“I understood what I was, yet still I put someone in harm’s way — my way.” A short story in which an incendiary soul worries about the well-being of those in their periphery…
by: Keelan Hansgen
I flick the last match to the dirt as the fire dances around me, alighting anything and everything in its path. The embers it throws my way taste my skin, leaving little singe marks and filling the air with the scent of burnt hair. I don’t need a mirror to know the quickly growing monster is reflected in my eyes, or that if I don’t move soon, it will consume my only way out.
I watch, frozen, as it claims more and more of the field around me. The smoke climbs higher and higher, blacking out the sun and threatening to smother everything with its thick haze.
What they say about your life flashing before your eyes is true, it turns out. I see images of my hometown and my childhood. My father used to get so angry about every little thing. He would scream and scream any time I made so much as a peep of noise. I was to speak only when spoken to, and be seen only when he wanted to pretend he was a good father on the occasion someone visited the house. My mother wasn’t safe from his tirades either. She often came to comfort me after she had been fighting with him, eyes puffy, and tugging her sleeves down to her fingertips to hide her arms. She did what she could to keep me safe, leaving me with her parents in the hopes of freeing me from my father’s heavy hand.
My grandparents had a massive fireplace, complete with a mantelpiece decorated with all the family memories they wanted people to see. They, of course, never wanted to leave any evidence of the “less savory” parts of our family. I used to beg them to light it for me so I could sit on the hardwood and stare into the flames. The fire seemed so alive and powerful. I never could have imagined what real fire is like though, when it’s been released from confinement. When it’s no longer contained by the stony walls of that fireplace.
I think I watched that fireplace so long it became me. As I got older I became the thing that consumed everyone. I was the flames and everyone else was my oxygen and tinder. How many times did I find myself sitting in the principal’s office? The first time I remember shaking, sitting in that chair across from his enormous desk. I wasn’t afraid or remorseful, instead it was thrilling. Getting pulled out of class, stern lectures slowly becoming yelling matches, being sent home to my grandparent’s house, getting grounded (though that never actually really meant anything).
With each new grade came new friends who eventually got burned too, leaving nothing but their ashes in my hands. I collected those ashes like little trophies of everywhere I’d been, and everyone I’d touched with my heat. I realized that out of everything in my life, that was one thing I could control, one thing that I could make go my way. I didn’t have to feel small anymore if there were others that could be smaller than me. Sometimes you have a goal that you want or need to achieve, and you only have yourself to rely on to get there. In those cases, you do what you can to make it happen, sometimes in spite of the consequences, and sometimes welcoming them.
At 23 I met someone who didn’t run when I lit my first match, and then the second, and third. Little burn marks began to dot his arms and fray his collar but still, he stayed. Each embrace was like cool water flowing over me, quelling my flames and washing away the ash that darkened my hands. In an effort to redirect my heat, he gave me candles of dogwood and honeysuckle. Before I knew it, I became my grandparent’s fireplace with the decorated mantel. I was content with being trapped inside those brick walls, burning only the wood that belonged to me. We started to build a life together, with the only constants being me getting too heated, and then him cooling me down again. I loved him, and for a time, was satisfied.
After a while, though, I began to miss the ash, miss the feeling of control. I felt like I was going crazy, like all of it was too good to be true. Suddenly everything was wrong, and I made sure he knew. I pushed him away, kept him out, and threw gasoline his way with my embers as a chaser. The healed burns I had given him re-opened, and were quickly joined by new ones. He tried to keep throwing water on me, but it only made my flames grow higher and hotter. The problem is that your mantelpiece is only so big and if you choose to display strictly good things, the bad things will get jealous and resurface eventually.
So he burned too, smothered in the whirlwind of smoke I blew his way. Out of everyone, though, he is the one that sometimes makes me feel regret when I think about how things ended up between us. I understood what I was, yet still I put someone in harm’s way — my way. After him, I started carrying a matchbox everywhere with me to remind me of that.
Now I wonder if this is what it must have been like for everyone around me. If my poor mother and grandparents ever had me reflected in their eyes as the monster I was, like the fire in front of me now. I think it must have been hard for my mother. Every time she turned around to try and put out the roaring flames that were my father, I must have quietly burned her hand as she held mine. I think that’s probably why she always had that look in her eyes. Why she gradually shifted from calling every weekend, to once a month, to once every six. Why she packed up and moved across the country to live in a new state. To start a new life.
As I look around now, I can hear sirens wailing in the distance, though I’m not sure how far away they are. I can’t see anything through the mess of orange, red, and grey that surrounds me. Smoke invites itself into my lungs and forces me to cough. The wall of heat makes sweat soak my thin t-shirt, and though it is a crisp fall day, the cool air cannot reach me now. There is only a narrow strip of wild grass that has not yet been touched by the fire, only a sliver of space for me to escape through. But I don’t ask my legs to carry me away; the fire doesn’t scare me. Everything has been too much, too hot. I needed a way to vent the heat. When I came here last week to just sit in the grass and feel the fresh dew sizzle against my skin, I thought the whole field was quaint, someone’s unused back acreage perhaps. I didn’t mean to take it this far and burn it all too.
Suddenly the fire begins hissing in agony all around me, and before I can really process what is happening, ice cold water rains down upon me, soaking my scalp and soothing the places the embers had touched me. Before I know it, firefighters are rushing towards me and pulling me away from the lingering flames. I look around, half wishing I will see the only person to have ever been the water to my flames. But of course he isn’t here. All that waits for me is a cold steely ambulance, and a long ride that leaves me wondering if this time I will finally learn to be ok with putting down the matches.
Keelan Hansgen is an aspiring writer with a flair for the deeply personal. Tending towards introspective pieces of flash fiction, they frequently explore topics relating to mental health struggles and inner conflict.
Header photograph by Virginia Duran.
