Exhausted in body and soul, he sat on the front stoop, watching in the dark for a familiar figure. It was a vigil he had kept before, and one that he would keep again -- and again and again until the vision came true. One night, maybe tomorrow, maybe a thousand tomorrows from now, the image that had haunted his dreams would materialize right here on this street, gaining life from shadows cast by so many empty, hollow bulbs. A hundred flashing lights touting girls, lottery tickets, cheap beer and over-taxed cigarettes were powerless against the abyss at the heart of this broken city. Like a hungry, black hole, it swallowed even the heartiest flame. 

 

Small embers never stood a chance. 

 

In his short lifetime, he had already seen so many burn out. Sparks that flared with promise died swift and tragic deaths, snuffed by the greedy hand of indifference. Once, he believed he could harvest the power to ignite an inferno simply by touching those around him, as though he might spread passion as efficiently as an errant microbe might spread disease. Sadly, disease had the greater power. 

 

In time, the fire within him ebbed. 

 

His own passion washed away in an icy, winter wind.

 

Now, as that same ice emanated from the concrete slab beneath him, he let the chill penetrate him much as the darkness itself had for so long. The city was within him; it was a part of him. And it was dying. He was dying. And so he sat there, night after bitter night, waiting for the one person who could free him from this desolation, the one person who could ignite that spark again. He watched on that dark street for a super-hero who would fly from the pages of an old comic book to stoke every budding ember into the inferno he had hoped to build long ago. 

 

He watched without looking.  

 

And the shadows grew thicker, darker, colder. They reached out to him. The void, the abyss, the black hole of hopelessness opened its maw around him, finally driving him from the stoop. He stumbled inside, into the comfort of his home, the one place the shadows had not yet reached. There he moved to a window. 

 

Intent on keeping his watch, he fell back, gasping, startled, when he finally saw a figure looking back at him. It had fire in its eyes, passion in its soul. There, in that glass he saw the person he had been waiting for, the super-hero who would chase away the abyss.

 

As realization warmed his spirit, giving life to tired bones, he rose to his full height, standing taller than he had since his spark had fallen victim to the wind. He could feel the birth of an ember rising in the core of his soul. 

 

And then, looking to the window again, he found an odd comfort in the familiar image, in the truth he had kept hidden from himself for a time beyond measure.

 

In that window, he saw his own reflection.