short stories

Fire

585 words

There's something so interesting about throwing a log onto a fire. Watching whilst it is engulfed in flames, hearing it pop and spit embers onto the hearth. Seeing the embers die out and fade from a glowing orange to a small black blemish on the tiles. 

"A sail of flames" I'd heard that somewhere, in a book maybe. But it was perfect. It is like a sail of flames, they all join and connect, making a sort of cloth as they blow in the wind.

Apparently fire is alive, It uses oxygen and needs to eat, so it's alive by all laws of biology, but no one would ever think it's alive. There's a film in which fire is alive, well... I guess it's a fire demon but the fire talks. God what was it called? I loved it as a child, although it scared me a little.

Howl... Howl's moving castle! Of course, I should watch that again. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just keeps throwing logs in the fire and watching them burn. But what if I run out of logs?

I guess I could throw in a wooden table, maybe a stool. And after that maybe curtains, bits of tick fabric, blankets. Anything to keep the fire burning, to keep the sail of flames flying.

Maybe I'll throw some candles in there, I hear wax helps the flames. I wonder if leather is flammable, or would it just melt? And what about the fake leather that you see everywhere now? It's made of plastic, must melt.

My fireplace is so old, strange to look at it and think it's probably been there since victorian times, the design is very Victorian and the house is old enough. Always creaks too, I used to blame it on ghosts.

I once set a fire outside my school, near the cross-country track. A guy saw us and threatened to report us to the police, I ran. We all ran, some of us were faster though. They say fire exposes our priorities, but in that case it was what the fire drew to us, I didn't think once about my friends or what would happen if they were caught. I slid down a muddy hill and bolted down the street until I was sure I was safe.

When the flames settle it's just hot rocks, just glowing rubble... somehow it's almost as pretty as the real fire. And it still produces so much heat, and light. But you want to keep the fire roaring. Embers are too somber, too calm. It's fizzing now, well more crackling. But it sounds like it's fizzing.

More logs. They're being engulfed again. Reminds me of a movie, it was based a lot on the bible, a marriage, but each time everything crumbled. The house burned down, and from the ashes rose another, slightly different woman. Played by Jenifer Lawrence for the one we followed, but it just keeps going.

Sort of like a fire, you throw in fresh wood and it slowly grows more weak before it's nothing but rubble. It's almost sad. What if the wood was alive? Not just the fire? Well I suppose the tree is, the wood is sort of like limbs off of a body. Like how we eat certain parts of an animal, the tree is ripped apart and we only use some of it.

The fire's dying again, but this time I won't add another log. It'll smoke and crackle until it goes out.