Fireflies

Flash Fiction by E. Rathke

I see nothing but the fireflies.

I remember no faces, for they left me long ago.

Voices trickle down forgotten hallways and whirl round me blending indistinct and incomprehensible in the blackness.

I have lived here too long to be lost, but the rooms no longer hold shape. I drift between the walls, my movements dictated by habit through this spectral world.

But the fireflies blaze and resonate to lend form and structure to this ghostlife in the land of amorphous phantoms.

My father and I ran into the summer nights that smelled of bonfires to capture them in mason jars. When people die, their souls fly into the stars and shine there with the past, he told me, and when they grow lonely in the infinite blackness of the sky, they return as fireflies to shine over their families on earth.

Lanterns made from glass and the dead souls of the past flickered beside me every night to protect my dreams. If you listen close, you’ll hear what they have to say, he said while tucking me in bed. I never slept better.

I was ten when my father, dressed in the only suit he ever wore, lay motionless beneath the tears of my mother and the eulogy of Father Thomas.

That night I caught every firefly in the neighborhood. I filled every mason jar I could find with the flickering lights of the past, hoping he was one of them. That summer, the fireflies filled my room, and I held the jars to my ear, listening for him. I often brought the jars to keep his body company and reunite the soul, the past, and the present.

Gerry, a woman’s voice calls, and footsteps click. Do you wanna shave that beard?

The sound echoes and shakes the ghosts from me. My face bushes out, but my scalp feels smooth. The voice floats forgotten.

My memories disintegrated; the past comes unstructured to me in blinking images, fleeting and ambiguous. The endless night fell when I caught my wife in a mason jar. A daughter born from my wife’s flight to the stars may still live, but her name and face escape, for I have never seen them.

Gerry?

The name means nothing, for I am no longer.

My heart no longer beats.

But my blood lives.

If only for the fireflies.

A hand runs through my beard; it is soft like satin and smells of oranges. A tender voice crawls through space, Should we get rid of this thing?

I speak no words because I know not the voice.

Won’t you ever speak to me?

Her voice crumbles, but I feel nothing, for she is only another phantom wandering with the others.

The orange-scented hands hold my face and tilt it upward into the suns I have forgotten. Gerry, she whispers warm breath against my cheek, the fireflies return tonight.

The fireflies swarm and fill only 100 nights of the year. My father told me, The memories of centuries flicker during ‘The Season of the Dead Souls’ to light up the world.

The months become nameless, for my mind deteriorates. The world fades, leaving me neither the past nor the present. There is only ‘The Season of the Dead Souls’ or nothingness.

Spectres bury me in silent neverending darkness.

The voice with orange-scented hands sits near me, reading aloud. I wait, and her words drift in and out like tinkering bells.

I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all

That is not it at all, that is not what I meant, at all

            They are here.

            Till human voices wake us, and we drown

Quiet, my voice crackles like glass shattered on gravel.

Her reading stops, and I hear a song far away, reaching from the past.

Woman, I say, help me out of this chair.

Yeah, okay, Gerry, her breathless voice rushes, Where do you wanna go?

A hand reaches under my elbow, and I lean on it to rise.

Bloodred stars flicker faintly, far away. The house, no longer dimensionless and habitual, becomes knowable in hues of blackened red. The woman’s face is young and furrowed, but I do not recognize it. My steps shuffle to the door and walk into the flaring light.

Her voice follows me, but I do not listen, for the fireflies emerge.

The world blazes into a crimson and indigo existence. No longer shuffling, steps become deliberate strides leading me over the prickling grass past the collapsing spirits and into the constructed night. The fireflies surround me, and memories shimmer. My hands reach into the shining past where I see. My blood flows, reminding me that I still live. Centuries of the past collide with the present in a supernova illuminating the world. Their voices envelope my soul and reverberate through me. I no longer capture fireflies, for I live in them, and they watch over me, resonating. They resurrect me. Tears fall when their faces appear, all of the dead remembered, smiling at me. Their voices pour into the night, singing to me.

They sing to me.

And I dance.

E. Rathke writes about books and games at radicaledward.substack.com. A finalist for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, he is the author of Glossolalia, Howl, and several other forthcoming novellas. His short fiction appears in Neon Hemlock, Mysterion Magazine, and elsewhere.