Prompt from Creative Writing Prompts:
After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.
The Burn
After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.
But mostly stopped is not the same as stopped. I was being driven by a man who showed up at my front door every other evening. He would knock once, softly, when he knew everyone else would be asleep, everyone but me. I’d open the door and he would stand there in shadow, a hat pulled low to further hide his face. The dark of the night seemed to not just surround him but infuse him.
Each visit he handed me a box of matches with simple instructions: light each match and toss it aside when it got close to burning my fingers. Do this until all the matches were gone before the next visit in two days’ time.
I had no idea who this man was or what purpose these odd bits of pseudo-arson would achieve, but it didn’t matter because he said if I didn’t go through the box by the next visit he would make sure those I loved would burn as the matches should have.
It occurred to me the guy might just be a crank but was I willing to risk the safety of my family to prove it? I was not.
I was on the third box of matches when I became aware of their control. Each time I took out one of the wooden matchsticks and scraped its head against the side of the box, the spark and smoke and flame did something to me. I could have just gone down the street and lit the full box of matches over a sewer grate and safely met the terms of the “deal” and yet I couldn’t. I was compelled to light each match in the worst possible place and release it only when the guttering flame threatened to burn the skin of my fingers.
When the man arrived late at night with the fourth box of matches, I asked him why I had to do this.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn,” he said.
I told him that was a line from the 2008 film The Dark Knight uttered by Alfred the butler, his summation of The Joker’s motivations. And that since then it had become a popular internet meme. And was pretty dumb, as memes go.
I expected him to step forward into the light of the front step and reveal himself to be wearing full Joker make-up. Instead he just shrugged a little.
I took a match out of the box and lit it. The man took a small step back, as if he was afraid of it. That seemed weird. I held the match before him, saying there was nothing like an early start. Then I flicked the match at him, its spell over me seemingly inert.
For a moment I saw the soft brown leather of the man’s jacket illuminated by the orange glow of the match, then, as it struck, the man’s jacket exploded into flame. When I say exploded, I mean that quite literally–the force blew me back against the front door. When I staggered forward the man was gone, nothing but ash and some ragged strips of clothing in his place.
I considered the box of matches and nearly pitched them onto the street. Instead I kept them and took them with me to the bedroom, placing them on my nightstand before quietly slipping under the covers, hoping my partner would not stir. I fell asleep with surprising ease and if I dreamed, I did not remember them.
[to be continued]
