In Flames

I sit here on a system I purloined from my colleague, waiting, wondering, hoping that the one I was working on is alright. I suppose I overloaded it with the last render, but whatever I did, I caused the UPS to catch fire. Burned my thumb a bit too. Again, hopefully, it's alright.
It's being narrated in my voice entirely, they seem to like it, and I've been able to do a decent job with the editing, considering the footage they gave me. I've spent way too many hours in the last week and a half sitting in my 19 degree office working on this damn movie to see it go up in flames.

In flames.

My life changed with those flames, four years ago. Having just got back from Pakistan, one of the toughest and scariest but most memorable times of my life, a time I was forced to grow up a little too soon, with everything happening around. I was attending Woodstock school, for the rest of the year, away from my folks for the first time in my life. The customary six week period where we weren't allowed to meet any family starting on my 14th birthday behind me, I spent a weekend with them, where Dad treated me more like a man than the kid he'd always treated me as. I knew he had something he wanted to say, to tell me, but kept himself from saying it, until perhaps the next time I met him. Little did any of us know.
The following thursday, I was fumbling with a problem in Star Math, they all thought I was some stellar student, when I got called out of class. Wondering what the hell I'd done this time, I followed the peon out and was rather surprised to see my aunt as well as my sister at the office. I was a bit apprehensive, even more so when she said Dad had an elevator accident, but wouldn't say anything more. I went over to my locker, and grabbed a book for the ride home, thinking I'd need something to do while we sat around in the hospital waiting for him to recover. A few hours later, my uncle took us aside in the train and told us he was gone. It had been instant.

It took until the next morning for it to sink in. The next few days passed like a blur until I found myself at rishikesh wading knee deep in the river, pouring his ashes into it. I remembered carrying his body, lighting the fire below it, taking a stick and cracking his charred skull through the pile of logs. I remembered going back the next morning, to look at charred bones, all that was left of my Dad. I opened my eyes and found myself at the river again. I swore at that moment not to shed a tear, to be strong for my mom and sister, that Dad's strength would flow through me.
I found out over the rest of the week from newspapers that he was with RAW. That was what he had wanted to tell me in Mussoorie, the last weekend I met him, what he couldn't tell me in Pakistan because I was too young. The accident had happened in CGO complex, his own office. The lift had stopped, and he had tried to climb out, along with all the other senior officers, and gotten crushed when it started moving.
I numbed myself to everything around me, I strove to be the man Dad wanted me to be. I put my faith in love and love alone, just like Dad always taught me. Time and time again love kicked me in the balls, left me gasping on the ground, but I got up just the same, ready for it to find me again. Keeping myself strong, Dad's strength flowing through me.

Then came the book. Apparently some Major General had published a book on RAW once he retired that's been banned around the country, but we found a copy at Midlands. A chapter of the book was his own account of it, he was in the elevator with my Dad, and for the first time I got to hear exactly what happened to my Dad.

It's sapped the last of my strength, I've been absolutely empty, but the misery only came two sundays ago, when I found I couldn't talk about it, and I sit in my nineteen degree office from nine in the morning to nine, ten, eleven at night. Days my boss makes me leave early, I pack up the computer and get my buddy JD, who's staying over with us right now, to come pick me up, and I take the computer home and keep working from there. I don't know what I'll do once I finish these movies, I don't know how I'll keep myself busy then, but I need to do a great job of it.