He sucks air into his lungs and it’s too much and he hacks up blood onto the dusty patch. The boy’s feet pace casually and two of them trail behind, hopping with adrenaline. His eyes sting when they pinch close, running with sooty grease. Behind him, the fire roars, blowing out the windows, flagging away from the building. Two upstairs windows and the back door glow in the inferno, making the block frame visage of a blazing skull. He looks up at it; the bonfire of everything left in his life, soon to be a forest of charcoaled timber. A pyre for a man who didn’t bend his knee to the new masters, a ritual fire to forge the souls of those brave enough to play on Mischief Night, a horrid diversion in the neverending whirlwind of lawlessness. The one with the gun, the short one, their chief - he seems the calmest of all, like those boys in war who’ve known nothing but, young face impossibly old. A face like that could be the warlord of this city, ruling this trammeled, ruined place once they’ve finally run out of people to maim and kill and rape.
