FlameLash446
Posted 5/3/2002 - It's their first post in this community! Stop by and say hi!
So I’m going to die. I’m going to explode or implode or just burn out. And so are all of you I guess.
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FlameLash446
Posted 5/3/2002
The doctor called it a word with too many syllables, but the first word is what’s still stuck in my head. Arderis. I guess you all know it already. It’s a pretty word, feels good to lightly work around in your mouth, right? He gave me a stiff smile while I tried to keep my hands from shaking on the examination table, saying that it is good of me to have made an appointment when I first tasted ash beneath my tongue, that I am taking it very well, telling me of what’s to come. Whitening hair, persistent but manageable fevers, dryer skin. Then the turn. Those fevers will become less manageable, that dryness will crack and splinter the skin, there will be an inferno raging beneath my skin until it has nowhere else to go but out. I was kindly given a diagram of a person engulfed in flame to illustrate the situation. I want to scream.
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FlameLash446
Posted 5/3/2002
He said that feeling burns me up quicker, to try to stay away from emotions like joy and grief, rage and fear. Difficult to do when I want to lunge across the room to scratch this man’s eyes out. Difficult to do when my clock's been chopped from fifty years to fifty weeks at best. Difficult to do when he edges away from me in concern, and I look down to see wax paper curdled and calcified all around me, a hollow crackling sound like an ancient laugh filling my ears.
I don't know what to do. I guess I'd rather write then do nothing. I haven't even told my family.
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FlameLash446
Posted 5/4/2002
I'm abandoning my hopes of that doctor being any help at all, and turning to the internet. Every account ends the same way, with a hushed tale of an ashen stranger going up in radiant flame. Every detail is fought over; while one person recommends staying away from open flames and taking long ice baths, another decries the whole affair as a tragic case of spontaneous combustion, and is firmly resiliant to those who suggest that the months of symptoms experienced beforehand ends up taking a little meaning out of the word 'spontaneous.'
There's some ash trailing along my arm. It's been raining here in Seattle.
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FlameLash446
Posted 5/4/2002
I've been digging deeper through old post histories on here for more personal accounts of Arderis, and it's honestly been a little comforting. Even when this website was new, there were people sharing their lives, not just their condition. I found the long-winding posts of an older man who ran an animal shelter throughout the progression of his condition, the pictures of an artist whose final post was of a vibrant shadow alight with flame. There was a video I found of a group of friends huddled around one of their own, laughing hysterically as a bouquet of sparklers ignite in her hand. She was laughing too, tears in her eyes and flush with glee as smoke wisps twirled around her snow-white hair. None of them have posted for years, their accounts are gone. It makes me want to share more here, to be one of these laughing lights in the dark.
Comment from
Deleted-User: Heya, I wanted to say that I really get that! You mentioned earlier you were in the Seattle area, right?