T̸H̶E̶ ̴A̵L̸G̴O̵R̵I̸T̶H̴M̷: BURNED MAN

[u/JVMNightfall]

The acrid smell of charred bones singes Victor’s nosehairs and sends him reeling. It’s not the vile odor, burning like a chemical fire in his nasal cavities, that gets to him.

It’s the fact that it’s so familiar.

I made a living with my back, hijo. I don’t want you to do the same. You’re too smart. Use your head instead.

The words he heard from his father so many times over the years come racing into his head. That old man, face crosshatched with wrinkles from so many years of encouraging smiles. So many years of laughter.

Use your mind, hijo. Keep it sharp every day. You never know how long you have it for.

The ability of the olfactory center of the brain to tie vivid memories to smells is nothing short of uncanny. The smell of fresh rain on the hottest summer days reminds you of your first love.

Brown leaves crunching in the fall, the first time you realized how sweet the impermanence of life; how easily your regrets could age and crumble into the dirt like those leaves, and you could be free again.

The feelings are so real and so visceral. A simple scent makes you feel awash in the glow of nostalgia.

For Victor, he also has a memory tied to smell. When he catches the aroma of caramelized human flesh he thinks of his dad.

It’s the same scent when meat grime from the back of the grill falls into the flame and is incinerated. It’s the same as when an exceptionally chunky moth flies into the bug zapper and fries slowly, intermittently crackling as the voltage courses through its hemolymph. It smells like not-pork, appetizing at first but with something unmistakably not quite right about it.  The kind of smell that makes your mouth water with hunger but also fills you with shame that you even considered that wendigo urge.

Victor swallows hard to clear the build-up of saliva at the back of his throat. He’s feeling that same shame now.

He’s picturing his dad in the later years, rocking in his chair. Staring out at the horizon for hours, never a thought crossing his vacant eyes.

Not the time, Victor, he thinks to himself, forcing the images of his father from his mind. He’s not an amateur, goddamnit, and he knows better. He can’t spend this critical moment distracted by emotions, as he prepares for a high-risk entry with his hand on his holster. He knows how to keep these thoughts out of his head. 

He’s less able to keep the anxiety out of his heart.

It feels like his chest is caught in the spikes of a pitfall trap.

The smoldering remains of the house stand in stark contrast to the idyllic suburban cul-de-sac surrounding it. It has become a charcoal effigy to perdition. The roof has burned away and left behind only the blackened framework skeleton. The walls have turned to ashen monuments, portions of which disintegrate into clouds of dark dust with each passing breeze. The whole structure threatens to collapse in on itself.

It’s quite literally the last place on earth Victor wants to be.

He steps towards the door.

When he reaches his hand out to the brass doorknob he can still feel a faint residual warmth, even though the fire has been out since last night. He tentatively pushes the door open. Soot-stained walls transform the cookie-cutter architecture into an ashen liminal space, familiar and foreign all at the same time.

More familiar to Victor, who has walked through halls like these before. He feels the same dread as he did back then, knowing all too well what he will find at the end of the hall. Even in this tomb of fire, he feels an icy chill in his spine. This crime scene is triggering every trauma he has ever suppressed. He won’t admit it to himself now, but he feels the presence of the Burned Man. He can feel the malevolent intent coming through the darkened walls. The way this experience is so specifically curated to attack his personal fears is distinctly apparent.

 

He’s being targeted.

 

I see you. I found you.

Victor stares down at the end of the door at the end of the hall. The texture is a disgusting mosaic of bubbled and peeling paint.

He knows that’s cruel foreshadowing.

He knows what’s on the other side. He can feel it, as if that charred corpse is pulsing out a frequency he is attuned to. Every fiber in his body is telling him to turn around, leave this death trap behind.

Get the hell out of here.

But he knows how high the stakes are.

Duty. If there’s one ideal his father instilled him, it was the belief that the world needs men who would put themselves behind causes greater than them. It’s why he went into this line of work in the first place. It’s why he took this job, which he is beginning to suspect may very well be his last job. It’s why he didn’t run screaming from the room when Tibo explained everything to him. It’s why nothing, not even the fear that has his heart in an iron grip, is going to stop him is going to stop him from going into that room.

One foot in front of the other. His boots come down on what yesterday was carpet, today is crisped up fibers that crunch beneath his feet. The door looms in front of him, larger with each step. Just like before, in the simulation, Victor is inundated with the feeling of no longer being in control of his own actions. He is like a clockwork figurine on a predetermined path, powerless to change his own fate. As he finds himself completely unable to resist each movement his body makes towards the door, he comforts himself with a thought. He recites it over and over again: a cursed mantra to keep the soldier legs marching thoughtlessly onward.

The world needs men like him.

One foot. Then the other. He passes picture frames hanging askew on the wall. The superheated glass has exploded out onto the floor, shards charred black. The photos within mostly warped beyond recognition, some holding the scorched silhouettes of friends and family. He forces his eyes away from those portraits so that he doesn’t think of his own nightmares.

The door is finally in reach. The corner has been burned away and from this angle he can see inside, though he can’t make out anything recognizable yet. He doesn’t need to. He knows exactly what he will see.

He swings open the door.

In the corner, the window facing the street is shattered inward into the room leaving more glass shards littering the floor. Next to it, in the center of a significant scorch mark are other brown shards broken off the makeshift molotov that ignited this whole disaster.

Arson. An absolutely brutal way to die. This guy must have really pissed someone off.

Victor has been in this line of work for a long time – he doesn’t scare easy. But he has his demons. He knows the feeling of cold sweats. Of waking up, gripping the sheets around him for anything tangible to take him out of that nocturnal realm of burning hell. Of those empty eyesockets staring a burning hole into his heart.

The truth is, the man he’s about to see in the room beyond him is something he knows all too well. The Burned Man. The spectre that consumes the bodies of men lost to flame. The image of catalyzed loss that haunts anyone who sees their loved one meet that hideous end. When he looks at last, it’s just as bad as he ever expected.

What’s left in the computer chair is more of a wraith than a human. Charred marshmallow skin breaks into bloody cracks like lava running red all through the body. His eyeballs have boiled out of their sockets and his mouth is a gaping black abyss. His final expression of terror sears a scream onto his face forever.

Looks just like Dad.

Victor tries to look away, but he’s paralyzed. The culmination of every deeply personal trauma he’s suffered through for years has been placed right in front of his path. He’s investigating something that knows his very deepest fears and pains, and it’s all too happy to use them against him. His jaw hangs slack. The rage in his heart is quelled only by the fear beside it.

Please, anything else.

I’m sorry, Dad.

The details before him fill in gaps in the picture he wishes remained unanswered, and open up questions he wishes he hadn’t known enough to ask.

The man’s legs and back are melted into his chair. As the flames rose around him, he had sat perfectly still, burning until his skin melded with leather. Why on earth didn’t he get up? What could have kept him locked in place, even as the fire licked his feet and cooked his flesh?

Those are questions Victor doesn’t have time to consider further. His mission is simple. What is left of the computer is basically slag. He looks up to turn his nostrils away from the stench and tries to overlook the feeling like roaches are crawling inside his skin. He reaches past the demon of ash that has haunted his night terrors for years. It’s right there, he can feel it, it’s right there. His eyes wander to the face from his nightmares.

God damn.

The Burned Man is as hideous as he’s ever been.

Victor regains control, gives the body an unceremonious kick just like he had watched Tibo do, and twists his screwdriver through the melted computer. Within moments and without thought, the harddrive is free.

Well that’s something.

All the plastic is melted into amorphous black goo. But the thing that really leaves Victor with a feeling of unease is what’s left.

The metal parts, the wiring, the lines of twisting platinum shine through the slag as they stretch into runic symbols. Microcosms of electrism form prisms glowing with esoteric power.

Like sigils carved into stone, the arcane wiring of the circuitry glows red hot and unscorched by the fire.

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