Zippo

by Zakary Grimshaw

 1 

By then the houses were burning twice a week, and Alice lay in bed and listened to the distant sirens in the dark. Through a space between curtains she watched for flashing lights or the orange glow of embers. She had been dreaming of fire. She could still feel the heat of it on her skin. 

The sirens wailed and she listened, trying to place them in the suburbs by the sound. 

She went out into the hall while elsewhere the fire chewed through wood and consumed houses. Severed the bonds that held matter together and left ash, which scattered easily in the wind. 

In the bathroom she turned the tap on the faucet and splashed warm water on her face. There were dark circles under her eyes in the yellow light. She opened the medicine cabinet and her reflection swung away. She took a cigarette from the box of cotton swabs and turned on the shower. The sound of falling water covered the sound of the sirens. She took off her sweat-soaked tank top, shivered, lit a match, and blew smoke into the steam of the shower. When she got in, the water hissed as it hit her skin, and evaporated.  

2 

She went to her classes and kept her head pointed toward her desk. She read books in her lap. The lectures went on and the hands crawled across the face of the clock. She moved through the halls like a ghost and her classmates passed through her. The bell rang. The closing of the lockers was a snap that cascaded like firecrackers. The noise in the halls reverberated. The floors reflected beams of florescent lights and down dark halls exit signs glowed. Teachers spoke in labyrinths that forked and looped back upon themselves and were devoured. She wandered through them sometimes, opening doors. When she wandered too far she found herself in the dim halls between classes and the bell would bring her back. The baseball players narrowed their eyes at her beneath their caps. She felt for the zippo in her pocket. She opened it and closed it. The sharp sound cut into her roughly and reminded her that she was alive. She was alive and she was alive and she was alive. When they looked at her like a killer she was alive. When she imagined the flames that could erase this place she was alive. She was unattached. She was separate from everything. The bell rang and she went out into the hall. The bell rang and the halls were empty again. 

—What is the capitol said the teacher but Alice could think only of fire. 

—What is the significance said the teacher but Alice thought there wasn’t any. There couldn’t be. If anything mattered in the world it would force her to confront the things that had been done and she could not. She could not.  

—Where are you supposed to be said the teacher but Alice didn’t know the answer.  

—I don’t know said Alice.  

—It’s fourth period said the teacher.  

—History said Alice. I’m supposed to be in history. 

3 

That night she climbed through the window. There were sirens wailing in the distance, the sound like a scream that catches on that beginning note and stretches out through time.  

—Aaaaaaaaaa. 

She tried to place them, following the note. The drone got louder and she started to run. The streetlights illuminated strange dusty cones. The houses passed by like the same house repeated over and over, like the same empty face with the same lamenting door mouth, the same dark, lightless eyes, all of them shut up tight, all of them silent, listening to the screaming of the sirens. She could smell smoke on the wind. She went out of the subdivision and onto the main road. Red lights flashed in the distance, bathed stucco walls in red. She followed them into the winding depths of another subdivision where a house burned and bathed everything in shifting, crackling light.  

The fire department was already working to put out the flames that roared two stories high and threatened to spread to other houses which appeared to lean away into the dark. A window shattered, wood popped and hissed and the whole thing sent up a great stack of thick black smoke. She went closer, holding her hand in front of her eyes to block the brightness of the flames that burned like a sun, as bright as a sun. She basked in the light, standing there on the sidewalk. They sprayed water from the hose at the blaze. They danced around her in the light like strange participants in a ritual over which she presided. She didn’t hear them yelling at her to get back, to stand a safe distance from the flames.  

4 

She tried to forget but she remembered. She always remembered. She remembered when she dreamed, when she sat at her desk in school, when she heard the sirens cutting through the silence of the suburban night. She remembered when she stood before the burning house. She remembered when she saw the flames. She cursed them for making her remember but she sought out the fires in her mind in order to remember. Like picking at a scab. It made her want to live and die at the same time. She sought out the feeling and feared what feeling it was doing to her. It tasted like iron and burnt bread in her mouth.  

She shook with cold and tried to warm herself with the flames of the house burning down. The firemen were pulling her back into the cold but she wanted to be warm. It was so bright. Even with her eyes closed she saw the fire.  

And in the window she saw the boy in the baseball cap that held his hand out before him while the flames spread up his arm. He waved the arm like a torch, like a beacon. The fire that consumed him was the fire that consumed the house but it was also the light of the first fire, and it had burned out months before. She watched him burning until the window shattered, and the boy on fire was lost in the smoke.  

She went looking for him in burning houses, racing through the back alleys and the washes of the suburbs, through shortcuts and across dying fields, always hoping to arrive before the sirens that screamed in the streets and threw strange red light against the stucco walls and the houses, and the men who would take her away from the flames.  

5 

She awoke one night to the smell of smoke and through the curtains in her bedroom that drifted in the wind the orange glow of fire created strange diffuse shadows that moved flickering across her walls. The shadows were sharpened in the light and all the forms in her room became pointed. She sat up in bed and watched the flickering light as if from a candleflame. She peered through the curtains at the house on fire. The street glowed in its light and everything metal shined. A cloud of smoke blackened the night sky. She went out into the street.  

Out on the sidewalk she listened for the sound of sirens but only heard the crack and roar of the fire. It looked familiar to her, like she’d seen this house on fire before, but it could be that she had, as houses in the suburb sometimes shared the same face.  

The door hung open like a mouth. What else could she do but go inside? She was compelled by her desire and her desire was a hand that pulled strings from the rafters that were too high up to see. In her own hand she opened and closed the zippo as she entered the burning house.  

Inside the smoke was thick and the wood popped and snapped. The flames spread to the curtains and climbed the walls. The fire roared like a great wind through trees. Pieces of the wooden frame clattered sparking to the floor.  

She went through the house looking at the things that had been abandoned to the fire, all the things that would burn and be gone from the earth leaving only ash behind and smoke and nothing, all of it would become nothing and it would blow away in the wind. The framed photos on the wall caught fire and fell, shattering the glass. The couch was on fire, the blankets, the beds, closets, the books and records and the journals, the calendars, the albums, the collections. All of it on the verge of burning out and burning away. 

She called her brother’s name and coughed the smoke out of her lungs and her eyes ran with tears. 

She went up the stairs where the floor was hot beneath her shoes and she pressed her hands against the bedroom doors and opened those that didn’t burn the skin of her palms. She went into the rooms and sat on the beds if they weren’t on fire and watched the things fade from the world. She was alone in the house. There was no one there but her. The bright light of the flames grew dim.  

Touching the source of the heat and the light had only burned and blinded her, and she didn’t understand. 

Coughing smoke she stumbled down the stairs and collapsed. 

6 

She let it lick her palms. The fire spoke in a rush of hot air like paper crumpling or like a canvas flag flapping in the wind. It spoke in a blaze. She fed it cigarette butts and lovingly she watched the light. Her shadow was flung jerking out behind her like bat wings. Like moth wings that flicker with the candleflame. The fire belched smoke, exchanged her offerings for sparks.  

—You’re him, she said to it. You’re my brother, aren’t you? 

The fire nodded affirmation.  

—Unless you’re the thing that got him. 

The fire flickered and flashed. It opened its mouth and roared. 

7 

Red and burnt bodies rose from the desert sands. 

They shambled as if on strings, guided from no life within but by some invisible hand. The hair had been burned from their bodies. Their uniforms were half cooked into their skin, which shone in the bleak light of the desert like barbecued meat. She smelled them cooking. They opened their blistered mouths wide and made a sound like hot wind. Their eyes had melted and they groped blindly toward her over the cracked earth. They wanted to touch her. If they caught her, they would hold her down. They would cover her mouth with burnt-meat hands so she couldn’t scream. Crinkling and shining like blank paper. Like laminated plastic.  

And then the sky opened up as if torn and through the ragged hole her brother flew. He drew a flaming baseball bat and the sound was like the zippo opening and closing. The shadows ran from the flame, and her brother turned the world to ash. He burned it all down. He did it for her, just like he promised he would. 

8 

When the man carried her out of the flames she thought she knew him. The visor that shaded his eyes was a baseball cap, and she heard his cleats against the charred hardwood floors. 

She put her hand against the number on his uniform.  

But her throat was burned and she couldn’t speak. 

9 

She sat on her roof and watched the suburbs burn. They sprawled around her labyrinthlike, like repeating fractals. The fires were spread out. They looked like campfires attended by wailing spirits. The fire engines cut through the quiet and rushed out in all directions.  

Her hospital wristband fell down her forearm, and she scratched the irritated skin beneath it.  

Her sweatshirt and her skin smelled like smoke. She held the zippo in her pocket. She thought of her brother. She watched the scattered glows.