The Fire Baby

He had only a few seconds then to prepare. He had to close his eyes, he must, because the pain would be sweeping, a burning poker of agony thrust into his eye sockets and down into his brain. That first time the nerve ends had sizzled, like tiny caterpillars shrivelled on a hotplate.

But he had to open his eyes to savour the light, to relieve the human inkwell of darkness which was his life. An absence of light so total he sometimes forgot what sight was. So to ready his eyes he pressed his fingers into the sockets, producing the dancing colours which helped prepare for the light, even though they danced now with a half-hearted flickering voltage.

After the rusted hinge came the dog biscuit. He knew the dog, Atta, lived at the end of his corridor. Many people kicked him; some, surreptitiously, patted and fussed him. But only the jailer gave him the biscuit. He imagined the dog tossing the biscuit and crunching it further each time it was caught. A joyless meal which made the jailer laugh each time.

Then came the keyhole. There must have been a disc of metal covering the keyhole on the outside. The jailer flipped it up to insert the key and for a second a magical key-shaped beam crossed the cell and fell on the wall.

So he’d moved Freeman there, to catch the light. Freeman, who’d survived like he had, drifting down inert to the desert. Lyndon blamed himself for the injury. He’d panicked, hitting the button for the ejector seats before his co-pilot was ready. So he’d caught the canopy with his head, breaking the skin and the skull, and blackening his eyes. He held Freeman’s head in his hands sometimes, tenderly, feeling for the fractures beneath the skin, and the sickening click of the cranial plates which had been dislodged by the cockpit canopy.

But when the keyhole light fell on Freeman’s face his eyes never opened. For eighteen days they’d been in this solitary silence. And Freeman hadn’t moved; even though Lyndon gave him most of his food and cleaned the head wound with the water he craved so much to drink. But Freeman White lay still, stiller with each passing day. One day soon, Lyndon knew, the keyhole light would find his eyes forever open.

The jailer knew his business and the key turned in the lock and the door flew open with military swiftness. The light engulfed them. Direct sunlight. Lyndon’s eyes hurt so much he always cried out, while he scrabbled to his knees beside Freeman’s body.