Ashes of Memories

The hot air burns your face, making you instinctively pull your head into your shoulders. Before your eyes is a raging flame, devouring everything that should bring relief. The icons you placed so much hope in are writhing in the fire, as if damned. The walls are cracking like breaking bones. You came here, to the church, in a desperate attempt to get rid of him.

Ever since the fire took Elias, his ghost has haunted you everywhere. In reflections, in shadows, in the faces of passersby – you saw him everywhere. You almost forgot how to distinguish between sleep and reality, so much is reality intertwined with the pain of loss.

And yet, this is not just a nightmare.

In the very heart of the flame, in the very epicenter of chaos, he stands. His silhouette, burned into your memory, dressed in that same formal suit that he loved to wear to important meetings. His facial features... so familiar, just like in old photographs.

You reach out your hand, trembling and uncertain, as if afraid to destroy a fragile illusion, as if afraid to touch a ghost that you simultaneously hate and love with all your heart.

He looks at you. What's in his eyes? You're afraid to read it, afraid to know the truth, afraid to realize that it's all just a figment of your imagination.

And then he takes a step. One step towards you, through the fire...