CHAPTER THREE

“Can you please not stand so close to my tree?” Haven asks firmly. “Your flames are melting the cotton candy.”

After daylight ends, and the souls retreat to their own limbos, the canvas around us remains transparent, and devoid of Haven's tree of delight, the endless space behind us is shadowed by an hour of day not perceptible beyond the dead’s understanding. It’s dark. A veil of black slowly descends upon us.

“I can’t help that I burn, Haven,” I reply. “Who knew that bizarre things like this can happen to your soul in the afterlife?” 

“It’s all the rage you have here. You’ve literally set yourself on fire.”

I take a few steps back and ignite the world behind us. One by one, hillsides plush and luxuriant with meadows where delicate poppies stand upright like red-staked lollipops show themselves to us for the first time; and we both fall in awe to the grand scheme growing bright inside a vast darkness. A mountain dressed in a milky white fog hat stands in both beauty and majesty. Its peak climbs into the above and beyond all we can make out in my fire aglow. I move left, and my flames kindle and pop like rice Krispies. I move right, and they dance embers up, up and away. Birds of all that are on Earth flock and lift the night sky with tempestuous lullabies. Distantly, we hear the sound of waves crashing softly into rock pylons on the shoreline of a great sea.

“Do you think there’s any place on Earth as gorgeous as this, Haven?” I say, gesturing with my burning hand. It extends light like a powerful torch. Haven is starstruck.

“No,” she says, “a place like this doesn’t exist there.”

“Let’s walk,” I say. “I’ll lead the way. After all, I’m the one with the light.” I swish myself around like I’m wearing a skirt, and we hear my flames crackle loudly.

Haven giggles sweetly and begins to carry on. 

“What?” I speak.

“You know what’s funny? Your name is Mercury Bernz, right?”

“Yes,” I say, confused.

“Well, you’re Mercury Bernz… and you’re burning.”

“Yes, but I don�"”

“Mercury Bernz is burning. Mercury Burns,” Haven adds, and we laugh and laugh like we are kids in third grade who hear another say that their dog ate their homework. Irony and simplicity bring humor here in this limbo.

Haven and I walk onward. A still night air strikes us gently and perfumes the aura with the crisp pheromones of fall solstice. My fire, Haven says, resurrects the scent of marshmallows roasting slowly. We both lavish for a moment and then come upon the water’s edge meeting velvet sand. The tide is a moonsong playing soundly through beached shells. The thought police are closing in for sleep. Haven and I stand and look out over the water. The quiet begins to take us until…

A bobbing burlap sack with its brown color-stained red floats onto the shore.

Haven looks at me; I look at her. And before the tide pulls it back into the sea, she picks the bag up and turns it over. Its neck spills out my severed head. Cold, blue and pallid. My hair�"black and matted to my temples, is tangled with loose twigs and roots. In the sockets, one eye is missing, and within, nightcrawlers slither in and out. The bag hurls my left arm, which was cut off at the elbow, behind my head. My right arm follows, fingertips cemented on my wrist. My torso is leaking blood from the knife wounds pitted within. My breasts are nowhere to be found.

The b*****d dissevered my breasts. What did he do with them? I think as Haven empties my legs, each clothed with High-Rise jeans that stink of mildew and decay, out of the bag. It is empty now.

My flames brighten Haven’s horrific and sorrowful expression as I approach closer. She is crying. I suppose she hadn’t quite understood how evil my father was when I had told her about the night I was killed. I tried to be as genuine as I could; I never gave one detail half-heartedly. My father is the worst man to ever live. Haven understands now. She nods complacently, sadness and disapproval excreting heavily.

I, on the other hand, am only reminded of the pain I endured in my short, meaningless, “NOTHING LIFE!” I scream. And when I did, my flames burst into a large smoldering inferno of wrath and fury. The blaze roared and spat luminous firestorm into a vortex of endless coordinates. 

“Mercury, please, calm down! You’re going to turn our piece of heaven into hell!” Haven shrills, dropping the bloody burlap to the sandy ground.

“Maybe I should be in hell, Haven!” I scream, hot flames spraying outward, inward, downward, sideways, upside down, inside out and upward.

“No, Mercury, you shouldn’t. You’re, you’re a wonderful soul! He’s the one who should be in hell! I had no idea it was this bad!” Haven says, reaching out to comfort me but pulling back from my elevated heat.

The burlap wafts over to me on the wind coming off the seatide. It lists like a sailing ship, left to right, and lands close to the flames fueling the night with luster. Through the mesh of blood, I see my mother covering the streets of Mill Shoals with questions of: “Have you seen my daughter, Mercury? Excuse me, please, have you seen this girl? Sir, mam, have you seen the girl in this picture?” With which they respond: “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t.” “No, mam, we’re sorry, we haven’t seen her.” 

“MOM! MOM! I’M HERE!” I cry out. I worry for my mother. Dark circles have bloomed under her eyes, and she’s lost a lot of weight. From this limbo I watch her go to bed hungry but too depressed to eat. She tends to Maggie quietly, now twelve and well on her way into maturity. This fact leads me to my father and how he’s beginning to look at Maggie the way he had me when I was alive. He can’t… “HE CAN’T HURT MY SISTER!”

The velocity of the flames shot off my shriek turned the bag, as well as the mirror reflecting the current status of my past Earth, into ashes, which spiraled from the impact of the tide and became enveloped in the darkness beyond the shore. 

“Mercury, you have to let go. You have no power on Earth now. Please, you’re dead. You must go on.”

I know I have to go on. But not yet… not until that b*****d is dead, too. 

Haven and I share contrasting looks: hers of pleading, mine of vengeance.