Burned

Part 1 - Existing & Being

BURNED

by Lynda Clark

...BURNING...

Wood burns at around 190°C. Slow charring only takes around 150°C. Slow charring is a good way of describing what's happening to the floorboards. Blackness blossoms across them, turning them from oak to charcoal.

That magical charring point of 150° applies to paper too. The wallpaper blisters, its 1970s floral patterns bubbling like diseased pustules, brown-and-orange petals turning brown-and-oranger.

Cotton's robust nature requires a scorching 250° before it goes up. These curtains are obviously manmade crap because they're disintegrating like tissue in a tumble dryer.

Which begs the question, why are you standing here watching everything burn?

Chapter One - Existing

If that car's still there, I'm going to go down there and set it on fire.

Bernard clenched his eyes shut and then re-opened them. The ceiling swam above him in rippling patterns of darkness and light, like the shadows of flames.

Time to get up and check on the car.

He heaved his legs over the edge of the bed and found his slippers with his toes, hooking them into place and wriggling his feet inside without using his hands. Celeste scolded him for doing that, because it broke the backs down, but they were only slippers and what Celeste didn't know couldn't hurt her.

It wouldn't still be there. It was probably just some visitors for Mrs McKee. Or a hearse to cart the nosy old biddy away. Bernard smiled half-heartedly to himself at the thought. Better just check on it anyway. Just in case. He scratched his belly then forced himself to his feet. Started shuffling over to the window.

Downstairs letters dropped through the letterbox, thudding onto the mat.

Not again.

Bernard stood stock still and waited. Nothing. Just the one bundle. From the weighty slap of the envelopes, Bernard surmised that it was more than yesterday, but not as much as... Well, just not as much as it could have been. He waited some more. Perhaps for once the damn-

'Yipyipyipyipyipyipyip-yipyiypiypyipyiypyip!!!!'

Goddammnit. The neighbours would probably complain to the council again. Bernard hated that ruddy dog. Celeste had pestered and pestered for a cute fluffy puppy. Bernard didn't mind dogs, but he wanted something large and solid, the kind of dog he could prop his feet on when he was reading. But Celeste insisted on something tiny and adorable, because she'd be the one walking it anyway and didn't want her arm wrenched out the socket by some canine Goliath. So they got Muffy. The creepy, calculating mind of a tarantula in the body of a child's stuffed toy. Then her career skyrocketed and Bernard took early retirement and he was the one left at home with the venomous powder puff.

Muffy proved the existence of God. How could the noble wolf share its evolution with the Pomeranian? Then again, Muffy's ear-wasting yip made you pray for deafness, so perhaps he proved the existence of Satan.

The yipping continued, the same pitch, the same intensity, never letting up for a second.

Better go and shut him up. Car won't be there anyway, so I may as well just check.

He moved to the window and squinted through a crack in the curtains.

The long black car was still pulled up to the kerb in the street below. Across the tops of the lime trees lining the cul-de-sac, he saw Mrs McKee's net curtains twitch. At least the watchers were being watched.