The Last Ember of a Dying Fire
The world was a blur of gray and white the day I decided to burn down the past. It was an overcast afternoon, the kind that threatens rain but never delivers, mirroring the empty promises of a childhood lost too soon. My parents had passed away some years ago, leaving me with nothing but a legacy of pain and a house full of ghosts. I had distanced myself from them the moment I was old enough to understand that not all homes were battlegrounds, not all words were weapons, and not all touches left bruises.
I stood now at the threshold of the house I once called home, a structure that seemed smaller than I remembered, less menacing. Yet, the air around it was still thick with the echoes of screams and the scent of fear. It was a mausoleum of my darkest days, a monument to misery. And today, I was its executioner.
I've always been drawn to fire—not because of its destructive potential, but because of its cleansing properties. The flickering light of a candle gave me comfort as a boy in the middle of chaos as it was the only source of light in my otherwise gloomy environment. In the depths of my misery, it served as a ray of hope and a symbol of rebirth. Today, it would be my salvation.
I made my final entry into the house, holding a lighter in one hand and a canister of gasoline in the other. Every step seemed like walking through a gallery of nightmares, every chamber like a prison where a fragment of my soul was held captive. I poured gasoline all over the walls, the liquid drawing the contours of countless memories, each drop a tear shed in silence.
I stopped in the middle of the room that used to be a living room and was now a courthouse, where I was both the judge and the executioner. This has nothing to do with seeking retribution. It had to do with breaking free from the bonds that held me to a past that threatened to suppress my future. It was about turning suffering into strength and hopelessness into resolve.
I inhaled deeply and ignited the lighter. I let it fall, and the home burst into flames. I watched as everything was burnt by fire, the darkness that had covered my heart for so long being broken by the light.
I didn't stay to see the fire go out. I knew that the final traces of my history were turning to ashes even before I saw the embers disappear. I strode away like a man reborn from the flames, a phoenix rising from the wreckage of a life that was no longer mine, not as the broken boy who had previously traversed those hallways on shaky legs.
And so, as the house turned to ash behind me, I did not look back. For the first time in my life, the way forward was ablaze with light, and I was ready to walk into the dawn of a new day, a phoenix born from the ashes, free at last.