Failure To Thrive

Big Picture

June 3, 1984

Flames crackled as another creased photograph fluttered through the stagnant air and down into the fire, snapshots of faces forever lost in time abruptly devoured by dancing strips of irresistibly entrancing plasma. Forever famished, this fire would finally feast today, rapidly fueled by combustible memories as it grew from a fetus of a flame into a mature inferno, whispering in a destructive language only Shirley and her unfortunate son could hear. Every single picture ensnared by those seductive strips of seemingly harmless light was instantly bitten apart by fanged flames, faded faces disappearing nearly as quickly as they'd been captured by that confounded camera. Bride-to-be Judy in an ugly homemade dress vanished into the hungry fire, erasing that day when the brunette had stood at an empty altar while ardently hoping that faceless man had truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and was just running late, only to keep her waiting all alone for hours on end with only Shirley and a wilted bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers for company; those empty pews had stared back with a silent intensity, reminding both young women forever bearing their maiden names of how many people were missing from their lives and how they were both worth no more than the warmth of their purchasable bodies. Whipping bursts of flame eagerly chewed on a pair of bored toddlers photographed at a tedious funeral hardly a week after their mothers had washed up in a neighboring town, Shirley and Judy having been way too young to understand the impact of death but extremely aware of how much it hurt knowing that their mothers had gone to great lengths just to avoid them; for the rest of their lives, those toddlers would grow up wondering why they hadn't been good enough for their mothers to at least give a proper goodbye and begging stone-deaf graves to know what they had done to deserve being forced to stay in the houses of mean strangers who hurt them in ways that were never shown in cinemas. Starving wisps of light ate into the faces of two regretted babies pictured laying side by side, the boys supposedly too ugly to stand a chance for adoption but too insignificant to even bother properly naming since they already at least had last names, though one of Judy's uncles had called the larger baby "an ugly little butthead" which had made the infant giggle and accidentally solidified a permanent nickname; though they didn't believe that they had ever been loved by their own mothers and had learned the hard way that not even children could make men want to stay with them, both Shirley and Judy had covertly hoped that at least they would be able to love these boys if they bought a house to keep the children in and somehow managed to finally get themselves clean, but the latter obviously never came to be and those children never did get to be loved, just like the previous generations had never been. Painfully bright strips of flame licked away the rumpled faces of two immature men whose names two dumb hick women had forgotten but had put their trust in a few years ago, the two men that Shirley and Judy had dared to dream of building lives with rather than just passing by without a second glance like they did to so many of the people who only saw flesh and who they had learned to never trust; naturally, the deepest response the women had gotten out of the two men had been a "cool" and laughter when revealing they were with child, as if they truly meant so little that not even children could prevent anybody from abandoning them just like everybody always did. Searing heat sliced through a crappy house Judy and Shirley had pooled money for together along with a few bribes, the house where they hoped they could return to one day when they were finally clean and sober enough to properly raise children who would have to raise themselves for the time being, foster care far too cruel an option to consider; obviously, neither mother had ever been able to break free of the alcohol and drugs they had tethered themselves to by their early teens, instead finding some semblance of control and a horrifyingly addicting sense of power they had never had before by slipping into that dreadful house at odd intervals between stints at rundown motels and waking to find their children injured in unimaginable ways, the women's exact actions lost to memory warped by intoxication but undeniably their own doing. Wholly consumed by flame and spat out as ash, picture by picture, years of memories that would never actually be forgotten physically dwindled away as Shirley fueled a fire that had been waiting far too long to be fed. Just because she would always remember everything didn't mean that she needed to have those stupid pictures staring back at her every single time she glanced at where they had hung on the kitchen wall adjacent to the stove before she'd torn them down with reckless abandon and doused a few unused newspapers she'd never even subscribed to in lighter fluid. Emptiness still sat far too heavily in her bosom, but at least those stupid pieces of bygone people who had changed or died that she shouldn't have cared about, especially herself, would no longer stare back at her and mock the voices that had already taken over her head years ago. Life was a game and death was the prize. Ever the contrarians, Shirley and Judy had always feigned immortality and refused to play along. Those stupid pictures could go die in a fire.