Short Story: Heart on Fire

(A little experiment in first person writing that I did. It's a little darker than normal as well, which I wanted to try out and get a taste for. Please feel free to comment, criticize, and question this one. I welcome anything, negative or positive, that you have to say wholeheartedly.)

           I used to hate the rain. It was like the whole world crying. Crying for mercy. Crying for forgiveness. Crying for the pain to stop. I didn’t hate it for that. I hated it because while its cries were freezing tears while I burned.

            My name is Jonathan Stone, and I lived once for what felt like an eternity in my own little hell. For a while my heart was consumed by fire.

            This is my story of how I put that fire out.

            When I was born in 1934 in Victorian England. My parents, educated folks that they were, insisted that I go to school and make something of myself. They paid for everything, and sent me off to America to get a degree in medicine. Not that I wanted a degree in medicine, mind you. I had long wished to be a violinist or a theater performer. But my parents didn’t approve. They told me that it was better to dwell on what was outside you, not to try and understand the mysterious workings inside of man. “Leave that to God,” they said. “He’ll deal with your insides just fine,” they said.

            Whilst I was off at college a fire burned through my home town. Many people died, including my parents. When I got the news I cried. I cried not because I was sad; I cried because I wasn’t sad.

            With the death of my parents I was entitled to the contents of their will, but I found out too late that all the finances which had been left to me had been misappropriated. I was left alone, poor, homeless, and without a degree in anything. I managed to buy a ticket back to London and for years, endless years, I begged on the streets for money.

            I had to collude with ruffians and thieves to fill my stomach. I had to steal to pay off the thugs that came through the streets long after darkness had fallen on the city. I saw terrible things… terrible crimes. I was prey to them, every now and again. At first I reported these to the police, but when they refused to listen to such a vagabond as me I stopped trying.

            I could have died then.

            I wanted to die then.

            I would have died too, if my heart hadn’t been on fire.

            For all those years of pain, and fear and poverty I held inside myself a living fire that kept me alive… a fire that kept me going. When I was hungry and had nothing to eat that fire gave me the intelligence to find food. When I was being beaten by ruffians it gave me the power to hold out through the pain. And when I wanted to give up hope on everything it gave me the will to carry on.

            Don’t ask me to explain this fire to you. I don’t know how it began, nor what it is. Many people have asked me before, but I can give you no straight answer. This fire was peace and hope, light and life; but it was also strength and muscle, passion and grit. It was the dream of green pastures and the consuming heat of a billion suns. It was the hope of love, given by a beautiful woman. It was something to inspire terror in the hearts of villains and purge corruption from men like a sword purges the world of men. It was all that and more… and it lived inside of me. It was not me, for I was weak and humble and poor in spirit, but it was no parasite either; if anything, I lived on it.

            It spoke to me, this fire. It told me things I couldn’t hear, and insisted on my completing an unknown mission. Sometimes I listened to it; most of the time I didn’t.

            This fire is gone now, for I no longer need or want it. It disappeared one day as I was walking in the rain.

            I had finally decided to abandon the streets of London that night, for I had resisted the prowling thugs too greatly. I knew that if I stayed there I would be murdered, so I picked a road out of the city and took it. I didn’t even know where I was going. Wearing an old coat I had snitched from a wealthy looking man I made a fine impression on the guards despite my rough looks, so they let me out without a fuss. I still regret taking that coat, for it was obvious that the man who I’d stolen it from was of great character, but I rationalize it even now as a necessary action.

            Not a mile down the road it began to rain. Hard. I pulled the coat over my head, but the cold shook me in my bones nonetheless. It was nothing I wasn’t used to, but it wasn’t the best thing that could have happened at the time. For many miles I walked like that, sometimes splashing through huge puddles in the road or traversing mini-rivers that had formed in the landscape. The truly terrible part of my travel was when I found a sign by the roadside. It told me that the nearest town was many miles away. I cursed at my misfortune, and berated myself for having been such a fool as to choose this path. I was about ready to head back…

            Then I heard the sound which heralded my salvation from all the misfortune of my life: the cry of a man in the darkness of that dreary, rainy night.

            He called for someone, anyone to help him, and from the way he called I could tell he was being attacked. But there was something else in that voice, though… an innocence I hadn’t been witness to for many years. This man was a good man.

            I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, hearing every cry the man let out; every shriek of pain he was unable to suppress. I could have left him like that… left that good man in the darkness, in the rain, tormented by the darkness and it’s workers. I could have left him to die……

            Instead I ran forward and saved that man. I drove off his attackers with a tree branch and my fists, forcing them to retreat into the night. That man ended up being a very important man; a lord, if you’d believe that. I couldn’t believe that such a man would travel in public at so late an hour, but I learned it was a pastime of his and that the thieves who had attacked him had learned of this hobby and were attempting to exploit it when I came upon him.

            I half carried, half helped him back to London where we found his lodging. In gratitude he allowed me to stay in his lavish residence… A residence which, since that day, I now manage. In his goodness he took me in and gave me the job of running his household. I am greatly blessed to have experienced that fortune, but let me tell you that serving under such a good man is reward enough. I now live in peace, happiness, and have met and married a very fine woman. I play music on my violin, and I have no enemies in all the world.

            But that fire in my heart is gone. I shall never have it back, for I know now what it was and it is irretrievable once lost. I lost it that very moment I made my choice to save my master that night. Since the death of my parents I’d had that fire tearing through my heart, a fire I’d kindled all my life until it finally sprang to life on the occasion of my misfortune. Though it drove me and kept me alive I now see that, in the end, it would have destroyed me.

            Do you know what that fire was?...

            It was pride.

            It was the urge to be better than everyone else; a self love without any love for anyone else. Yes, it kept me alive… but fire burns, my friend; one day I would have burned with it. Only when I finally gave up my selfishness to help a good man, when I abandoned my pride and arrogance, only then did I find peace and what I had sought all this time.

            Maybe you feel this terrible fire as well, my friend. As I tell you this tale I can see in your eyes your disbelief, but do not be so sure.

            Everyone must deal with pride.

            Even you.