THE FLAME CONSUMES HIM
665 Words
THE FLAME CONSUMES HIM
The call was polite.
Almost casual.
A man-to-man talk, Hashim had said.
Private.
Ahyan arrived alone. Smug. Dressed in his usual arrogance—pressed shirt, gelled hair, predator’s grin.
The farmhouse was isolated. Wooden shutters drawn. No livestock. No staff. Just silence. Heavy, waiting.
Inside, the light was dim. Dust floated like ash in the air.
Wahad Zaheer—Riya’s uncle—greeted him without a smile.
He closed the door behind them.
Turned the lock.
The sound echoed like a coffin nail.
Ahyan raised an eyebrow. "What’s this?"
Zaraq Hashim, Riya’s elder brother, stepped forward.
A cricket bat rested on his shoulder, casual, too casual.
And then Hashim Zaheer emerged from the shadows—knife in hand. His face was calm, hollowed out by grief. There was no shaking. No stutter. No fear.
Ahyan laughed, uncertain now. "You’re joking. You’re not serious—"
The first strike silenced him.
Wood cracked against flesh and bone.
Ahyan hit the floor, spitting blood and teeth.
He reached for his phone.
Zaraq crushed it underfoot.
He tried to crawl. Wahad grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the floorboards.
Then Hashim knelt beside him.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t cry.
> Hashim:
"This is not murder. This is a funeral—for her innocence."
The knife cut deep.
The gurgle that followed wasn’t human.
They slit his throat cleanly.
Then came the butchering—hands steady, clothes soaked in red, faces set like stone.
It was a ritual. A cleansing.
They wrapped the pieces in canvas.
Dragged them out back.
Lit the pyre.
The flames kissed the dark sky, tall and hungry.
They stood in silence as the fire crackled.
Not speaking. Not mourning.
Just watching.
By morning, nothing remained but ash.
And in the ash—
Not closure.
Not peace.
But the beginning of a silence that would never leave them.
---
AFTER THE FIRE
The smoke still clung to their skin.
Wahad scrubbed his hands until his knuckles split.
Zaraq vomited behind the barn, twice.
And Hashim…
Hashim just sat there, elbows on his knees, staring into nothing.
Knife still beside him, untouched.
His daughter’s pain had been louder than any scream, and now—now there was only quiet.
They hadn’t spoken a word since the body burned.
Wahad broke the silence. “You did what any father would.”
Hashim didn’t reply.
Zaraq looked at his blood-soaked shirt. “She’ll know. Somehow, she’ll know.”
Hashim stood up slowly, like a man whose body had turned to rust.
> “She already does.”
---
Riya
She couldn’t explain it.
But she felt it.
The weight in her chest that had lived there for months—since that first night Ahyan stole her voice, her body, her name—lifted slightly.
She was lying on her side, staring at the pale morning through the hospital window.
Her hands trembled. They always did now.
But that morning… her breathing was easier.
No one told her anything.
No one needed to.
Ahyan’s silence was louder than his threats had ever been.
She stared at the window for hours, waiting for him to call. To blackmail. To laugh.
But there was nothing.
And in the quiet, something cracked open inside her. Not healing. Not yet.
But space.
Space where the panic used to live.
That night, she dreamed of fire.
Not burning.
But cleansing.
---
Hashim (Later that Night)
He stood alone in the shower, blood still clinging to the corners of his nails.
Hot water ran over him, but it didn’t burn enough.
He thought of her laugh as a child. The way she used to hum when she braided her hair.
And the silence in her eyes now.
He had avenged her.
But he had not saved her.
That failure would never leave him.
> “You can’t bring innocence back from the dead,” he whispered to himself.
“You can only bury what killed it.”
- Writer
