The One with the Patch

The heat was intense, flickering, waving, the air shimmering nothing too solid. Eyes were prickling. The sun was covered by black smoke. The country was burning, the fire had started out as a forest fire, because of the arid area. It had quickly transformed, turning into a raging wildfire that resisted all efforts made by firefighters to contain it. No hose was big enough, no water cold enough. The fire scorched through any attempts to put it out - they continued regardless, the people had no other choice, except to leave their homes - and if any attempted to damp the flames, the inferno roared in anger and seemed to get larger. It was as if it were a wraith, a living entity made purely of anger, made to eat up all the oxygen in the air, and all the dirt on land. It was doing a pretty good job of it. It had been months. From a small forest fire in a national park, it had spread out to cover more than half of the country. It too, seemed to be restricted by man made borders, as if someone had colored fire on a map after not knowing what country it was, and wished for the country not to have existed. It was slowly being drenched in that wrath.

In a city, the few people that remained hurried from one street to the next, looking for who knows what. Most people had evacuated, this had been a wealthy city, and its inhabitants almost all had houses in other places across the globe. They had left when it seemed like the fire could not be contained. The few people that remained had different reasons for remaining: suicidal tendencies, no other options - the homeless, and one man, who strode with purpose, not too fast, not too slow, was scanning the streets, looking for something very particular. He wore a hat hanging low over his face. No one could see it. No one would want to. Under the crow of his hat lay a blue eye, and a white one. The latter stared sightlessly, pinned dead on his face. The skin around it was wrinkled, creased, depending on how you looked at it, it was always smiling, or not. It looked a hundred percent of the time like it was out of a horror film though. He did not wear a patch there. He should have. His patches lay proudly in his clothes, all patched together like some quilt sewn by a grandmother. He seemed not to be fazed by the fire. His skin was not red from the heat, nor were his clothes drenched from sweat. Unlike most of the people that remained, and when the city was crowded, when the flames had appeared on the horizon every night, and got bigger by the day, he still chose to wear clothes. He strode through the streets looking for something. He did not know exactly what but it was in this city, and he would know it when he found it. Whether it was writing, an object, a person, a building. He didnt know. Quite likely wouldnt be a building, it would be very old.

The fire roared in the distance, angry at another futile attempt made by firefighters to subdue it. They would be retreating, finding another position to take cover and make their stand from. Their force left down to a measly number. The remaining stragglers would soon either realize the futility of the fight and flee, or fight their last stand.