IMMOLATION: CHAPTER 46

White walls. White floor. White ceiling. White lights. Joan hated the color. Her cell was a perfect cube, and while Joan burned with as much intensity as she could muster, it was to no avail. No scorch marks, no ash, no sign that she even burned remained behind. It seemed her captors had finally found her a perfect prison. Some days, all Joan did was burn, others she sat on the floor and cried. Today, she paced around the edges of her room with a low burn on to warm her cell. Days went by without any contact with the outside world so she hummed and talked to herself from time to time just so she could hear the sound of a friendly voice.

“Joan,” a voice announced over the loudspeaker hidden somewhere above her cell, out of range of her fire. It was a pleasant voice, and Joan was thankful for that. She couldn't remember when it had taken over the loudspeaker but it was certainly an improvement from the guards who'd controlled it before.

“Yes, I'm here,” Joan replied, pausing in her walk and pulling her fire back in. They liked it when she did that.

“Your letters have arrived and they're waiting for you,” the voice said.

Joan leaped to the door, eagerly awaiting for it to unlock and slide open. The only times they let her out were when she received letters, and the only person who wrote to her was Tom. He'd kept his promise, writing everyday, and she wrote him back. The only problem was, with the country in its current state the mail was only being delivered once a week.

Perhaps it was better this way, Joan thought to herself as the door to her cell opened and she walked out into the fresh air of the enclosure beyond. This way she could spend several hours out of her cell, reading through Tom's letters and writing responses to each one before having to go back to her cell. The stack of letters slid through a small opening on the far side of the enclosure and Joan ran to pick them up.

“How are you doing today?” the voice asked over the intercom as Joan sorted through the letters.

Joan was always careful to get the letters in order before reading them.

“Joan?” the voice prompted.

“What?” Joan asked, distracted and annoyed with the voice. All she wanted to do was lose herself in reading and writing letters.

“How are you doing, Joan?” the voice asked again.

“Fine,” Joan said, finding the first letter and tearing it open.

Dear Joan, she read, I hope this finds you well. Or at least better than last week. Things here are going well—

“Joan?” the voice interrupted.

“WHAT!” Joan shouted up to the voice. Her finger tips singed the edges of Tom's letter and Joan glared from the burned letter to the observation deck and back again. “Look what you've made me do!” she cried out. Tom's letters were like gold to her and now this one was damaged. Burned, like Tom.

“I'm sorry, Joan,” the voice said, and it sounded earnest enough, though that did little to assuage Joan's emotions. “But please,” the voice went on, “it's been so long since you've let me come visit you.”

Joan ignored the voice, quelling the fire within that was struggling to burst out. Flakes of charred paper fell away from the letter but, thankfully, none of the writing was lost. She smoothed the page out lovingly.

“See,” Joan said to herself, “it's not so bad.”

Joan went back to reading her letters, devouring Tom's handwriting. It had improved quite a lot over the weeks that they'd been writing to one another. The first several letters were almost illegible. Tom's writing was still shaky but at least his letters didn't look like they'd been written by a first grader anymore.

I got a cat, Joan read, but I can't think of a good name for him. I've included a picture of him so you can help me out.

Joan picked up the envelope this letter had come from and found the picture. A sleek, black cat with white and orange markings was eating from its bowl in the picture. Joan had never seen a cat with such coloring and could see why finding a name would be difficult. She returned to the letter.

He likes being held, but not being scratched. He'll sit on my lap for hours, purring, as long as I don't touch him. Whenever I do try to pet him he bats my hands away. Sometimes he'll bite if I don't stop right away, but I can't feel it.

Joan frowned. She hated it whenever she was reminded of how badly she'd burned Tom and she quickly finished reading the letter, eager to move on in the hopes of finding happier news.

Tom's remaining letters spoke about his parents, his cat, and his healing. In his final letter he told Joan that his face had begun to get some feeling back, discovered when he awoke that morning with the cat's tail flicking and tickling his nose. Joan clutched this letter to her chest in her ecstasy at the good news before moving on to writing her daily letter to Tom.

She told him about her cell, but not about how she hated it. She wrote about the new voice on the intercom, but left out how it had upset her and that she'd burned his letter. Joan even dared to tell Tom that she'd had a dream about the two of them, though she failed to write down that the dream was about her burning the world and leaving only Tom and herself behind. Tom didn't need to read about the bad things in her life, he had enough pain to deal with already. When she finished her letter, she folded it up and slipped it through the slot that Tom's letters had been put through. Her guards would take care of the envelope and stamp.

Finished with reading her weekly supply of letters, Joan tucked them away in her shirt for safe keeping until she was back in her cell where she could put them in her locker where they'd be safe from her fire. As she turned around to return to her cell she was surprised to see a woman standing there in place of her cell. Where her cell had gone she had no idea.

“Hello,” the woman said. She wasn't dressed like a guard and neither did she wear the same type of jumper that Joan wore. Instead, she wore jeans and a T-shirt.

Joan didn't say anything. The shock of suddenly being confronted with this person and the disappearance of her cell was more than she could take in.

“Joan?” the woman said, “It's me, don't you recognize me?”

Joan wasn't listening. Instead, she was scouring the ground, looking for any sign of her cell and all she found was a pile of rocks lining the perimeter of where the cell should have been.

“What did you do?” Joan asked excitedly.

The other woman looked around uncertainly. “I didn't do anything,” she said.

“But the cell,” Joan said and she moved around the pile of rocks, kicking some of them over, “You destroyed it.” Joan practically leaped into the air with triumphant glee and she proceeded to scatter more of the rocks.

“There never was a cell, Joan,” the woman said uncomfortably as Joan threw handfuls of rocks around the enclosure. “You stacked those rocks yourself.”

Joan hesitated, something in the back of her mind nagging at her like a cog in a gear box slipping into place. “Say that again,” Joan said.

“You put the rocks there, Joan,” she said.

Joan looked back to the letter slot, then back to the woman and the remnants of the rock pile. In the far corner she could just make out the edges of several letters tucked beneath the rocks. Joan moved over to them and pulled them out. Al of Tom's letters, safe and sound, tucked beneath the rocks.

“These were in my locker,” Joan said, confused.

“You've been putting them there the whole time,” the woman said. “Do you remember me?”

That last question sounded as though it was as much of a realization for the woman as it was for Joan to discover her letters beneath the rocks. Joan looked at her, hard, studying her face. The final piece clicked into place and Joan's eyes welled up with tears.

“Melanie?” Joan said and Melanie nodded.

Joan ran to her friend and embraced her.

“I'm losing it, Mel,” she said, fear etched into every syllable. “I can't keep on like this.”

Melanie didn't say anything, she just held Joan and let her cry.

*     *     *

 Thoughts on Joan's mental state? Thought's on Melanie and her behavior? Did it make sense, was it a surprise that it was Melanie at the end?