Condemned to Burning - SCP Foundation

Condemned to Burning

Byㅤ RuraScarlet

Published on 29 Mar 2023 04:40

Xerophylla might have been beautiful, once.

I believe it with all my heart. It’s why I came here in the first place, even, just before the skies went dark. I was no longer welcome in Ilcana, my Lord, no, even after it became my second home— but I should know best that a common whore struggles for shelter. But I had two good feet, I did, the Lord willed.

But what is a woman on these streets, one husbandless but with-child, one hungry but cannot cook? My legs couldn’t even open anymore with this weight below my bosom, not without pain. A rundown house beyond the city walls and my bastard father’s flintlock are my only friends. Burnt flesh from simple hunts are favourable over starvation. Perhaps it would be wise to save for a cookbook. Sometimes I wish my mother lived long enough to teach me, but I think back to the fire and thank the Lord.

I still go to church, for my feet were strong as wrought iron and I could make the trek. Not on the hallowed Sundays, no, but I go every night I can. The every-coloured window casts comfort on what little self I have, and I always leave before the gaunt glass-cleaner arrives. I thank the Lord for everything, even things that have hurt me and things I’ve left behind. I find myself thanking the Lord for the child that stirs within, for I will love them no less than how ivies love the church’s walls. Trials and challenges overcome by divinity, and my fortune to have been outside the door from my burning childhood home. A flintlock in my left hand and a lost friend in my right. I thank the Lord for gunpowder and the little chamber it lives in, and I pray that I find good shelter that fits me well as that.

One day I pray I find that friend again as well. Hopefully, in one piece. Hopefully, with peace of mind.

Burnt flesh has a smell to it. In rabbits, it is delicious, for a time. I always fear when it isn’t charred, if I would unknowingly poison who resides in me, but it’s not as though I can ask for better. I swear I smelled my mother’s hair grower amongst the acrid remains, and maybe that’s why I put flowers as I buried her, despite it all. Perhaps the stench also carried the Lord’s mercy, and made me ever merciful in turn. The last of their wealth was burnt on the train ride here.

Trains, can you imagine? The Lord made humanity so intelligent, that they may advance to create such transportation. I await the days where my child will grow with other such advancements, perhaps, one day, helping the world under the endless night sky, beneath the pale moon with all their future friends. There were posters on the walls, that of “train madness” and other such warnings, but I give mercy to the Fundamentum that my friend was so reluctant to leave for me. Full of heretics. I saw the final glimpse of daylight months ago, the ink-blotted skies surely the fault of that wretched place.

Fire looks enough like dawn to be close enough. I take my sins to my grave, Lord, but I did not burn bridges to be cruel. As scalding the soul in my body, as a firebox is housed in a train that moves only forward. This life is my devotion, my Lord, and I will see it through to its final destination.

…I bid you wait until my child can walk to burn me for my heresy. Afford me that luxury, and I will go willingly. I cannot persuade you against charges of things I might have or did not do, nor will I fight against such accusations. I am of sound mind and body with good morals and the light of the Lord. I vow to you, as Katarina Zavrazhin, born of the Rus, child of the forest, woman of Ilcana, loving almost-mother, and prisoner of your Xerophylla. I vow to die by your execution, under the human court of law. The Lord witness to my word, amen.