Hey! How do you define legacy?
Bound by nature, we don’t have full control over what happens to our image after we die. In any unexpected eventualities, even our ghosts lack the capacity to change too much. A haunting will always be a lighter touch compared to the impact one can make while still among the living.
As a motif: lingering images floating on a new dawn’s light as dust settling in thick lines. The last remnants of a soul ground into snowy flakes. Memories softening the edges of what were once sharp details until they become mere suggestions of an unforgettable idea.
This was once important, but we no longer remember why.
With the conclusion to
‘s STCKTMBR challenge here, I have thoughts like these swirling around my head and in my mind.I’d like to note that I tried my best not to plan out anything for the story. I wanted to stay true to the ideas of flash fiction. For me, that means respecting an inherent spontaneity rather than practiced recitation.
A complicated way of explaining my process this past month.
The prompts have helped keep my mind in a similar space, to be fair. And this last one is no different for it’s dark touch and morbid theme:
Sept 22—Buried Alive
What refuses to stay dead.
I immediately interpreted it as a reflection of lasting memories and the marks we leave on this world.
Tangential at best, this is as good a moment as any to mention that I received the Reader’s Choice Award and am verifiably nothing if not a writer of the people!
Hold your applause and keep that dramatic tension tight.
I’ve already wasted too much time in this introduction. Feelings colored by sentimental ramblings. Before I lose your attention and your interest, let’s dive back into my cold and dark world to find out what happened to the esteemed doctors and their divine benefactor.
And if you want to catch up with my previous entries, here they are:
Grab your coat and hold on tight, we’re going in.
Permafrost #4 Buried Alive
The fires burned brighter than expected.
But it still took weeks to notice.
Half the continent set ablaze before the bureaucrats began filing out the forms for an official overview. They thought to avert their eyes at first. An anomaly in the dataset signifying nothing more than noise.
Everything changed overnight.
“Methane clathrate only burns green if impurities are so intense it causes interference!”
An important minister stood before the judge. His name never mattered. He was the devil’s advocate at the original sentencing. Indeed, it was with his testimony that the fates of Dr. Cristalla Ktisis and Dr. Lathis Ergon were sealed.
“Was the thesis not cleared, peer reviewed, notarized, and apostilled under your signature, minister?”
The prosecutor wore a white suit and stern expression. Her red hair twisted into curls and seemed to swirl above her head.
“The data weren’t enough to suggest a flood of fire! What happened was an unknowable unknown the likes of which are only seen on the face of God!”
The mission was deemed a failure and the minister was on trial.
“Objection!” The prosecutor raised her finger and made eye contact with the judge. “Our disgraced minister dares make an appeal to heresy!”
“No! That’s not what I meant!” The frustration of the situation writ plain on his face, the minister shook his head. His job was now to explain the paranormal phenomenon brewing in the wildfires in the northern wastelands. There shouldn’t have been enough fuel to sustain those gates of hell.
“May your actions be remembered!” The prosecutor made grand gestures with her arms. “Let your legacy speak for itself!”
“Methane clathrate should never burn like this! It doesn’t make sense! Yes, they were meant to die! We left them stranded out there!”
The world’s problems went far beyond the courtroom. Rumors spread far and wide. People were offering their daily bread as retribution. If nothing were done, humanity’s final hope would end in vainglorious mass starvation.
“We care not for the sophist’s dream.” The judge wore a white wig and rarely spoke. He was meant to utter little more than the final verdict. “Teach us of the harvest or suffer under eternal damnation.”
Such an ultimatum hit with predictable pain. The ones who could rightly answer were no longer alive. Negligence that would reveal itself if procedure were raised to the level of discovery.
“Your honor!”
“It is imperative that your insubordination be noted by the official recordkeepers.” The judge slammed his gavel in a rare sign of anger.
The prosecutor curled her lips into a smirk, her red hair dancing down her back, adding accents to her pure white suit. The minister’s shoulders shrunk. He was the one charged to defend the heroes of humanity. And for that prestigious role, he drew his last breath in that courtroom then and there. All assets seized, it took more than a year to decipher the documents.
What followed were the death throes of civilization. Generations of brave soldiers fighting the encroaching flames. Humanity’s survival or our demise. It was all the same for those who suffered.
Stories from veterans were odd and superstitious. They would speak of a beautiful woman with blue and green eyes hidden as a mirage on the horizon. Others would shiver as they mentioned a voice penetrating dreams and nightmares.
Worse — and by far the most common — were reports of a mangled corpse charred to bone and ash. The soldiers assumed it was Lathis, but none could explain how or why.
“He begged for mercy!”
Some veterans were no longer communicative. Those wounded hearts mumbled verses if they said anything at all.
Among the more common ones was the following:
And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him,
and shall be broken.
The new malady was given a dishonest name: Pure Fire Exposure. Or PFE for short.
Any “sightings” were then misattributed as PFE symptoms. And so countless deaths were sooner forgiven.
Stranger still, no one mentioned the name Khulmnus Hodoratus, but the monster was common knowledge. Soldiers would say they saw a beast with a white face and orange eyes. A deformation of the bountiful methane clathrate. They referred to the colorful, impure flames as the demon.
“I hear it in my sleep…” One way or another, PFE ate away at its victims’ sanity. Without warning, those afflicted would suddenly gently walk into the inferno. Anyone close to the lost would say it felt like their loved one was finally at peace.
The word “war” was avoided, but that’s what it was. A war against nature. No bullets could pierce the front and no poison could stop the spread of entropy.
But there was nothing else to do.
So they fought the good fight and then they fought some more.
After nearly a century of holding the line, a solution was near. Slow progress and incremental innovations in mining technology, the problem solved itself. Siphoned of fuel, the hellfire died. Humanity gained a new source of sustenance in equal measure.
Celebrations were thus arranged. A big parade for all who could attend. Bronze statues commissioned and decorations placed on every corner. Proper honors for the mythic duo of Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis.
The details of their life were lost to time, but children learned of the expedition to the north. The foundation to the dim light left in the tatters of scattered civilizations.
And so attention swayed to putting on a grand show, welcoming in a new era. Fears of burning through the last candles replaced by hope for pushing past the limits of knowledge.
Any austere wish could be answered by the generational understanding that came from surviving an apocalypse.
“I’m actually related to that Cristalla!” You’d hear boasts in bars with some fool making an impossible claim. “You know how they did things back then, but that doesn’t stop people from being people. Otherwise I’d not be here, am I right?”
A round of laughter and similar stories were shared between raucous tables. The tales only grew taller as the days grew easier. PFE and the death of Lathis and Cristalla left as a footnote in the greater history that defined the species.
And on the fateful day, the great-grandson of that callous judge played the role of master of ceremonies. He wore the same white wig and saw his heritage as the deciding factor in humanity’s victory.
“Citizens, commonfolk, strangers, and heathens!” He inherited a stately bombast more suited to the courtroom. “We celebrate today not as the final point in our story, but as the beginning of what has yet to come!”
His words were met with thunderous applause. Populations were projected to quadruple in his great-grandson’s lifetime. The heir was left with uttering the final verdict. A decision to honor the tattered remains of our heroes’ legacy.
“Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis were the best of us!” He raised his hand and looked down the broad avenue. In that brief moment, he could feel the history of the words. How long the people suffered under a cruel omen. A world where all hope was lost finally forging new dreams. “Their contributions led to the discovery of our new sustainable future! With their lasting legacy now in our hands, let us share that glory in their image!”
He made a swift movement to the side and a cloth covering the statues was pulled away. The bronze figures were revealed and for many it was the first time they ever saw the likeness of their saviors.
“She’s so beautiful!”
“He looks just like my son!”
“They were so brave!”
That reverence came together in an echoed prayer. The first true, unified thought in generations. The old judge’s great-grandson then moved his arm to his other side and signaled the start of the celebrations. Lights along every major and minor street. Every house and home. All the little paths. Every conceivable habitat was lit ablaze in artificial light.
Humanity’s mastery put on full display, meeting more fanfare as the captive audience cheered.
A miracle in the making, music filled the air and dance swept people off their feet. A dream realized in life lived rather than another day left to survive.
Everyone made merry well into the night, the stars never daring to shine brighter than the drunken songs of hope and victory.
When the sun finally rose, a little girl in a white dress with curly red hair wandered past a few passed out patrons to drink in the bronze statues. She looked at the faces and pointed her finger at the two heroes’ heads, asking a question no one knew how to answer.
“Why are her eyes blue and his eyes green?”
Frozen in Time
When I first read the words “Buried Alive,” my mind was flooded with images of the undead. But I am not a fan of zombies. In fact, I find them to be plain boring. I’m also just generally not a fan of horror and monsters — at least in their traditional Western interpretations.
So, I started thinking about the other ways in which we humans are immortalized. That soon solidified around the concepts of memory and legacy.
Playing with the scale of time and shifting perspective away from Lathis allowed to stretch things out over the span of generations. The callback to the celebratory parade becomes all the more tragic, at least in my eyes.
In the end, Lathis and Cristalla kept their promise to each other. The circumstance of their deaths notwithstanding, our two heroes witnessed the glory of their achievements, if only as artistic representations of who they once may have been.
I believe that’s more appropriate to what often happens in real life.
An imagined reality frozen in time that becomes a fragment of our fractured history.
A melancholic edge that better matches me and my writing style than uncomfortable descriptions of risen souls and unnatural lives.
Let me know what you think!
Until next time,
JMB
In watching the moment when all the messy, tragic particulars have been smoothed into the bronze of legend, it's so satisfying to have the little girl's final question.
Great mini-series, John! Thanks so much for participating in the fun of Stacktember despite not being a horror fan 🧿