The boy.