The fire sees everything as it feeds. Gold filigree peels away under the heat. Skeletal wooden
beams come crashing in succession.
The oil paintings hanging on the walls drip down, colours and faces crawling from the canvas
onto the ground. Red and black and flesh warp into one as hungry brushstrokes flee their
gilded frames.
Mary on the altar screams as she falls to her knees. Calloused hands hold her gently when she
dies. Thousands of small cuts dissolve; she is nothing once again.
Indulgences are licked away by starving flames, divine favour carried to ash by the
unforgiving wind.
Open windows blow fury into twisting tongues of fire.
Oxygen, oxygen, freedom.
Silk dresses in the wardrobe catch like dry kindling. Before combustion, it turns flesh –
writhing, bleeding pennies, spinning threads with swollen empty fingers.
The chandelier hangs, suspended. Hundreds of brilliant cut crystals rain from their brief
heaven, crying blood, glinting malice, landing as dull ore in soft plinks against the marble
floor.
Little shattering sounds go unheard, in death as in life – buried beneath the weight of a
crumbling house, swallowed by the destruction before they have the chance to screech.
Art is brief, and the fire is hungry; it wants to eat. It undoes stitches into tears, turns stone
walls into shrieks of tortured slaves, each slab of marble a lashing against their outturned
skin.
A cacophony screams where the mausoleum once stood. The fire burns on, reaching higher
and higher and higher, as little wisps of secrets creep silently out of the smoke.
Oil Paintings
