Bonfire Night – A Short Story by Sascha A. Akhtar

“In the deafening silence since you stopped giving me words of any kind, in this grim arena of desolation in which I battle, the fireworks talking come as a relief.”

I lie on the bed in a heavy slump. Behind my eyelids, shut, is a deep, immersive silence that I am sinking slowly into. One firework is set off and erupts, followed by another violent sound and then another.

In the personal darkness I am engulfed in, each articulation of fire feels like an expression of my suffering. A whipping stroke of each gesture of cruelty you have inflicted on me.

The voices of the explosions are a tapestry in the night of past, present and future; a theatre of our lives. I grow expectant. The enunciation of each firecracker elaborates further on the story. The deep booms, I feel in my base, my root – the complete detonation of myself.

The faraway rat-a-tats, a mantra- quick, fast, feint, parry, thrust; your stabs.

Small bubbles of firelight rising above the trees like indigestion- the tiniest ornament of joy, the very last morsels of happy thought that you snatched away. A pin-prick; you bursting the soap bubbles we blew together in blissful dreaming.

Every now and then, there is a frenzy, as if there will be no end; one detonation after another takes place. I cannot see their hues and shapes from where I am in space but the torrential sound assails my senses.

In the deafening silence since you stopped giving me words of any kind, in this grim arena of desolation in which I battle, the fireworks talking come as a relief.

It is as if the sheer and utter limit that my frustration and despair have reached is being given a stage. It is as if my deepening, wounding desire to rip this silence into shreds of rage is being fulfilled. The nightmare I have fallen into whilst believing myself to have gone to sleep in the confidence of peaceful dreaming – this nightmare has assaulted me and taken me into its dark clutches.

How you left me here, is impossible to know. I am listening hard across the black sky, across the deep waters, across the voluminous continents, I am straining my hearing, digging my toes and feet into the earth, breathing strongly in the free air, I am trying to hear you, somewhere talking to me.

The fiery tongues engaging the atmosphere are taking on your voice. They are speaking of destruction and celebration in the same breath. They are shouting of pain and pleasure, both.

Your name remains a question drawn in the air, suspended in the sky indefinitely.