Link to article: Ashes, Ashes.
:scp-wiki:theme:ad-abyssum-penumbra
:scp-wiki:component:license-box
:scp-wiki:component:license-box-end
[[include :scp-wiki:theme:ad-abyssum-penumbra]] [[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] When you were young, you stared a long while into fires. In your earliest memory, the wind is whistling and you are smothered by blankets, sitting on a towel, staring at a fire. Your parents are worried, your teeth are chattering. And you reach your hands before the hearth – and though you can’t remember this now, you are suddenly snapped into consciousness. It is calling to you, that thing in the fire, its face carved out of the contours; orange eyes, red cheekbones. > This wasn’t my first memory. Ah, forgive me. Your first religious memory, then. The thing is staring back at you from within the fire, a warm smile on its face. And you knew you would be OK as long as it was there. Through middle school, high school, you’d sleep next to a candle for good luck. A blur of softball practice and prayer meetings and the other dusty trappings of Catholic school. The material of the uniform was itchy and poorly fitting, you stood in front of the mirror in your room and attempted styling it. A girl kissed you playing spin the bottle in some LED-drenched bedroom so you tried hard keeping it off of your mind in class and you lowered your head down to candles with saints. You were praying hard, but you knew it was wrong, didn’t you? Still, you were getting better at keeping your eyes off of the flames. Moments swim, flicker, burn. Lighting up in a park with friends. Parents yelling, you cry in your room, your head spins. You shove your special candle into a desk-drawer. You and your girlfriend make out behind a staircase which feels horrible and awkward in a good way. Firecrackers explode around you in a field. You're screaming, your leg is snapped; you let the team down. For days you are suffocated in fluorescents at the emergency room. Halls of a church, you bend a knee and light a candle; you think of the psychopomp. Ashes, ashes. Wincing under a stick-and-poke as a triangle is grafted behind your ear. You rub it before every game, you consistently play MVP. Christmas time becomes your favorite holiday – you watch the Yule log for hours and it’s //normal.// You start getting college junk-mail. Your room starts smelling like burning paper. The fire takes, the smell of smoke, hot sauce burns your mouth, firecrackers and smoke and prayer and– You burn your hand on a stove and don’t realize until your mother pulls your hand away. Your palm is peeling. She cries. You don’t feel anything at all. Four years later you’re studying abroad in Sweden and you meet a guy named Stefan and he’s like you. His apartment is blisteringly hot and he keeps incense burning most of the day, and he seems ashamed of it when you ask. Until you tell him your story. You’re dancing around a pyre as it’s lit. The others have burn scars along their body, ceremonial chars across their arms and face, the room is pitch dark but for firelight. Your heart feels full for the first time and you believe in something real and you //swear// you start to see something beyond the edges of the fire, something real. > Where am I really? …Fair enough. We’re currently in the subbasement of a research site. If it matters, we’re in Ontario. > OK. Wow. You took me here after the raid? We were actually just about to get there, if you'll let me finish. > It all really happened, then. Yes. > And who are you? FBI? Saul Seoman, I run the Atheistics Division of the SCP Foundation’s Tactical Theology Department– > Why are you here, what is all of this? Your past, kid. We’ve got you hooked onto machines that help us sift through memories. As for me, we’ve found it’s useful to be talked through the process. Keep things focused, I guess. > You said Theology? Tactical Theology? What, killing gods? Among other things. I’m actually so glad you said that, watch closely. You stand next to me, watching your own memories play out before you. In another world you’re sat across from me deep underground, a monitor is reading a cross-section of your brain. You see yourself dancing around the fire, until you see something //so very real// begin to loom out from the blaze, beautiful and terrible. Its eyes are hot coals and its skin is molten. The room is blindingly bright, you cry from the radiance of it. The walls split open, and profane sunlight spills across the floor towards the center of the room. Soldiers like locusts swarm the room. //Everybody down the target’s in sight what is that thing waiting on the all-clear.// I take your shoulder for this next part. The Fire, hungry, attempts to speak over the noise. One of the soldiers walks through the haze of heat behind it and levels a weapon against its neck. You try to close your eyes, like you did when you were here physically. I make you watch. You fall to your knees. You try not to believe, you really do try. Tears stream down your face. Ashes, ashes. > You… you did this? No, no. Not me. The //Foundation.// The ashes were collected and contained, then the ritual to revive it was put onto file. All that to say, for what it’s worth, we didn’t kill it. > Why do this? I know it’s hard. I get it, kid, I really do. You were lied to, but that’s OK, it’s over now. Hey, hey, it’s all over now. This can all be fixed, OK? Look at me. We will fix you. > OK. How? You just need to understand that your good-luck-charm god was no god at all. It’s all a burning memory, //and the Foundation took it down//, and now it’s all behind you. > But… but I… You see yourself again by the fire, a spectator now. You watch a child shaking with the cold, covered in cuts. Thirty minutes before they fell through the ice atop a lake nearby and nearly died. They are fatally pale. Their eyes look desperate for anything to tell them that things will be OK; their mind is deluded with imagination; their hands reach towards the fire and invite in a lie. You see yourself lighting candles by your bed, and at this distance it seems perhaps you were just escaping the fear of being an outsider, the fear of being gay, the fear of your life turning its back on you. You see yourself touching behind your ear and all you can see is an above-average softball player scoring impressively, sure, but not impossibly. You watch your god die over and over and over until it is no god. Until your eyes sting from crying, and then until you cannot cry any longer, and then until your heart hollows out and leaves only logical processing to defend you. Somewhere else, underneath Ontario, you see again your brain in diagram, the colorful regions one-by-one go dark. The screen reads “Ambient Akiva Radiation," Saul glances to review the cross-section only for a moment. He smiles. You do not understand. > Is this all true? Which set of memories is real? This is what I’m trying to get through to you – what matters is which you choose to believe. My expertise is in giving you the clarity of what to believe in. > It’s all a lie then. What is the point? Of course. Hey, I get it. Everyone needs a purpose, right? A dream. My organization will get you back on your feet, OK? The Foundation can do //anything.// You see the lights, tiny at first, return to their twinkling on the diagram of your mind. > …Promise? I promise. Can you trust us? > I… trust you. Then let’s get to work. I think you’ll make a great researcher. [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]