Father's Fire

I used to know this kid from the Enders. The fire eye’d boy.

He lived out on the levies, where they got that intraspatial runoff. You know, all that crap that flows out the back of the Planar Fabrication Plant. The Escher Institute.

Back then, the Enders were a ramshackle dump, a place where nothing shined.

But I’m telling you, with his eyes of emerald fire, this kid shined.

Astral projecting at six years old. Void-weaving by eleven.

Out of all of us, he could’ve been somebody. An Arch Wizard. Hell, Provost of the City maybe.

But like you, he had a sonuvabitch for an old man. A real mean creature.

This kid’s old man was a no-talent pyromancer. Best magic he could manage was whispy, weak flames.

Some men are just born limited that way, and God knows why.

Maybe it’s for the better.

The best job a man of his talent could get was burning enchanted garbage down at the infernal incinerator plant.

And while it was honest work, he weren’t happy with it.

So when he got home each day, he did what men like him do.

He revenged himself on the people he was ‘posed to love.

He laid hands of fire on his own wife and child.

“You ain’t better than me,” he screamed at the kid. “You ain’t better than nobody!”

God, what a fool. Dumb son of a bitch thought he was in competition with his own son.

Took every success as a slight.

I hear the faint scent of burnt flesh never left that house.

But one day, the kid’s old man pushed it too far.

Nobody knows exactly what happened.

Maybe the old man was laying into the kid’s mother again, singeing the hairs off her head.

Maybe the kid was standing there, helpless, watching his mother sob.

Maybe she was looking into those eyes of emerald fire the moment her son broke wide.

All I know is, there was a flash of blinding light and the Enders weren’t there no more.

Authorities come down to find the levies broken and the place flooded with all that intraspatial shit.

The whole world was twisted up.

Stairs spiraling upwards, buildings all looped together like a bow on a birthday present.

Multi-dimensional spaces you’d get lost in for weeks, if you dared set foot.

And what happened to the people would turn your stomach. You ain’t never seen a body stretched half a mile, still breathing.

But that’s what happened to that kid’s old man.

Out of everybody, that sonuvabitch lived, if you could call it that. He could even speak.

They found his half-folded head sticking out of a seven-sided wall and it was screaming the same thing over and over. Screaming and laughing, real satisfied.

“You see boy?! You ain’t better than me! Thank God in heaven, you ain’t better than me!”

I guess what I’m trying to say is, some men ain’t winning unless everyone else is losing.

Even if the one’s losing are his own flesh and blood. Ω