This week’s prompt from 642 Things to Write About:
Set something on fire.
It’s a little ominous.
A lot of these start with something like, “Write a story about…” or “Summarize a time when…” but this one is more like a command, like something that’s maybe not actually in the book and is really just my subconscious telling me to literally set something on fire.
Of the phrases that might pop into your head, “Set something on fire” is probably one of the most troubling, right? One of the worst?
I mean, others are worse, situationally. “Maybe I should try killing to feel something again,” or “I bet that person would look really fucked-up naked,” are pretty bad.
But just as a phrase, on its own, I have to say that “Set something on fire,” is so direct, so clear, that it frightens me just a bit, and I’m glad I don’t think it much.
“Much” should have been a notable tag on the end of that last sentence. That’s for the super-readers out there as well as the people in my life who read this as maybe a little insight into the ol’ mental health of our pal Pete. Should I hang out with him? Maybe he needs a friend. Is he too far gone, is a latenight stroll dangerous? Let’s take a look at the ol’ Substack…oh, sweet jesus.
I did like burning things as a youth. I mean, most youths do, right? Fire is forbidden, but also accessible. Or, at least it was when I was a kid. There was always a match or a lighter hanging around. What do kids do now? How can they have any fun with their parents’ vapes? Or those electric wands people use to light candles? That isn’t nearly as cool as cracking the top off of a lighter and adjusting the little wheel inside so you can make a giant flame.
This is something I still know how to do. Geometry? Fuck, no. Make a huge flame come out of a lighter? Of course.
Why couldn’t I be interested in ONE marketable skill sort of thing as a kid? Just one? My entire childhood was a series of stupid, worthless skills. Want to make a little dart out of a matchstick and some pins? I’m your man. Want to learn a lot about aquariums and eventually get into the aquarium design field? Sorry, nerd, hope this little tiny dart hurts like hell, HAHAHAHAHA!
When I think back on it, I remember going to Long’s Drugs and trying to buy lighters a few times. Most times, the checker would not sell a child a lighter. Which was pretty reasonable. But occasionally, they would, and I always wonder what the fuck they were thinking. I mean, I was a kid, like 12. I looked like I was maybe 9. There is zero practical need for a kid of 12 to have a lighter. There is only trouble to be made here.
In hindsight, I should’ve gone in to the drug store in my Boy Scout shit, bought one or two other camping things, or like some rope or something, and a lighter. Maybe that would’ve been more successful for me. At least it would’ve given me some use for Boy Scouts other than a monthly meeting to go to that was like, “Oh, goody, it’s like school except with khaki uniforms ad short shorts and a much bigger reputation for boys getting touched.”
My most vivid memory of fire comes from a tradition me and my friend Travis did in high school: The Annual Burning of the Papers.
One of the hallmarks of a good tradition is that you don’t remember exactly how it started because when it started, you didn’t know it was going to be a tradition.
Traditions are like nicknames that way: It’s impossible to cultivate or consciously create a nickname, it just has to happen.
Traditions are also like nicknames in that they are often outside your control and a reminder of how cruel life is. There were two separate people known as “Poopdick” that I came across. I didn’t know any “Macs” or like a “Moose” or something, but I knew TWO “Poopdicks.”
My memory of the first burn is that we went to a little pit in the backyard on the last day of school, threw in all the school papers we still had, and burned them shits. Not a super auspicious start, but very fun, very zen.
I read a story once about a guy who would paint with a can of water and a brush on a hot sidewalk, and the sun would burn away his work, and he’d start over. A very zen sort of thing. Burning the papers was sort of like that. Except destructive instead of creative, and also, whereas the water painting would be pleasant to watch someone do at the park, you’d be alarmed to see an old man just starting a fairly large fire 30 feet from a swingset.
Over a few years, this humble smoldering of notebooks turned into a real towering inferno.
My junior year of high school, I saved my papers All. Year. I crumpled them into balls, which we’d learned made them burn a lot better than throwing in, say, a whole-ass notebook completely unprepped.
We constructed a little chicken wire cylinder, filled ‘er up, and whoosh, burned every math assignment, every electronics worksheet, everything.
It was great, glorious. It was the right way to end the school year for a kid who fucking hated school and needed to be cleansed of its stink in order to really and truly enjoy the summer.
Maybe that’s part of why I can’t enjoy the summer anymore. There’s no break, you know? No real cutoff. The years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’, to quote either Smashmouth or Shakespeare (I always get those guys confused. Probably because one wrote Shrek and one wrote the soundtrack for Shrek).
[if you just looked up whether Shakespeare wrote Shrek, shame on you]
Maybe I should set something on fire…
LIKE THE SALES OF 1-STAR CHRISTMAS, A HORROR SHORT THAT I WROTE!
That’s right, this baby can be yours for the low low price of…$2 dollars?
What the fuck, everybody, you can’t spend $2 dollars on a goddamn piece of literature where a guy maybe gets his testicles cut off?
How about we really light this up and get those sales in? Get those 5-star reviews cookin’?
Am I just a big joke to you all? Do you only love me when I’m talking about my own inadequacies for your amusement?
I mean, I only love me when I’m doing that. It’s one of the few bright spots in my life. So I guess it’s okay if you only love me then, too, but also just spend $2 fucking dollars, you cheap fuck.