Gory details is a monthly article dedicated to helping horror writers improve their writing by looking at some of the "real" places and things that often find their way into horror stories. This edition is about fire.
Fire is fun, and does so many things. It will keep you warm, run your car, make pesky things like bad grade cards and unruly girlfriends just disappear. In horror, its uses are endless. You can make things ignite just like that (Fire Starter, Stephen King.) You can cook bad guys. (Nightmare on Elm Street.) Note: May not work on all bad guys. But since this is "Gory Details," we want more. How does fire do it all? To learn more, we're going to divide the subject of fire across both Gory Details editions this month. This article will talk about what happens to Fire Trap Mansion when some silly kids set fire to it. The next article will talk about all the fun things that happened to the kids. It's called "Ooo That Smell." It's nasty.
First. Four fun loving teenagers, underdressed and overdrunk go to spend the night at "Fire Trap Mansion." It's fun; necking and holding flashlights under their chins to make demon faces. Eventually, the party breaks up. Dawn and Gary go upstairs to...discuss philosophy and Evelyn heads off for a bath. We'll come back to them in part two. Right now we want to follow Doug. He thinks he's going to make breakfast.
Doug turns the burners up to high, tosses on some bacon and starts reading "Fire Prevention Weekly." After what seems only a few seconds there's a "whoof" sound and the pan is on fire. What happened? Most likely the pan got hot enough to produce a flammable grease smoke which got into the heated stream of air coming up the outside of the pan and "flashed over" (reached burning temperature.) Doug leaps to his feet and tries to smother the fire with a towel.
This just isn't Doug's night. On the way to the pan, he knocks over a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. (What does the "extra" mean exactly?) The oil soaks into his sleeve and when he holds it over the fire, poof, up goes the sleeve. That's called "wicking." Very few liquids actually burn. When a volatile liquid, like gasoline or superheated bacon grease, catch fire, it is actually the vapors coming off the fuel that burn. It's all about oxygen. A liquid, bound by surface tension, is reluctant to give up its molecules to passing oxygen so that combustion can take place. If, on the other hand you break the liquid up into a vapor, there's lots of oxygen around each droplet and it's much easier to burn.
This has story implications that go way beyond Doug. Sawmills, bakeries, grain elevators and any where else that produces a lot of dust always have air filters because powders, which won't burn if you hold a match to them, will light right up if you get a good oxygen to dust mixture. In fact, it doesn't just burn. It goes boom. Whole grain elevators. It's awesome.
Back to Doug. His shirt sleeve is acting as a wick for the olive oil. A wick handles the issue of getting a flammable vapor a different way. Try this. Buy a new candle, one with wax on the wick, and hold a match to the wick. It doesn't light right away. First some of the wax melts off. What's happening is the wax is heating and thinning till bits of it on the end begin to vaporize. Sense a pattern here?
Back to Doug again. Arm wicking, the pan flaming, Doug flails around setting fire to the curtains, his hair and several other things before crashing out a window and disappearing till part two.
For some reason authors, screen writers and video game designers have got it into their heads that a fire will hang around, just kind of burning to itself until whatever scene is happening gets over. Wrong! Fires move fast. This time the issue is temperature. A Calorie, as used in medicine is the amount of heat needed to raise one kilogram of water one degree Centigrade. Since boiling is one hundred degrees Centigrade, that 300 Calorie candy bar you're eating would raise a kilogram of water from freezing to boiling three times over. That's hot. In the kitchen of Fire Trap Mansion with hair, oil, bacon and curtains burning in an enclosed space, the temperature is skyrocketing. Within two or three minutes, items all over the kitchen will reach flash point and join the flaming fun. In environments where a fire can get really hot, nightclubs, supermarkets etc., fire will literally run people down. Eeep!
This is the last of the fire anyone will see unless they're standing outside. Smoke, pouring from the kitchen will quickly turn into a thick, toxic soup. At this point dish detergent, pesticides and old banana peels are all adding their smoke to the party. By the time the fire itself gets to the sofa in the living room, billows of smoke will be issuing from the upstairs windows. Fire fighters describe pitch darkness and a tremendous roar.
By now, less than ten minutes from the fire start, the only part of the house that is habitable is the basement and only because heat takes fires up. Soon though, supports will start to collapse, floorboards will burn through and even the poor rats cowering in the basement will get cooked. Within an hour, all that will be left of Fire Trap Mansion is a smoke and ash filled hole. Wasn't that fun? Now go over to part two and let's see what happened to those nutty kids.
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