Nova

A writing exercise. Prompt: "A person who turns bright red and glows when they're angry"

- Lawrie you did it again!

- You made me!

- Shush, mom is going to see it, she's going to wake up and you know she won't be happy.

Lisa was looking at her brother shaking her head. - Here, get under the blanket!

- I can't, it's going to be too hot.

- But she'll see you! You'll wake her up again. She needs to rest!

Mother was resting after her shift in the factory. Only 4 hours allowed, then back to work. Mother was sensitive to light, and she would wake up, and scold him. She was working hard for them, to allow them to have shoes on their feet, clothes on their skinny bodies. Work in the factory was hard, and the boss was mean, and there were plenty of people ready to take her place, and then there was going to be no food on the table, and no shoes on their feet.

Lawrie knew, and that was just what made him angry. He couldn't help it. He would try to sleep, but the thought of the boss groping his mom, grabbing her by her waist, taking her behind the machinery, would just strike him like electricity passing through a tungsten wire, and just like that wire he'd glow, making the night bright of a very peculiar bloody hue, and  that would radiate out of the windows, and would be seen in the streets, and the guards would come knocking to see who dared to turn the light on, and mother would wake up and have to go answer, and show him to them: no one consuming energy out of time. And they'd take him away, again and again, like the boss behind the machinery.

- Lawrie, they'll come, and you'll be hurt. Get under the blanket now! - begged his sister.

And the guards came, and they knocked on the door, and mother woke up and had to go open, just like Lisa had said. And they took him out on the square, placed him on the pedestal, and jeered at him like they always did. And he glowed, brighter and brighter, and they laughed and threw rotten vegetables at him: - Oh glowing boy, you'll light up the night! Go nova, we know you can.

He shone so bright with his uncontainable rage everyone was soon coming out of their shacks, gathering around him on his pedestal, squinting as they tried to read his expression. Lawrie stared at them, one by one. His father was not among the crowd. He was never among the crowd when they put him up there, and how could he be? He'd been just like him, and that had been his doom, until he'd learned how to dull down his rage, and they'd left him alone, bored. Dim it down he could, but not always, and surely not seeing his son on his personal Golgotha, surrounded by guards and a crowd.

But Lawrie was going nova that night, and the guards were laughing and wearing sunglasses, while everyone else stood with their eyes down, seeing the pavement turn to blood, the shacks like disemboweled cows with their udders removed and their bellies wide open, and gaping wounds on their ribcages. Lisa was there in the first row, still holding the blanket, still offering it to him and knowing he was not going to take it.

His mother had gone back to sleep. She was supposed to start her shift soon, no time to lose staring at her glowing boy, who had started glowing already in her womb, throwing out a faint rosy light just like the one she could see when she was a little girl, looking out of the grated window of her parents' shack, covering her eyes with her hands not to feel the pain. She'd always been too sensitive to light.

The guards were chanting now: -  Nova! Nova! and Lawrie was crying lava tears, rolling down his face and charring his cheeks, and his clothes his mom had worked so hard to give him. Lisa got closer to the pedestal, still holding the blanket, like a bigger sister would hold a towel ready for her little brother coming out of the sea on a windy day.

- Nova! Nova! - chanted the guards. Lisa begged him to come down, to give in to reality, to quench his rage, resign to their fate, just accept the whole thing: the shacks, the shifts, the rationing.

- Nova! Nova! - chanted the guards, and others with them, louder and louder, while Lawrie started having wisps of smoke coming up from his curly hair, up from his hunched shoulders, and a smell of roast chicken was filling the air around him.

- Nova! Nova! - The whole camp was now chanting, prisoners big and small, young and old, some crying, some laughing, all stomping their feet. Lawrie had flames coming out of his fingers, little fingers, thin fingers. He was just 9 years old. 

Then the crowd parted and a man rose to the pedestal, so bright the guards' glasses melted, and with a mighty cry he commanded: - Enough!

And the night disappeared in a blinding flash. Gone were the guards, gone the prisoners, gone was Lisa, and her ridiculous blanket. Gone were the shacks, and the factory, and the pedestal molten in a puddle of metal. Later, the sun rose and showed all that was left: ashes, shadows forever projected on the ground, with nothing and no one casting them.

Budapest, 2022.05.05