Michael Elmore
The Dirt Road
You awake on your dirt road, covered in your filth. Your head is hot, and your vision swims. The pain is nearly unbearable. Why must life be this way? you ask yourself. Tears stream forth from your heated eyes and cool your burning visage.
You begin to walk down your dirt road, towards your horizon. The distance is far, but you do not care. Your head is too full of pure thought to notice anything else. When you first awoke, the thoughts gathered in your forehead. Now that time has passed, the space is full, and their presence can be felt all the way down to your toes. They bump together creating a curious friction that causes heat. This heat fills your body, making you very uncomfortable.
Take this pain from me, you pray. You wonder if you will be able to handle the weight of this load that the Lord has placed upon you. You doubt that you will, and so the world begins to fade from your vision as the tears rise to take its place.
You stumble forward, and find that you have wandered from your road. High weeds now threaten to consume you, but you do not care for anything in that world anymore. The fire in your body consumes all, is all. The weeds cannot harm you.
You continue on, and your foot touches a small object, which is also yours. You look down, and see your gun. It is dull black and mostly featureless. How could I have forgotten? you ask yourself. God gave you this gift as a testament to your everlasting faith. It will provide you with all of the strength needed for the task at hand, and yet you had forgotten. You smite yourself for your insolence.
Now you continue on, but you still have no purpose. Your gun has become part of you. Your thoughts reside in it, and its in you. It guides you towards your destiny.
Your burning had gone, but it returns now. You drop your gun and fall to your knees. You close your eyes against your unbearable pain. In your self imposed darkness, you bear witness to your flames. You feel your fire consuming your body, your soul, your everything.
You open your eyes and see your gun. It too, burns in accordance with your pain. You pick it up, and look forwards. Your house stands before you, but those within are not yours. They have taken that which is yours. Now the grass burns, the shrubs burn, the trees burn, the house burns and the people burn, just as you, too, burn.