Burning, Hell — Anonymous

I know that the shapes of shadows
point toward the light. And so I
rose up and moved in that direction.

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At first Sam and Flora aren't even afraid. They live in a future so deep it may as well be the past. They greet neighbors in the marketplace. And the whole town enjoys a respite from a harsh winter. But the warm spell turns monstrous. It looms and grows, swallowing all horizons.

So this man and his wife dig a hole and hide at the bottom of the world. They leave behind those threads of life and cut through roots and clay. But the redness comes for them, the madness. It peers down from above. And so they go deeper and deeper. Flora is bright. She guides Sam as they move earth from low to high. And she lights the well at night. Flora is the architect of their survival. But in the pouring down heat she gets weak, wispy like clouds.

Sam finds a puzzle while they work. A message in tiled letters on an old board, buried for ages in the earth. What does it mean to say, from so far away? The question of it haunts him. And with the embers of their quiet love dying, Sam and Flora must choose how to embrace this bitter end. To dig again or flail or cry or burn out all at once.

But there are miracles yet to be found, at the bottom, in the dark. Can this husband and his wife survive the end of the world? What waits for them if they do? Because Sam and Flora aren't the only ones surviving. A million years above, the threads of life they left behind, begin to writhe and change.

BURNING, HELL is a mysterious adventure. An exploration of loss and the things that remain. There's a book within the book, a bear on a lonely mountain, and an incredible oasis in the middle of the end. And at the very edge a magic descends. Life's desperations yield to something new. In the calamity, Sam and Flora suffer. They are rent and buried and raised again. But their love is resilient. It nourishes them to the verge of life. And from there it begins to spread.

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BURNING, HELL is available in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and Kindle.