Burden of Fire

The Burden of Fire


By

Jarred Ingersoll





He saw the god’s face. The perfectly sculpted features stood out in the crowd like a bolt of lightning against a storm-laden sky. Anyone standing near the radiant being looked like an ill formed bipedal lump of clay.

Ben closed his eyes, afraid that he had forgotten to take his pills again. He tried to breathe slowly, deeply like he had been taught. The god was just a hallucination, a chemical imbalance in his brain. He took another breath of the cold winter air and opened his eyes.

The god was gone. All that was left were crowded streets. Snow flurries drifted down from a close, gray sky. The tops of the skyscrapers were lost in the heavy clouds. Throngs of people walked past wrapped in scarves and long coats. They were hunched over at the shoulders as if they were Atlas and the sky was the world.

Ben looked at every face, but there was no radiance, no beauty, just flesh. He shuddered, a movement that started in his shoulders and rippled down his body. With another deep breath to steady himself, Ben started to walk down the sidewalk.

He couldn’t be late, not today. This was his first day at a new job.

Ben sat at his desk and tried not to stare at his new boss’s chins. They cascaded from Mr. Baccu’s face like wax rolling down a candle. He was the dominant feature of the room, as if he were Jupiter and all the other workers gravitated around him like tiny moons.

Upon arrival at the company, Ben had been given a short tour and brief introductions to his coworkers. He’d filled out several forms for the Human Resources department and then was sent to Mr. Baccu for training. The training had taken ten minutes. Ten minutes in which Ben tried not to stare at the striations of sweat on Mr. Baccu’s shirt, each line corresponding to a roll of fat.

Now Ben was comparing numbers, numbers and more numbers. They were endless, an infinite scroll of numbers that kept rolling across his screen. He didn’t even know what the numbers represented, just that they appeared on the screen and he had to check them against a piece of paper. He kept at it though. Ben needed the job.

The work floor was arranged in a maze of half wall cubicles. The short, carpeted walls strived vainly to give each person a sense of their own space in the office. Mr. Baccu was staring at Ben with a knowing look over the top of the ineffective barriers. That was the problem with having your psychiatrist find you a job. Bosses would always stare. They would wait and watch for the smallest sign of psychosis, like a birdwatcher spying some interesting new species through their binoculars.

The numbers kept coming across the screen like a train without an end. Ben would look at the computer, then look at the paper. If they were the same he hit enter. If the number was wrong, he corrected it. The numbers were never wrong, so everything was just enter, enter, enter.

A small, angry voice in Ben’s mind kept screaming, “No! I am better than this! I am powerful and this should not be me!” Ben tried not to listen, tried not to hear the pain and frustration of the voice in his head.

Still the numbers crept across the screen. Enter. Enter. Enter.

Ten o’clock was break time. Ben paused the program and got up from his desk. Everyone was filing out of the room, even Mr. Baccu, who had to use a cane to help support his immensity. Ben took the stairs down to the cafeteria, so he could avoid the line for the elevator.

Ben bought a bottle of water and sat down at a vacant table. The cafeteria was warmly lit, and smelled like coffee and fresh baked bread. The walls were painted with blues and greens that reminded Ben of spring. A low babble of conversation filled the air.

Ben looked around, then took a small plastic bag out of his pocket and took one of the red pills inside. There was order to the pills, green when he woke up, red in the morning, another green at lunch, and another red for dinner, a pharmaceutical Christmas.

Ben walked to the bank of pay phones against one wall. He put in two quarters and dialed a number from memory.

“Doctor Herac’s office, how may I help you?” the receptionist, Dora, answered.
“Dora, this is Benjamin Fire. Can I talk to Doctor Herac?”

“He’s at lunch,” she said in her nasal tone. “Can I take a message?”

“I need to see him today. Can I make an appointment for this afternoon?”

Dora checked the schedule and informed him that there was an opening at five. Ben, who got off work at four-thirty, said that was fine and hung up the phone.

The fifteen-minute break ended. Ben was last in line for the elevator and so had to ride up with Mr. Baccu. Ben felt suffocated by the man’s mass. As the lift ascended, Mr. Baccu took a drink from a can of Diet Coke.

“Ah,” he smacked his fleshy lips, “the nectar of the gods.”

Ben cringed. How much had Doctor Herac told Mr. Baccu, how much did the fat man know? The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Ben walked to his desk. The god was sitting in his chair.

Warm light, like the summer sun, emanated from the god’s skin. The fluorescent lights were wan and bleak in the presence of divinity. Ben shook his head. The god wasn’t real. He was not sitting in Ben’s chair. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Not real. Not real. Not real.

Ben opened his eyes. The god was still there, smiling; his white teeth shining in the perfect mouth on the perfect face. No one was really sitting in his chair. The god was a hallucination. Ben took another deep breath. Coworkers were beginning to stare. He could see Mr. Baccu’s dull, blue eyes looking at him, noting this eccentricity.

Not real. The god was not real. Ben took a deep breath. “Get out of my chair,” Ben muttered quietly. Everyone was watching, their stares of curiosity and amusement were like heavy chains draped over Ben’s shoulders.

He closed his eyes. This was not happening.

When he looked again, the god was gone. He collapsed into his chair, his body gone limp with relief. Slowly, people stopped staring and went back to work. Ben, hand shaking, started the number program rolling.

Minutes ticked past as numbers marched by and Ben hit the enter key, again, again, and again. The repetition was numbing, which for a while was a good thing for Ben. No need to think about gods.

The numbers were the same, same, same. Enter. Enter. Enter.

The god came back. Ben kept his head down and stared at the screen. Ben wouldn’t look, but he knew: a golden radiance standing behind him, laughter that boomed and echoed against the walls, a glimpse out of the corner of his eye that showed pristine cloth draped over chiseled muscle.

A scream was welling up in Ben’s throat. He wanted to yell and rant at the god. He wanted to tell him to leave him alone. Ben kept in the rage, the yelling, and the sense of impotent frustration. No sense giving the god satisfaction.

Everyone else near Ben kept to his or her work. They pretended the god didn’t exist. Ben wanted to reach out and shake them, make them confront the damn capering god. Why weren’t they standing up and telling the fool to sit down and quit his laughing.

A sharp, slashing pain spread through Ben’s stomach. The hurt made him focus. He took a deep breath. The pain in his stomach was always a precursor to a bad episode. He stared at the screen. The medicine would help him.

Not real. Enter. Not real. Enter.

The god was gone for the moment, but Mr. Baccu was staring at Ben again. Ben tried to smile to show him that everything was okay. The smile was pained, an expression of unease. Ben focused on the numbers. He had to keep working, keep everything inside.

The god put his head next to Ben’s and watched him work.


Lunchtime. Ben bought a roast beef sandwich and another bottle of water. He sat by himself, watching his coworkers eat, talk and laugh. Occasionally one of them would take a hurried glance at him. This was not the first impression that he had wanted to make.

A group of people had gathered around Mr. Baccu’s table. From their rapt expressions the fat man was enthralling them with some anecdote. From the occasional stares he was getting, Ben surmised he was the topic. How much had Doctor Herac told the fat man?

Ben finished his roast beef. The god watched him chew the last bite. Ben took his green pill from his pocket, stared directly into the god’s sapphire eyes, and swallowed it with the last drink of water in the bottle. The god raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow and smiled. Ben got up and went outside.

Snow still trickled from the sky in big, wet flakes. The cold slid into Ben like an eagle’s talons. He felt momentarily clearheaded as if a bad fever had just burned itself out.

“What’s it like?” a woman asked. She was blonde, cute and looked like she would be ideal to play a nymph in a play. Her breath was a blossom of fog in the cold air. She was smoking a cigarette. As she took a drag, the glowing ember transfixed Ben.

“What’s what like?” Ben asked.

“Having schizophrenia?”

She had been sitting at Mr. Baccu’s table.

“Like having your brain torn out.” Ben answered and then went back inside.


Numbers. Numbers. Numbers.

They no longer soothed, they were no longer a distraction, the numbers just kept beating at Ben’s brain. Was this what his life had come to? Ben shook his head. He needed this job. No one else would hire him.

Through the windows, Ben could see the flat, gray clouds riding ever lower like a snow-laden tide. The god was sitting on his desk, smug and perfect. Ben tried to focus on his computer. Still he sat there smiling at Ben. The cloth that wrapped his body was so brilliant that it made Ben’s white shirt look gray.

Not real.

The rest of the office kept working, ignoring the god like pedestrians passing by a homeless man. The cigarette blonde sat two desks over. Ben wanted to scream at her to turn around and look, look at what he had to deal with while he was trying to work. How was he supposed to concentrate with this immortal ass sitting and staring at him?

The god leaned down and whispered in Ben’s ear. “What have you come to?” The god’s voice was smooth, the sound of a melody played on a harp.

Ben gritted his teeth. He hit the return key again and again.

“You don’t know why you are here,” the god said. “You were mighty and now... now you are scorned by those you tried to help. Brought low by your own arrogance.”

The god had little wings attached to his ankles. Ben wanted to rip them off, tear them from the god’s flesh. He wanted to see the god’s blood; he wanted to hear the god scream.

“So sad that you didn’t predict this for yourself.” The god shook his head in amusement.

A scream burned in Ben’s throat. He wanted to rage and yell at this haughty, smug being. He wanted to throw him to the floor and stomp his perfect face, grind it into nothing with his foot.

“I hope you spend eternity like this.”

Ben’s hands shook. Who did this god think he was?

“Pathetic.” The god said with a golden smile.

“Shut up!” Ben screamed as he jumped up from his chair. “Shut up! You will not speak to me that way!”

Everyone in the office was staring at Ben. Mr. Baccu had pulled himself to his feet using his desk for support. His mouth gaped like a surprised hippo.

“After everything you’ve done for them and look at how they stare at you,” the god commented.

“Do not speak! Do you hear his arrogance? This god who thinks he is better than me?” Ben yelled at the blonde two desks over. “How can you listen to such lies and say nothing!”

The cigarette blonde stared at Ben in stunned disbelief.

“They all think you’re crazy,” the god pointed out.

Ben lunged at the god. He wanted to grab him, break him, smash the smug golden smile. He wanted to take the radiant perfection and beat him, crush him until he was a dirty, soiled pile of skin and cracked bones.

The god disappeared.

“Mr. Fire,” Mr. Baccu had lumbered over. “Please calm down.” The obese, monstrosity of a man had a knowing look in his eyes, as if he’d expected this.

Ben screamed. He ran out of the room.


The snow and mud were soaking through Ben’s pants. He was kneeling by a river, shivering from cold, rage and frustration. He didn’t precisely remember how he’d gotten there, but that didn’t matter. The river moved past, flat and gray as the sky.

Ben cried.

“You’ve been summoned.” A melodious voice said.

Ben looked up. The god stood there, imperious and beautiful.

“You aren’t real.” Ben mumbled.

“You’ve been summoned,” the god repeated.

Tears ran down Ben’s cold face like comets.

The god reached down and pulled Ben to a standing position. He grasped Ben by the shoulder and they leapt into the air. They flew as if they were the very wind that rushed by them. The world rolled away under them, mountains, land and oceans like a blurred stream. The tears on Ben’s face froze. They were above the clouds, sheltered by the blue sky.

Slowly, in front of them, Ben could see where they were heading. A city built on a mountaintop, wreathed in clouds. Spires as delicate as spider webs rose from palaces the color of the sunset.

Ben could only mutter, “Not real.”

The god flew them through the city so fast that it was just a blur of vibrant color: golds and crimson, silver and blues, every shade of purple. They pulled up sharply in front of a palace so massive it disappeared over the horizon. In front was a garden with a large throne in its center. Hundreds of gods were gathered around the throne and the great, bearded god that sat there.

Ben was dumped unceremoniously in front of the marble chair.

“None of this is real,” Ben pleaded.

The great bearded god laughed and all the heavens rang with his mirth. “But of course it is.”

The gods whispered back and forth a susurrus of humorous wit.

“Why is this happening to me?” Ben pleaded.

“Because you defied me,” The bearded god said. “For that you must be punished.”

“What punishment?”

The great god shook his head and an electric quick smile flashed across his face. “I stripped your memory of yourself and replaced it with that of a flawed human.” Ben felt lost, as if reality were a slippery slope and he was sliding away. “From time to time I bring you here to revive your memory and amuse myself.”

The other gods laughed, the sound of chimes in a wind. Ben looked around at all the perfect faces. Despite their amusement, hatred seethed on every beautiful visage.

“Why?” Ben asked.

“Because, how can having your liver torn out even compare to having your mind torn out again, again and again,” the god’s thundering laughter echoed out.
Ben hung his head, wanting this to end.

The mighty god approached and placed a hand on Ben’s head. Memory came crashing back; clay and creation, fire and chains, eagles and pain. It was overwhelming. All the torments, all the injustice pounded and thrust back into his head. He saw all the times he’d lost his mind and wanted to scream and shake the heavens from their lofty perch. He wanted to fling the gods to the filthy earth.

“Who are you?” Zeus asked.

“I am a Titan. I am Prometheus!”