The Burning Man

Photographer - Tobi Brun

The Burning Man

Up on a hill, in a lonely forgotten part of this strange place there stands a man. He is not a good man, nor a particularly bad one, but he is a tall man; so tall his shadow stretches to the boundary of this strange history park. He’s stood here before, many times in fact. He’s stood here in the rain and the sun, with the biting chill of the winter wind against his cold cheeks. He’s stood here looking down at them: the people in coats and warm scarves; the women and children with their faces painted blue, yellow and red; and the men in such peculiar armour. It’s an odd sight to look at, this show they perform for him ...this spectacle of human audacity.

They do it for him, each year they come in their hundreds, carrying their baskets of food and warm drinks for when the night’s frost starts to creep in. Every year the soldiers come down from their encampment – their armour is strange and metallic; their tunics are made of red thread and if one were to lift up the faces of these strange actors, one might notice a uniform scar under each chin. As if the straps of their helmets were not formed to keep a human skull from harm at all. There are others down on the field, men and women in bright coloured cloths of yellow, and blue, and brown. The only metal these phantoms wear is around their arms, huge bands of gold that loop like dragons around their too pale flesh. The man remembers them all as he looks back down onto that empty field before him: he remembers how their clothes flailed in the wind as they faced each other. Romans...Romans and Celts they named themselves as they rattled their spears, and their shields and screamed at one another. And all the while the man looked on, unafraid because none of this was real – it was all just a play. These were not real soldiers, these were not real Romans or Celts, these were players, dolls in the game before him. The other people knew it too, the people in chairs off to the side – it’s all a game, no one dies in this battle today. A brief show for the onlookers while they wait for night to
come. This is how it’s always been, all this time the man has stood here under the stars – this has always been his role in their game. He has stood here before, in many different bodies: sometimes he’s tall and shapely like a woman, sometimes he is short, his body square and as unnatural as this whole night must look. It’s always this hill he stands on when it happens, when the crowd gather, and they come. They come with their torches, and their lighters and they gather at his feet...at his large wicker made feet.

‘Alright,’ cries the false Roman. ‘Who wants to see him burn?’

Every year the crowd screams back to him, and everyway year it’s always the same answer.

‘Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!’

He hates this part, hates the heat of the flames as they rise up his legs, and his torso, until they cover his entire body. There are red sparks everywhere he looks, and the fire inside him is brighter than the stars. But he doesn’t scream, for they have not made him a mouth to do so. He is burning, and his whole world is that pain, that searing crackle as the paper and the straw in his belly catch light. This is his life – to watch and to burn, and then when it is all over his memory will stand here until next year, when the cycle begins again. Except it doesn’t because this year there’s no new body for him, and no Roman to burn it, for there’s no park anymore. It’s empty and as silent as he is now, and on his hill, made flat from his many different bodies, he stands and watches that silent park. It will soon be winter, he can feel the ice on his phantom cheeks, he’s so very cold, and he thinks how fine it would be to be a fire. Still he remembers their laughter, and their battles and their flames. He remembers them all, for there is nothing else left. Only memories like him stay here now, and even they will fade when there is nothing else left to burn.

Charlotte Burnett is dyslexic and a high-functioning autistic. She lives in Scotland, and has had short stories published in literary journals such as The Write Launch and Coffin Bell. She also has a Bachelor’s in Science from the Open University, focusing on Psychology and Sociology.