Flame

A dark, short, fictional story

Not sure I’d have thought of it myself.

Well, I wouldn’t have.

But the best ideas just come to you, don’t they?

Naturally, out of the blue.

Gifts.

Been frying tomatoes, I had.

Those big round ones people used to put in salads. Slice ’em open and they look like ghoulish open mouths, full of yellow-pip stained teeth.

Had been shunting ’em round the pan, enjoying watching their skins blistering, rusting, the middle bits cackling like devils.

Well, I’m guessing there must have been too much oil in there or something, that it clashed with the high water content. (Think that’s why they sizzle.)

Whatever it was anyway, it just came at me, didn’t it?

Lunges at me, this rogue jolt of fire.

A freak flame.

Took me clean by surprise.

And briefly, unexpectedly, we sort of danced, this flame and me. Mirrored each other.

Flame, the more dominant partner. Obviously.

So yeah, flame led, and I sprang away, my back arching. I threw back my head the way a horse tosses its mane. The flame leapt forwards. For a few seconds, we spooned and swayed. I was Ginger Rogers edging away in high heels to the flame’s encroaching Fred Astaire.

I felt its fierce heat land impulsively upon my chest, admired its boldness. Was that weird? Wrong? Just being honest.

I won’t lie, it looked like passion to me - what I recall of it anyway! Taking what it wanted, layered and hungry. All consuming. It warmed my skin, singed the hair on my arms, made me glow and gasp with excitement.

I remembered how it felt to be alive.

And at first, I could’ve stopped it. Cause you can, can’t you?

If you catch these things early enough.

Before they get out of hand.

Could have heeded the alarm that sirened faux concern, its wailing blare of warning.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I calmly removed the batteries and walked away.

Went outside.

Observed.

That’s right, I looked on as the fire engulfed the house.

I wandered out into the garden, satisfied nothing living was inside it.

I say ‘nothing’, well, maybe spiders, but can we, should we really save every spider? Are we responsible for rescuing the things we cannot see yet know might be there?  Where does it end? Moths? Booklice? At what point is something worth saving?

What renders something valuable?

When are we deemed culpable?

When is it right to turn a blind eye?

I’ve been asking myself that for a while now, that last one.

No, the things that perished in that house were objects. Possessions.

Items people keep.

Goods they glean something from. Attach meaning to.

He’d probably call them ‘memories’, I’m sure. Funny how people can come over all sentimental about objects but not about……..

On the walls, there’d been photos of people who looked like us but weren’t. Like snakes, we’d shed those versions of ourselves many years ago.

No, the photos had remained as mocking husks, remnants of a time that could never return. So why had we been holding on to them? Those smug, taunting ghosts we’d framed and revered. Those smiles that had long since morphed into smirks and sneers. Why?

“Just an old flame”

He’d said a few months ago as her name flashed up on his phone. I’d smiled, maybe made a little joke. Cause you do, don’t you? No-one wants to be the psycho-missus making a fuss about something that’s probably nothing, right?

But privately, I’d wondered.

It’s not like real flames cool down, is it? They stay hot or die.

I’d become fixated on the words, anyway. ‘Old flame. Old flame’. Dwelled upon them. Swelled upon them. Fell upon them.

Could flames grow ‘old’.….or did they shapeshift, hang around, hiding, lurking in embers? Could you accidentally stand on them like dangerous coals? Could they catch you off guard, then bam, game on again!

I considered all this as the ‘tomato fire’ tore through the living room and raced up the staircase. It snaked and dragoned, poofed and smoked.  Made light work of a past it clearly held neither regard nor affection for. It charcoaled and smudged. My flame licked its yellow-orange lips, went back into each room for seconds, thirds. Greedily gorging like a bright, attentive new lover. Tasting everything again and again, wanting more and more. Insatiable.

Once I knew I was far enough away for it not to harm me, I closed my eyes and let the shadows paint my inner eyelids, delighted in the amber dances. I calmed myself on the sound of falling timber, the petulant hisses. I confronted the breaking of structures I’d once thought indestructible.

I embraced the finality, the utter detachment I felt. The palpable sweet release.

And then, he was back.

On the driveway.

His face pale, coughing and spluttering, his mouth hovering on words he couldn’t seem to part with.

He studied my poise, the way my green eyes were vacant as a January vase.

They say ‘smoke gets in your eyes’, but not if it’s blowing in the opposite direction, it doesn’t.

And now, how it was!

“I don’t understand…..did the smoke alarm not sound?”

He said finally, as he nervously approached me, body language defensive, desperately trying to decode the situation.  No doubt he was already grieving his precious guitar, his books and clothes. Mourning the material objects that defined his existence. The outlines that loosely held in place his spineless, gutless, quivering mass of jelly.

“I had no control over it.”

I said, wondering if he recognised his own words.

The words he’d said just three days earlier when I’d confronted him about her. The words that had scorched me. Torched me. Scarred me.

I continued;

“Would have been pointless to try and stop it. These things have a life of their own. What can you do? A fire takes hold and before you know it…..”