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wondering what on Earth?
    Talking among themselves, speculating,
glittering, distantly.
    Beckoning?
    Curious little things they are—or not so
little, he reminds himself. Only distant. Distantly curious
greeting the ever-thickening smoke as it rises and rises and now
begins to obscure the throng the far side of it.
    Bruno looks around, a little stunned. So
many. From what he can see the square is full, and none of them
well-wishers. Another Bible is calling for attention, or is it the
same one? He cannot tell for the ever-thickening smoke. He shuts it
out and listens instead to the greedy flames, innocent in their
collaboration. They know not what they are doing, though the asses
in long white frocks sprouting Bibles know perfectly well. They are
protecting territory, securing coffers, removing competition, is
precisely what they are doing, and what they will never forgive him
for pointing out.
    And now he registers heat. Something—he
muses, and again he wishes he could smile at his sardonic path of
thought—he will soon come to know quite intimately.
    Someone he had not seen or sensed approach
strikes his left ankle from behind sending a sharp pain up through
his calf and sings of more to come. He looks down, his neck
straining against the iron noose who wants to keep his feet a
secret. He does manage to look down, the iron noose cutting and
most likely drawing blood (he reflects), but has trouble seeing,
then sees. Then sees no hand, no stick, no weapon, but flames.
Making their way from behind they are the first to reach him, and
now they lick his calves again, and then his legs, and then the
chorus of pain rises into the screaming of more and more and more
until he is surprised he is still alive, and still feeling, still
capable of having ever more pain poured into him.
    And now they rise, like and army of small
yellow and red bears on their hind legs to take larger and large
bites of the kindling and of the wood, and now those a-front draw
near as well, as do those from the sides and now, now he can feel
his hands—have the thongs burned free?
    What an odd thought, and one immediately
replaced by a fresh rising of searing flesh now, cornered and
screaming in protest at all avenues of escape aflame.
    He feels himself crumble into this searing
ocean of fire, feels his knees either buckle or disintegrate, but
the ring, that metal ring still intact, holds him—he was
right—chokes him, though not lethally.
    Perhaps it is a fact that
when the roar of pain reaches a certain volume and pitch, it cannot
be increased. Perhaps a body’s capacity to register can be
out-pained. Once there is only pain, once every nerve screams in
unison, once all there is is this roar, this pain, perhaps it reaches a point
where there can be nothing more of it.
    Bruno reaches this point.
    It is now a pain edged by darkness, or
should have been, would have been for any normal mortal, but Bruno
is no mortal, and still he can think and still he thinks:
screaming, on the one hand, through every cell in his body; amazed,
on the other, that he still can, and still does, think.
    Amazed, yes, and off now a
little to the left of the pyre—the little body turning black and
still trashing around like a reeking medallion at the end of the
chain—Bruno watches and then—and this is a conscious thought, a
knowing decision: enough . Enough. He recognizes and
severs the channel of perception and no longer feels the anguish of
what manner of life still fights on within the charcoaled puppet by
the stake. That charcoaled, suffocating thing is not him, or his,
never was. He knows with every thrash that it is no more but an
unfortunate congregation of expiring cells, once his home, now but
one last communal suffering.
    A breeze of compassion rises then fades into
yellow and red of still greedy flames as he takes his leave.
    :
    While the remains of what had once been
Giordano Bruno, the Nolan, smoldered and thrashed, his hovering
essence remained for some