II. Triking down back to the nipa huts, Arthur thought deeply about the conversation he had with the man. To him, the city’s opportunities were never worth more than the tobacco leaves that stretched from acre-to-acre; generation-to-generation. Out of the blue, he saw clouds of smoke, appearing in a thick nimbus as if it was coming from the village—his home. Adrenaline surged through Arthur’s every beat. The ache of his bare, calloused feet wasn’t his main worry anymore. Because beyond the thick, phosphorous smog—there was a world to save. But his pleas for help and cries for anyone’s existence were merely verses to the symphony of the blazing choruses of the kerosene. The orange flames have tattered down everything to the charcoal ruins of history and sent them away on a wind-turned-dark from burning. It was as if it was a lie, the damnedest joke anyone could tell—the town was that of a marshmallow in a stick; toasted atop a bonfire, only to be served as ash. More than a leg of his body had been covered in soot, but it seemed as though he refused to burn. Slowly, steadily, footsteps were brushing against the village grounds. Faint, wan, and pallid, was the feeble gleam that came peeping over them. And there, the last remaining villagers saw—a foot, resembling that of a man, was bursting out of the pavement.
Dusting aside the debris, inch-by-inch; the body was found to be of Arthur’s.
And ergo, in what seems to be an act of God, his heart still beats. He hears a cesspooldeep murmuring behind the towering echoes of the inferno.
“Wake up Arthur, we have a city to burn.”
45
