Chapter 84: The Gallery of Ghosts
The Architect's boots clicked against the concrete floor as he moved closer to Firefly. Each step sounded louder than the last, filling the small room.
Firefly scrambled backward, his back hitting the wall within seconds. There was nowhere to go. The room was barely twelve feet across, and the Architect stood between him and the only exit.
"No—wait—" Firefly's voice cracked. "We can talk about this. Whatever you want, I can do. Dont make me like one of those—"
"I'm not here to talk, Garfield." The Architect crouched down in front of him. "I'm here to show you something."
"Show me what?" Firefly pressed himself harder against the wall, as if he could somehow push through the concrete and escape. "What are you—what are you going to do to me?"
The Architect tilted his head, "Where's the fun in explaining when I can just show it to you?"
"Your punishment begins now."
The Architect's fingers touched Firefly's forehead.
The effect was instantaneous.
Firefly's scream tore through the room as invisible claws ripped into his mind. It felt like his skull was splitting open, like something big was pouring into the space where his thoughts should be.
His vision went white, then black, then exploded into fragments of color that made no sense.
He tried to pull away but his body wouldn't respond. The Architect's hand remained pressed to his forehead.
The concrete floor beneath him dissolved.
The walls melted away.
The bulb overhead stretched into a streak of light that curved and twisted and finally snapped like a broken string.
And then there was only darkness.
---
Firefly woke slowly, his consciousness returning in fragments.
He was lying on something cold and hard. Stone, maybe. Or concrete. He couldn't tell in the darkness.
Where was he?
He tried to remember. There had been... Batman? Yes. Batman had caught him. And then... Wonder Woman? No, that wasn't right. That hadn't been Wonder Woman. That had been...
The memories scattered like ash in wind. Every time he tried to grasp them, they slipped away, leaving only vague impressions of terror and a man in black with a face he couldn't quite recall.
Firefly pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly. His hands were unbound now, he realized. The restraints that had held him were gone. He patted himself down—no weapons, no equipment, nothing just clothes.
"Hello?"
"Is anyone there?"
Silence.
He took a small step forward.
Another step. Then another.
The darkness was absolute. No light, no shadows. It was like being blind, except he knew his eyes were open, knew he should be seeing something, anything—
A light flickered on ahead of him.
Firefly froze.
It was a single bare bulb, hanging from an invisible ceiling by a cord that disappeared into the darkness above. The light was weak and yellow, creating a small circle of illumination maybe ten feet in diameter.
And in that circle of light hung a portrait.
It was massive—at least six feet tall and four feet wide, the ornate frame gilded and elaborate in a way that seemed grotesquely out of place in the void. The portrait showed a woman, middle-aged, with kind eyes and a gentle smile. She wore a floral dress and held a book in her lap.
Firefly stared at the portrait, a sick feeling growing in his stomach.
He knew that face.
"Mrs. Gloria," he whispered.
The memory came back piece by piece. An apartment building in the Narrows. Someone had paid him to torch it for the insurance money. Mrs. Gloria had lived on the third floor. She'd been a librarian. He remembered because she'd tried to save the books when the fire started. She had gone back into her apartment for them even as the smoke filled the hallways.
They'd found her body in the bathroom, clutching a stack of children's books to her chest.
"Why is she here? What is this place?"
Firefly tore his gaze away from the portrait and walked past it into the darkness beyond the light's reach.
After twenty paces—he counted them, needing something concrete to focus on—another light flickered on.
Another portrait.
This one showed a young man in a police uniform, fresh-faced and smiling, one hand resting on his duty belt. His name tag read "RAMIREZ."
Fire Officer Ramirez. First responder to one of Firefly's fires. The kid had run into a burning warehouse to rescue what he thought were trapped workers. Firefly had known the building was empty—had checked before setting the blaze—but Ramirez hadn't known that. He'd gone in anyway.
The floor had collapsed under him. Ramirez had fallen three stories into the inferno below.
Firefly walked faster now, his breath coming shorter.
Twenty more paces. Another light. Another portrait.
A little girl with pigtails and a gap-toothed smile, holding a stuffed rabbit.
He didn't remember her name. There had been so many children over the years, so many families, so many—
Twenty paces. Another light. Another portrait.
An elderly couple, holding hands, their old faces creased with laugh lines.
Twenty paces. Another portrait.
A teenage boy in a basketball jersey.
Twenty paces. Another portrait.
A woman holding a baby.
The portraits stretched on into the darkness, each one separated by the same distance, each one illuminated by a single bulb that somehow made the darkness between them feel even more scary.
Some faces Firefly recognized. Others were strangers—people he'd killed without ever seeing, bodies that had been nothing more than casualty counts in news reports he'd watched with satisfaction.
He walked faster, trying to get past them, but there was no end. The gallery stretched on endlessly in the darkness.
Firefly started to run.
The portraits blurred past him on either side, their eyes seeming to follow him as he fled. The lights above them flickered as he passed, creating a strobe effect that made the faces seem to move, to twist, to—
He stumbled, nearly fell, caught himself and kept running.
And then he heard it.
A whisper.
It came from behind him, soft and indistinct, like wind through dead leaves.
Firefly skidded to a stop, spinning around.
The portraits hung silent and still in their pools of light.
"Hello?" he called out, hating the tremor in his voice.
The whisper came again, and this time he could make out a word.
"...murderer..."
It came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Who's there?" Firefly demanded, trying to inject some confidence into his voice. "Show yourself!"
"Murderer," the whisper came again, louder now, and this time he realized it wasn't coming from the darkness.
It was coming from the portraits.
Mrs. Gloria's painted mouth twisted into a creepy grin.
"You burned me alive," she whispered, "I couldn't breathe. The smoke filled my lungs. I tried to scream but there was no air, only fire, only burning—"
"Shut up," Firefly said, backing away. "You're not real. This isn't real."
"I tried to save the children's books," she continued, her painted eyes now fixed on him. "I thought if I could save the books, the children could still learn, they could still dream. But you took that away. You took everything away."
"I said shut up!" Firefly shouted feeling creeped out.
Officer Ramirez's portrait spoke next in the same creepy smile. "I heard screaming. I thought someone was trapped. I had to try to save them. I had to—" His voice cracked. "The floor gave way. I fell into the fire. It took three minutes to die. Do you know how long three minutes is when you're burning?"
"Stop it!" Firefly pressed his hands to his ears, but the voices continued, now joined by others.
The little girl with the pigtails: "Mommy said to hide in the closet. She said she'd come back for me. But the smoke came under the door and I couldn't breathe and Mommy never came back—"
The elderly couple spoke in unison, their voices overlapping: "Fifty-three years of marriage and memories. Photos, letters, the quilt her mother made, the watch his father gave him. All of it burned. All of it gone. And then we burned too. Together. At least we were together—"
"STOP!" Firefly screamed, stumbling backward, crashing into another portrait.
All around him, the portraits were closer now together and started speaking. Men, women, children—all of them telling their stories, all of them describing their deaths, all of them staring at him with painted eyes that somehow saw everything.
"You worship fire, you call it beautiful. Pure."
"There's nothing beautiful about burning alive,"
"Nothing pure about a child choking on smoke."
"Nothing honest about killing people for money,"
"You're a coward,"
"You are nothing special, just a twisted psycho!!"
"I'm not a coward!" Firefly roared. "I'm an artist! Fire is transformation! It's rebirth! It's—"
"It's murder, It's just murder."
Something snapped inside Firefly.
He lunged at the nearest portrait—the elderly couple—and grabbed the frame with both hands.
"You want to judge me?" he snarled, pulling at the portrait. "You want to make me feel guilty? I don't feel guilty! I feel alive! Fire is power! Fire is freedom!"
He wrenched the portrait from wherever it was hanging in the darkness and threw it down. The frame shattered and the canvas torn, and for a moment there was silence.
Then the other portraits began to laugh.
It started low, a chuckle from somewhere in the darkness, but it quickly spread. All around him, the dead were laughing at him.
"You're a joke, A broken little pyromaniac."
"Take off your equipment and you are still the pathetic man you once were."
Firefly grabbed another portrait—the teenage boy—and ripped it in half, the canvas tearing with a satisfying sound.
"Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!"
He tore through the gallery like a whirlwind, ripping portraits from their moorings, shredding canvas, smashing frames. His hands bled from the broken wood and sharp edges, but he didn't care. He had to make them stop talking, stop laughing, stop judging him—
"Your fire is nothing," the voices chorused together. " You call yourself an artist but you're just a killer. You worship flame but fire doesn't care about you. It would burn you just as easily as it burned us."
"Fire chose me!" Firefly screamed, tearing another portrait in half. "I'm its avatar! Its prophet!"
Firefly stood in the wreckage of torn canvas and broken frames, his chest heaving, his hands bleeding, his mind fracturing under the weight of their words.
And then he saw it.
In the darkness ahead, barely visible at the edge of the light, was a shape he recognized.
His suit.
The fireproof bodysuit, the tanks, the tubing, the nozzles—all of it laid out carefully on what looked like a workbench. And next to it, gleaming in the dim light, was his flamethrower.
Firefly's lips pulled back in a feral grin.
"Well, well," he breathed, walking toward the equipment, his earlier fear burning away in the face of this beautiful, terrible gift. "Look what we have here."
Behind him, the portraits whispered and laughed, but he ignored them now. His hands, slick with his own blood, reached for the suit.
He pulled it on frantically, fingers fumbling with zippers and straps. The tanks clicked into place on his back. The tubes connected easily. The igniter in his glove sparked to life with a sound like a rattlesnake's warning.
Finally, he lifted the flamethrower, feeling its weight.
Firefly turned to face the gallery of the dead, and his grin was terrible to behold.
"Let's see how much you laugh now," he said, his voice steady for the first time since this nightmare began.
He raised the flamethrower, finger hovering over the trigger. "You want to talk about fire? About what it means? About what it can do?"
The portraits stared back at him now, their laughter still continuing in the background.
"Let me show you what fire really is," Firefly snarled. "Let me show you what happens to things that get in my way. Let me show you—"
He pulled the trigger.
"—what happens when you mock the flame!"
The stream of fire erupted from the nozzle, brilliant and terrible, painting the darkness with orange and red and gold.
Notes :
1) MC used Grodd's powers to make a dreamscape like thing. This chapter was just an appetizer, next one will be good.
2) Firefly worships fire. He even talks to it like some kind of gf. A fitting torture would be denying & destroying that concept.
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DC : Architect of Vengeance
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