The Forgotten

The hobo opened his eyes, stirred from a restless sleep by the relentless tapping of rain against his tattered rags, which barely qualified as clothes.

The sky sobbed cold tears, soaking the filthy alleyway where he lay. The rain had transformed the narrow street into a river of mud.

He shivered violently as the icy droplets chilled him to the bone. Swearing the weather under his breath, he reached for a broken bottle lying nearby.

He took a chug from it.

The bottle was, of course, empty.

He tried to take another chug before throwing it away.

As his bleary eyes adjusted to the dim light, he scanned his surroundings, taking in the dump that had become his home.

The trash piled high against the walls, and the stench of rot hung heavy in the air, unable to be washed away even by the heavy rain.

He couldn't get on his feet, as people with only one leg lacked that particular skill, but he could crawl just fine when sober.

He wasn't, of course, sober, but the drug-induced fog lifted the slightest bit, just enough to maybe cover himself with a plastic bag that would allow him to stay warm.

Or so he thought...before he saw it.

In the middle of the dirty pavement lay something...otherworldly.

It was a dark piece of meat, pulsating with a life of its own, and the rain seemed to evaporate as it made contact with it.

A tiny, reptilian part of his brain told him to run, and to do it faster than he ever did it before. If the hobo had that particular ability, or the slightest will to keep on living, he might have even considered the proposal.

Instead, he squinted, trying to comprehend what his fogged eyes saw.

It was darker than anything he had ever seen, yet he somehow still understood that darkness was merely the absence of light, but this thing... This was something else entirely.

Black as pitch, the flesh appeared formless and ever-shifting, like boiling tar that refused to conform to the laws of nature. It almost twisted reality around it, warping the space and bending the dimensions as if it were attempting to take on a semblance of physical form.

The hobo blinked, mesmerized and terrified by the sight. He felt a tug at the edge of his consciousness, pulling him back into the depths of his own mind—a place he had long sought to escape.

Memories, like ghosts, began to stir.

---

Even as a kid, he had always disliked fire. It was ironic, really, how something so beautiful could bring such destruction. Perhaps it was this dislike that drove him to become a firefighter.

His life had once been good, more than good, in fact. It was perfect.

He had a wife he adored, a woman whose laughter was the music of his heart. His life was hers, and her life was his.

Together, they brought a daughter into the world, a bundle of joy that lit up his life like nothing else could ever hope to. He remembered her smile, the way her eyes sparkled with innocence and wonder.

But all of that was gone now, lost to the merciless hands of fate.

It had been a day like any other when the fire broke out in their apartment block.

No one knew how it started, and it didn't matter. All that mattered was the inferno that raged through his home, consuming everything in its path.

He had been at work, fighting another blaze, when the call came through.

Panic surged through his veins as he raced against time, his heart pounding like a war drum. By the time he reached the scene, the building was engulfed in flames.

His colleagues held him back, but he fought against them. He was a man possessed by desperation and fear. He ran into hell alone.

A burning log fell on his leg as he did, breaking it with a sickening crunch. Pain seared through him, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his heart as he realized the choice he had to make.

He found his wife and daughter, but they were unconscious, and with a broken leg, he could only save one.

Torn between the two, he made the hardest decision of his life.

With trembling hands, he chose his daughter, carrying her fragile body through the inferno.

But even as he reached safety, he knew he had failed.

His daughter lay lifeless in his arms, a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. And his wife... his beloved wife was gone, consumed by the very flames he had sworn to fight.

His mind shattered in the aftermath, a mirror broken into a thousand irreparable shards. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't escape the memories of that day.

The fire still haunted him, even after all these years.

He drank to forget, to numb the pain, but it was never enough.

Nothing could ever be enough to forget this pain.

Slowly, he lost track of time, consumed by rage and loss.

His leg, shattered by the fire that had taken everything, felt like the enemy. At some point, he had picked up a hatchet, though he couldn't recall when or where he had found it.

Driven by madness, he swung the blade down, cutting into his own flesh. The pain was excruciating, but he welcomed it. Blood pooled around him.

The leg came free, and he almost died of blood loss.

He would have ended it all then, but he did not, driven by the belief that he deserved to suffer for his weakness, for his inability to save the ones he loved.

"If only I was stronger, faster... better. It is because of me they died." was akin to a motto for him. It was the only coherent thought he still had or dared to have.

He could not live without them, but neither could he die, so he stayed alive... At least his body was; his soul had long been killed alongside his family.

He lived in the streets, eating scraps and fighting with stray dogs for food. His life was meaningless, but he endured. He endured the torment, the endless cycle of guilt and regret that gnawed at his soul.

Alcohol became his refuge, but the solace it provided was fleeting, leaving only the bitter taste of despair as its effect wore off.

He lost his job and his home and turned to drugs in a last futile attempt to numb the pain. But it was not enough.

Now, he lived in a trash heap, reduced to scavenging for scraps and devouring rats.

If he still had any smidgen of humor in his soul, he might have joked that he had blood coursing through his fentanyl vessels.

And it didn't help one bit.

Even so, howling in pain as he realized he was, something about the dark shard called to him, pulled him from the mire of his self-loathing and once again into the recesses of his past.

Memories flooded back, unbidden and relentless, forcing him to confront the life he had buried beneath layers of denial and intoxication.

He remembered the warmth of his daughter's embrace, the way his wife's eyes twinkled with love.

He remembered the joy, the laughter, and the life that had once been his. And with each memory, the wall he had built around his heart began to crumble.

He was no longer just a hobo, a nameless wretch lost to the world.

He was Jonathan Bauer.

And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he remembered his own name.

How good it would have been if the memories stopped right then and there.

It was not to be.

Jonathan's eyes remained glazed over as he crawled toward the Void Shard.