“Numbers Don’t Lie”

His desk is a mass of notepads and books. Some borrowed. Most he owned. There were drawings and blueprints and diagrams. Facts and figures and tabulations. And numbers. Lots and lots of numbers.

The large fireplace and the crackling wood within keep him company.

He picks up the phone and dials. Someone on the other end picks up.

John. It’s Robert. I’ve got it down. It’s in the numbers.

You sure?

Numbers don’t lie, John. Numbers only lie when they’re being used by liars. And we’ve seen for how many years now that these people will tell any lie – use any number – to sell their story.

So, what you got?

Okay, ready for this? 200 an hour. Tops.

200?

Tops. There’s no way they could have burned the bodies any faster.

So that brings the number down to –

5000. Only.

My God.

5000, John. Only 5000!

And they’ve always claimed?

Double…triple that. Lies, John. Lies told by anyone who waltzed out of Auschwitz to make them feel less guilty.

Finally.

Finally.

Good work, Robert. My God. Let me call Richard and get back to you in a few. He’ll want to hear this right away.

Arbeit mach frei, John.

John’s laugh is unmissable down the line.

No doubt. Alright, buddy. Talk soon.

This is a huge deal.

A moment passes and Robert swipes at a fly on his leg. He misses but what attracted the nuisance in the first place are beads of sweat. Three of them. Racing down his calf. The handkerchief he uses to dry his leg moves to his forehead. More beads of sweat there. So excited by the news [“only 5000!”] that he missed how hot the room has become.

He unbuttons his cardigan and lets it swing open. Deep blue sweat stains beneath.

He steps to the fireplace and breaks the log into smaller orange embers.

He walks back to his desk and begins to organize. He knows he’ll soon have to share his findings [“200 an hour. Tops!”] with his community. Once Richard hears the news from John …well, it’ll be news.

Robert glances at the fire. It has doubled in size from when he left it. Though he broke down the logs into pieces they’re all burning with bigger flames than at their burniest an hour ago.

He batters at the logs again. There’s near nothing left of them –

He jerks up when he notices that the front of his cardigan has caught alight.

He swats at it wildly, stumbling back into his desk. He douses the burning end from a carafe of water.

He feels like an idiot. Half–soaked, shirt stained with sweat. His socks are sponges. The burnt cardigan smolders.

The flames are…bigger. They’ve begun to expand beyond the fireplace and up toward the mantle. There’s smoke in the room, too. More than before. More than ever before.

He blows at the haze and walks to the closed door.

Grasping the handle, he recoils. The metal is too hot to touch. He tugs off his cardigan and wrings some water from it to cool his hand.

The mantle has begun to smoke as have its edges.

He untucks his shirt and rips wide his collar. He coughs deeply and with some desperation.

Robert makes his way to the windows. He singes his fingers on the fixtures but with the shirt end can get a grip and push it up.

The rush of air is overwhelming. It is also exactly what the fire needed. It roars with appreciation.

Robert stands up on the ledge ready to tuck and roll onto the grass two feet below. He back has begun to steam with the heat from the inferno.

One leg up onto the ledge. He lifts the next and –

He falls back into the room. Onto the floor. Screaming in pain. His leg is on fire – or, rather, the fire is on his leg. An extension of the fire winds itself around his ankle and tightens. Then skins bleeds and darkens beneath it.

The fire begins to pull. Robert clings to the bookcase, the rug, the floorboards. Anything.

The fire has now wound itself up and over his knee.

It pulls him closer and closer.

As a second rope of fire wraps itself around his other leg it ignites his pants. Both ropes pull him closer to the fireplace.

His fingernails split and sever at the quick.

He vomits from the smell of himself burning. The flesh on his legs have puttied and blackened around the flames.

The fireplace was – well, it wasn’t really there anymore. In its places is an enormous, monstrous fire. An eternity of flames seething and angry.

Robert’s feet enter the fire. They blacken and melt. The blood is immediately lost in the flames.

And then his fingers curl and coil before alighting like ten small candles.

As his chest and neck are engulfed the capillaries in his eyes burst. The white replaced by a deep and terminal red.

His mouth reflexively yawns wide as flames pour forth. He is the fire now.

And then he is gone. As is anything and everything in the room.

By the time the firefighters arrived the flames had almost died out. There was simply nothing left to burn. It was all ashes.

But it was the strangest thing the firefighters had ever seen. Only the room burned. The rest of the house was fine. Couldn’t even smell the smoke inside.

The thermostats in the room on the other on the other side of the wall never went above a cozy 67 degrees.

And Mr. Robert, who everyone assumed had died in the fire. Nothing of him was found and he wasn’t ever seen again.

People remembered him fondly though. He was a thinking man who always loved his numbers.

“Numbers don’t lie,” he’d always say.