Light the Pyre

Quarter moon cast in shadow.

There’s no way that he can bury them all, not by himself. Instead they lay stacked together on an impromptu funeral pyre made from tires and car hoods, dry brush and chunks of foam. He looks at them with pale brown eyes, bodies stacked four high and ten across at the base, the ultimate human pyramid carefully Tetrised together just right by a single lunatic.
He chuckles. The sound is harsh and eerie accompanied by the scratching that pervades the cool night air. This time he knows the scratch. It is not a mystery held in a false breeze created by his mind. The sharp edge of his knife plays at the magnesium block, little shavings falling onto a blue blanket covered in dry grass and doused in siphoned gasoline. She lays there wrapped in it.
Her eyes are closed, her hair a little cleaner placed just well enough to hide the hole his bullet made. He’d washed her face with a wet nap, and then wrapped her in the blanket. That star shine beauty was the only one who’s gotten such attention. He wonders if the others are jealous.
She hadn’t had any ID, just a tattoo of an orchid on her forearm, the name would have to work. Beautiful Orchid, lain down to sleep eternal. He stopped running the knife over the magnesium block his work lit by the summer’s quarter moon. It is something to be proud of, some semblance of a surviving civility. He hoped he was not the only one left doing such things.
The pyre had taken a full day in its own right to be constructed, and yet another day to stack the bodies. He took no shame in it, nor did he regret the time he lost. If anything, at least It proved he was still human if only to a slight degree.
Alex looked up towards the sky, brown eyes moist as new turned soil. He wonders if he might cry over the dead. He’s yet to cry over any others and perhaps now might be the best time to start. He wonders if he should speak, one last token to the dead. He stands there in the cool desert air, silence of the earth speaking volumes, the intimate desert night life speaking more.
He added his voice, harsh from a lack of use.
“A sadness over takes her, her laughter wears itself out. It patters out in the echoes and she cries for she knows now why men will fail, and she curses herself for making this demon, but she refuses to call it back. She wants to see what will happen, she wants to see them suffer, and she wants to cry for them, to pity them for her doing. She will not rest, she will not call back her tears, but she will call back her children.
“That Starshine Goddess lays her Earthen children to rest, some for the final time. May they rest and may they return to their mother, and to the great mother in peace.” He hopes the words are not in vain, he wonders where they’ve come from. He does not question their being.
His prayer closes. It is his and hers. He looks at the human pyramid, his eyes filled with loss and sadness as his hands strike the knife to flint. The sound of metal to stone is like a scream under the moon as brush and shavings catch, and the fumes of the gasoline spark into full flame.
He turns away a solemn figure in the dark of deep blue skies, a lone man against a dead world. He picks up his rucksack, heaves it onto his shoulders as his carbine jostles back and forth. The night is a good time to travel in the desert, and a good time to leave the fire behind.
It’s a good time to move on, especially under a full moon’s light.