The Incendiary

The match felt fragile in my hand. I regarded it carefully, but held it still, knowing that the slightest slip of my fingers in turning it over could snap the slender bit of wood and render it forever impotent. Such a small error, to jeopardize all I had done, all I had come here for. The early death of this match would grant the life of a world, but what a life! Selfishness, jealousy, hatred, the slippery thoughts on which civilization rests and feeds, the motives that build its towers always higher, always for the service of self to the few greedy enough to pursue their own happiness at any cost. I saw things differently. They looked to tomorrow, but I looked into the next year and the year after that and saw the wreck and the ruin that would befall all people for the sake of these few. Monsters. I was no better. I wailed and beat my fists against the wall of my own apathy for years, always seeing what needed to be done, but never daring to leave my comfortable shell. There were too many thoughts beyond its sturdy walls, too many ways of thinking that all seemed right and wrong in the same breath. How to tell? No one could tell me, so I did my best, and my best led me here to this moment. This match. Such a small, fragile thing.

You would think, with all my planning, that I would have brought along some spares. I did have some, as a matter of fact, but they all seemed to vanish like the actors in horror films, one by one by one, until this one was the only one left, the last remaining to do what needed to be done. It was almost as if fate chose it, as if it was destined to be the match I held right now, but that was silly. I did not believe in fate, or destiny. The very words left a sour taste in my mouth so strong as to almost overcome the cloying odor of gasoline that hung in the air. If destiny had a say in this, it would be screaming at me that this was someone else's path, someone else's fate. I was not the sort of person to do such a thing, such a horrible thing. But I smiled sadly at destiny and told it that nothing was meant to be that has not been, and that it should go find someone darker to torment with its road signs and mile markers. The trail I followed was narrow and steep, and I met few others on it. Everyone else I knew, even those who thought as I did, preferred the sunshine to the shadow, and failed the see the tragic beauty in those necessary parts of living that the whole planet avoids. Do not mistake my meaning; I was not a sad person. I do not revel in despair or wallow in depression. No, I weep for the darkness I see, for the horrific things that are inevitable in this world but must happen if it to be saved. Such a tragedy occurred two thousand years ago, and in the moment it happened it was the most heinous thing to ever befall the world. The facilitators of the event are reviled to this day, though without their actions the great victory would not have been won. I hated them along with the rest for the longest time, but now, standing here, I think I empathize with them, for the first and last time. Like them, I will go on living after this for a while. A day perhaps, or many years. I don't know. But while I will not be required to live with the guilt, I will have to live with the tears until the day I find myself home.

I took a chance and turned the match over in my hand. It did not break, and I held it more gently still.

Why me? I often asked that question to the silence. What had I done to be the recipient of such sight, such knowledge? The answer was nothing; I did not deserve the gift or the curse of knowledge. I was like the match, only a tool of something much larger, fragile, yet not breaking, for the hands that held me were gentle even as they swept the comforting curtain of civilization away. I had always had a feeling that I would live to see this day, but never had I thought to be the one to set it off. What I did here, tonight, would echo through whatever ages this world had left, but none would know it. The thought neither soothed nor saddened me. It was as it should be. All of this was. But deep inside I still cried why and left it at that, a hopeless query to the empty sky, clear as far as the stars tonight. Not one cloud to disguise the smoke, to slow the response. Not one cloud to drop rain on the blaze. It was a good night for this, and the thought made me angry. Why should such a horrible plan go so perfectly, why should no one rise up to stop me? Perhaps because any who had broken through and become as determined as I saw what needed to be done as well. Then why were they not here with me? I had no answers, only certainty, enough that all my doubts and fears could not cause my hand to shake or my will to waver.

I lifted the match to the empty matchbox and struck it. The flame burst into existence with ear splitting crack and burned brightly in the darkness, providing more paradoxes for my mind to circle. I held it up before my eyes to enjoy for a moment the beauty and warmth. It was a friend, this tiny flame, the closest friend I had at the moment. Its heat enveloped me, but I did not close my eyes to feel it, for that would have only invited the darkness in. Instead I leaned forward and brought my lips within centimeters of the light, giving it the gentlest breath I could. It danced in the extra oxygen and burned all the brighter for my kiss. I found joy in that, and thought no further, for what needed to be done would be done and there was no more room for doubts or mental soliloquies. The flame had been born, it had my blessing, such as it was, and now its journey would begin, and everything before it would fall. I felt that I should cry at this moment, but my eyes were dry and for the first time in my long charade I could not summon the tears. In that moment I truly felt the villain, in every way but one. 

Slowly I stretched out my arm and opened my fingers. Everything fell from them: the worry, the grief, the despicable lenses of the world. Now I could do nothing, gravity had taken over. If one could embrace gravity, I would have. The match turned end over end, half consumed by the flame that would blossom into a forest once it reached its end. Such a forest would spread unchecked, unstoppable, leaving behind ruin and rebirth. But the fire could not rise until it fell, much like all that spread before me.

Swiftly the flame descended, but I did not see it. I was already dead.