Thank you, alt, for pointing out the obvious by not pointing it out xD
I took about an hour off to think about it. I used to be afraid of fire. The following is somewhat topical given the recent "Black Saturday" events in Australia.
Passage
(1164 words)
Jake had always been afraid of fire.
As a child, he found himself unable to explain the source of his fear, why even a lit candle caused him to shrink back, lest he might accidentally brush against the flame and burn himself, or, in his vividly puerile imagination, be immediately consumed in a conflagaration and be reduced to a pile of ashes. Worse yet, he was driven to distraction by the worry that the flame, dancing about erratically on the wick by means completely unfathomable to him, might entice him to reach out and grasp it. This compulsion, too, was beyond his comprehension, but nonetheless it drove him as far as refusing to blow out the increasingly numerous candles on his birthday cakes, much to the confusion of his parents.
The stories that children and teens liked to spread and speculate upon did nothing to alleviate Jake's torment. Arguments about spontaeneous combustion had Jake break out in cold sweats, an absurd reaction, he knew it to be judging by the laughter and guffaws of his classmates. But reasonable or not, he couldn't help but wonder whether he, too, might one day burst into flames, even without the aid of the demonic candle that haunted him still. He thought it might be ironic, even fitting if the catastrophe were to be willed into existence by his frantic preoccupation, which in turn had him sweating yet more profusely until he felt soaked to the soles of his Doc Martens. Perhaps that much might be barely sufficient to protect him from the imminent danger, and that, he reasoned, was the reason he survived his school years.
Years passed and Jake grew to be a resourceful young man. He had grown tired of this irrational- yes, that was definitely what it was- fear of his and with a newfound resolution set out to banish this phobia, for, as reason would have it, surely the heights of reason would triumph over this baser reaction of his. He pored over books, spent hours online downloading images and videos (once again much to the confusion of his parents, who had expected a rather different development), and in so doing he felt that at least he might be able to wrestle with the demon that held him captive his whole life long. Squaring his shoulders, he sat himself down infront of the stone fireplace in the family house, hands trembling as he stacked the wood and rolled the paper, heart pounding as he knelt, holding the matches and gazing upon the shrine, or perhaps the effigy, that he had built. He did not know how long it was, but surely it was hours, if not days before he finally flicked his wrist, and as if already burnt, tossed the lit match into the fireplace. It took every ounce of his willpower not to run away, but he watched, both hypnotised and petrified as the paper curled and blackened and the flames spread, licking at the kindling until the kindling caught fire, causing Jake to twitch every time the wood cracked and popped, the embers fluttering away and dying on the carpet. Jake saw that he was facing a beast- tamed but barely so, beating at the stone walls, leaving them scorched, searching for the way out and bellowing its protest as it found itself trapped, doomed to rage upon itself until it would dwindle and die.
When the fire was finally extinguished, Jake reached in and sifted through the ashes, turning the fragments of charred wood in his hand. They felt cold and brittle, which disturbed him. He thought that he might have finally conquered his fear yet there was something missing, something he could not figure out. Or, perhaps more appropriately, something he did not want to figure out, for he suspected he knew exactly what he must do, yet surely it was the most terrifying thing of all.
Against his better judgement, Jake found himself working that Summer as a volunteer firefighter in the middle of the dry Australian scrub.
As his seniors were fond of saying, it was a "right scorcher", and as fires went, Australian bushland was notorious for them, for their sheer destructiveness, the way the summer winds and heat would blow them across the land faster than any human could travel across the land.
"Didya know at least eighty percent of these fires are lit by humans?" drawled his supervisor as they sat at the table in the sweltering shed. From his extensive research, Jake actually did. He knew further that while many of those were left by careless campers, the majority were deliberately lit. Arsonists- Jake could not even begin to understand the madness behind it all, but perhaps madder still was the casual way in which his coworkers discussed it, even joked about it. Was this what they meant by the stoic Australian spirit? Or was sardonic a better word? Or perhaps just plain insane?
There was no more time to think about it, for Jake's ears were torn asunder by the screeching of the alarm. "Here we go again!" grunted his supervisor as he lugged himself into the red truck. Mindlessly, Jake followed, numbly gripping the strap of the seatbelt as the truck roared out of the shed, siren blaring. It was all he could do not to collapse in the face of this unrelenting chaos, so he just let himself be swept along, not heeding the chatter of the other passengers or the static of the CB radio.
Suddenly, the inferno was upon them. The truck screeched to a halt and Jake stumbled out. It took him a while to realise he had his hands over his ears, for the cacophony of earlier was blown away into nothing by what he could only call the heralding of doom. All around him, the scene was transformed into flickering red and yellow and heavy, oppressive black, and unbearable heat.
"We're in too deep, we'll have to fight our way out!" How could it be possible, that humans would willingly throw themselves against the flaming claws of Satan himself? Hell closed around Jake, suffocating and paralysing him, ready to crush him into dust. Blurry yellow figures rushed about with hoses, waving about puny streams swept aside with a disdainful, crackling laughter. Jake simply stared, the flames dancing in his eyes, his thoughts following their erratic choreography. He should have known- he knew everything there was to know about fire. He knew the the importance of flash points, the way fires spread, he knew its ecological context, the cycles and even the chemistry of fire. But all that was as ashes in the wind, in the face of what he faced now. None of that knowledge could ever capture the feeling of powerlessness, of insignificance, of the moment Jake realised the nature of his impermanence, whether or not he lived through this trial.
Paradoxically, Jake smiled. In the depths of his fear, he had found beauty.
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DISCLAIMER: This piece is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to characters either real or imaginary is purely coincidental. This piece does not reflect the author's views on fire or acts of arson, arsonists or the firefighting associations of Australia, nor on any events regarding these.
