Burning Cole

Gareth watched the madman who now held all of their lives in his hands. Gareth resented that; He had been the one leading the group for the last twelve years, not this madman. This guy really was a madman, too. He risked his life constantly and with a smile, leaping with faith into almost certain doom. He was lucky. He didn’t belong here. He should have gotten out while he had the chance. The door had been open.

Gareth had been holding up the celling for the new children to get through and the door was just- open. The light had shown through and nearly blinded him so he had to look away. But this madman, this brilliant madman had looked directly into it. Gareth had thought, for a second, that perhaps he had caught a glimpse, a passing snatch of somewhere else. But the madman did not go, he resisted the call of elsewhere like he had as much experience of Gareth. He had braced the celling with his shoulder next to Gareth and told him to go.

‘Yeah right’ Gareth had said, ‘like I’m going to leave you holding all this’ he had gestured at the quivering heap of scrap metal pilled on their backs, ‘and run off like a child. Don’t insult me, madman’. The madman had grinned at that. That’s what he had been called from then on, through Garth had been calling him that in his head from the start. Madman had become almost a term of endearment thanks to Felicia who had taken to calling him with a certain musical quality that only a girl could. Gareth didn’t like Felicia.

He insisted that he didn’t like the Madman either, but he was still the one spending his off-shifts staring at him while he worked the bellows. When questioned, he insisted again that it was purely so he may ‘know thy enemy’ and nobody questioned him again after the last kid was put on oil duty for a month. A month was a long time down here. When one day you’d go to sleep next to the boy you grew up with and the next it could be a stranger, each moment was treasured. Which was why Felicia kept pondering why Gareth spent his free hours watching the man he ranted and raved about was going to destroy them all. But Felicia was a girl, so she knew.

When others, namely Moody, pestered her about her ‘womanly insights’ as they called it, she simply told them to watch. But who had time to watch paranoid ol’ Gareth watch the crazy ol’ Madman? The madman did. Every time he had bellow duty that correlated with Gareth’s free period, he saw. He saw a young man fall. And he knew that he was the one who would break that fragile heart and it killed him. He knew he was never meant to stay this long, only enough to gather a decent report that could pass under the higher ups noses without fuss.

Gloria was waiting for him, so they could fancy off to the next city, the next planet, the next job. But now here was Gareth, so abrasive, so young. He wondered what Gareth would say if he knew his real age. Either of theirs.