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Watching Fires

Brian Peter Fagan

    This is a particularly good one: turning into a ten-alarm fire- the highest I have ever done. Hundreds of firemen and trucks everywhere.
    Two days and nights this fire has been burning. I had to take breaks to eat but sleeping while it blazed would be impossible.
    I chose my target well- an abandoned warehouse in Canarsie. So large I had to set four different sets of accelerants- used a timer so they would go off at the same time.
     How glorious it was as they exploded into flames. A fire climbing ever higher, a kaleidoscope of colors. Pure ecstasy lasting not for hours but for days.
    But now it has been extinguished, the last of the trucks driving away and the elation has long since faded.
    I hear a stirring behind me: someone else is here in the shadows.
    “So, what do I call you,” says a deep voice from the darkness.
    “Pyro? Sparky?”
     A large man steps into the light- he is carrying something.
    “No matter, probably better you stay nameless.”
    “I’ve been studying your patterns for months. Since you set that fire in Queens. Remember that one? I came home from my night shift to find a burnt-out house and learn my wife and baby daughter were gone. The Fire Inspector told me that they found traces of accelerants in the basement and the fire was the work of an arsonist.”
    “So, I watched and waited, and I realized you set your fires on nights of full moons- the better to watch them, right? Got myself a police scanner and started listening.”
    He is uncapping the can.
    “What have you got there?” I ask.
    “Surely, you of all people recognize the smell of kerosene” he says with a laugh.
    “Look, I’m sorry about your wife and daughter, I never meant to hurt anyone. I can’t help myself.”
    He begins to spray me with the kerosene, and I am soon soaked and engulfed in the pungent odor.
    “I’ll get help. I’ll turn myself in. Please. Please, don’t do this.”
    He laughs again. “How I have dreamed of this moment, listening to you beg for your life.”
    The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter.
    “No, no, don’t.”
    “There’ll be lots of fires where you’re going,” he says and flicks on the lighter.
    I watch as my beloved fire comes arcing towards me.

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