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Day #016: Purge

He was finally done with it. Everyone was. The Great Oblivion came only once every five years and it was a welcomed occasion. All those from around the community would come and burn their memories and priests would forgive the apostates who in turn forgave their former . Bitter enemies would become the best of friends after casting their worries into the fire, the forsaken widow would find her tears dried by flames. Applause silently popped with the crackling of the embers and the vanishing of soon-to-be-bygone worries.

Fredric came to the fire with a photograph of the fire itself. He couldn’t remember what was the last thing he burned was and he wanted the right to remember it. Who decided that this fire was anything of value anyway? No one in the town could remember who started this tradition, it simply was. Well, until that person could step forward with a good reason, he figured that forgetting the forgetting was long overdue. He wasn’t sure if this would work but it was worth trying. Would it bring back the memories, the vague phantoms of which had been haunting him for so long? Worse a to be unremembered than to remember that you forgot.

Enough pondering. Time for action. He flung the photo into the fire the way a child flings a rock to see how long he could make it skip.

The fire consumed the glossy paper indifferently. As sudden as it crumpled into ash, there was an echo of thunder in the clouds above. Rain started to pour.

A smile crossed Frederic’s face as a pained look of longing that he hadn’t felt in five years crept into his eyes.