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An explosion to my left, then fire and pain. More explosions
and fire everywhere. My father’s gallery—my gallery—
began to burn. I heard laughter within the flames. “A life’s
work up in flames, eh, Family Man?”
I saw the eyes of my once forgotten family reflecting the
flames within their perfect glass eyes. My father, clothed in
fire, began to bow to the conflagration. I would see those
eyes no more.
Something stepped in front of me. Knives and the
eagerness to use them glowed in the orange light. My naked
hands reached out and began parting ribs, lungs, and at last
the spine. I covered myself in his cooling blood, threw his
skin around me like a cloak, and challenged the ravening
flames. The fire was cold to the touch as the rage within me
humbled the heat without. My eyes returned to the world
bearing killing dreams.
The murderous shadows fell upon me as I breached the
inferno. Blades traveled the roads of my body, bullets sped
into the house of my spirit. My hands became monsters,
devouring and killing and crushing everything close to me.
My teeth came together within throats, and I howled into the
flames, blood, and death.
I was almost to the stairs, but my family, both, lay behind
me in flames. I turned around. A firing squad opened up,
washing me in lead. The stone pillar nearest me came away
in my ruined hands, and I crushed the firing line beneath my
crumbling weapon.
The speaker called out to his minions, this time no longer
laughing. “Take him! He’s only one fuckin’ guy, fer Christ’s
sake!”
My eyes defied the smoke and blood that filled them as I
peered through the flames, seeking the leader of the gang of
shadows. I saw him wrapped in a peal of churning smoke,
conducting the violence, doubt and disbelief filling him up.
I stepped without the maw of the inferno and addressed the
other shadows. “Bring him to me, and you can all live,” I
234 | Mark Anzalone