Drawing Pictures With Mind Crayons

The cold morning air did little to aid the Settlers in waking. They stood crowded outside the Habitat – pale of face and ghoulish – eyes blinking as if waking from a sleep devoid of rest, images from Stephan’s enchanted paintings fading from their collective memory.

“You’re a libertarian, right? That means you don’t believe in government,” Jimbo said holding a painting above his head. It’s hypnotic image blazing away for only the heavens to see. Carla’s hand was the splaying of five boney twigs across his sternum; a futile gesture to stop him advancing on the fire-pit.

“What’s my politics got to do with this … this booking-burning?”

“Well, I’m not forming a government if that’s what you think.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Taking over. Plain and simple.”

To punctuate his words he tossed the painting over her head. It described an arc and crashed into the tower of broken furniture and dried wood. The frame snapped with the sound of breaking bones. Jimbo peeled Carla’s hand from his shirt with one hand, and reached into his pocket, producing a box of matches with the other.

“You’re being a fascist,” Carla spat.

The bearded man weighed the insult.“That’s just a word. It means nothing on Moult World,” his voice was low enough not to carry to the crowd. “Carla, you know I love you and Zeek, but today the talking stops.”

He struck the match. It’s flame hissing behind his cupped palm.

“But this isn’t right,” Carla’s response was brittle and unconvincing. “We were promised a new start. A world free from tyranny and bullies.”

The pyre was heaped with the ruins of paintings. Canvas curled like parchments. Paint peeling along ripped edges like scabs. Michael and Jimbo left no stone unturned in hunting out each and every one of Stephan’s works. It took less than an hour to build a funeral pyre for Stephan’s entire canon.

Dried grass, kindling and lighter fuel beckoned the match’s flame. Jimbo bent a knee and the flame took.

“NOOOOOO!”

The assembled crowd turned towards the vestibule where Stephan writhed in Ralphy’s grip. Michael, unshaven with his blond hair whipping around his eyes leaned in to offer the distraught artist some words of consolation.

There was a whoosing sound as the fire-pit erupted with ferocity enough to make Jimbo step back, shielding his eyes.

Stephan howled again. His narrow heel coming down upon Ralphy’s bare foot. The giant winced; his hold slackening enough for the artist to weasel free. Then he was charging through the dazed crowd, eyes trailing tendrils of tears, waist coast slipping over his elbows.

Time seemed to hold a different regard for Stephan as he dodged through the crowd. Hands snatched at his gaunt frame but opened on thin air

Then he was in the fire!

Tongues of flame lashing his thighs as he sank into the raging pit. Tears evaporating inside tear-ducts as his fingers fumbled at disintegrating parchment trying to salvage his paintings. The pyre combusted elementally towards the sky. Its towering size disproportionate to the materials used to fuel it.

“Stephan!”  Carla’s shrill cry was lost to the roar of flame and spit and pop of incinerating wood.

There was a shrinking of the man within; either he had sunk to his knees or the inferno was making a feast of him. His clothes ignited and hair blazed and sparked like a comet’s tail. Buttery eye-balls trickled down his cheeks, his mouth opened to scream, but there was no tongue, only a jet of flame licking up from his throat to claim eye-brows and scalp.

The charcoal smell of roasting flesh filled the air and Stephan staggered free.

Blackened, naked, he crumbled to his knees, the lawn steaming beneath his touch. Raw, gouges of red meat flashing where burned flesh peeled away. His breath wheezed and chattered with the troubled rise and fall of his chest.

The crowd’s silence was numbing.

Carla held Zeek.

And Jimbo stood stock still over the dying man, scrutinizing him with eyes too small and dark to read.

Melody brought the glitter to them. A melody not carried on the wind but on the tides of horror filled thoughts. It swam against the memory of a burning man, upstream … ever upstream, against minds already blasé to the beauty of paradise.

(It was the sound of a planet stirring.)

Lights rose from the lawn around Stephan’s twitching form. Coalescing like glow worms in the smoke rising from his blackened flesh. Shimmering, their oscillations seemed to summon more of their kind to pay witness to the fallen man. They drifted from tree and stone, tinkling up from the depths of the lake, or dropped like sapphires from the clouds.

After the event some claimed Stephan healed in an instance; others certain – with a near religious fervour – argued hours passed before the lights vanished. No two witnesses’ tales matched, but they all agreed on one thing: when the melody faded and the Moult World morning was cool and calm once more, Stephan was sprawling on the grass; flesh perfect and new as a baby.

Carla was the first to speak.

“You were going to leave him.”

Jimbo nodded.

“He’ll paint again.”

“So you let him burn?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect this community.”

Carla placed her jacket over Stephan. Trembling he pulled it around his nakedness.

“I think Moult World just demonstrated that’s her job.”

But Jimbo didn’t answer her. He simply turned his back and fed the fire.