Burning Desire

Smoke, my faithful assistant and constant ally, has enveloped the apartment. Acrid black plumes roll and swirl around you like unbroken stallions, but they can't be tamed. Even with your breathing apparatus you will need to get out of here fast, or you’ll be overcome.

***

Growing up, I was considered good looking, in a pretty-boy sort of way.

I didn’t like the term at first; it sounded almost demeaning. But I soon realized that some labels can be useful,  and should not be taken for granted.

Socially, I learned fast by studying those around me. I discovered that being agreeable is preferable to being argumentative and confrontational, so I became the eager-to-please, light-up-a-room kinda guy.

You could say I had it all. I was smart, popular, with loving parents who adored me, encouraged and supported me in whatever I wanted to do.

I graduated at the top of my high school class, helped out at the YMCA, coached a junior baseball team. I even spent time volunteering at our local senior citizens center.

Our family did meals on wheels at Christmas…the whole shebang. From the outside looking in, there’d be no red flags flapping around in my anomaly-free life. But from a young age, I learned that sometimes normal is actually bat-shit-crazy wearing its Sunday best.

I finished college and completed a paramedic’s course. I did it for mom and dad, but I didn’t like it.

***

Scraping human roadkill off highways and trying to stifle the constant flow of blood and gore never did appealed to you. You knew this would not be your choice of career.

It’s not the death and injury that made you flinch, but the messiness of it all. The detritus that spills out of humans is relentless and repugnant. Faeces, blood, hair, saliva, vomit, mucus…even teeth. And this bodily content wants to cling, relentlessly. As if by attaching itself to a different host, it can live on.

No matter how much time you spent cleaning yourself up, there was always a spot of dried blood somewhere on your body, or some kind of unidentifiable dried matter cementing itself to your clothing. The tragic hue of this kind of death made you confused and vulnerable. The way I deal with death is so much cleaner.

***

But it wasn’t all bad. The saving lives part was exhilarating. When that happens, there’s no feeling like it. It’s not like I enjoyed playing God or anything, it’s just that I got a blast from the affirmation that a person's existence means something.

So, my parents’ hopes of one day having a doctor in the house were shattered. I wore their disappointment like a dunce’s cap for a while, but I did warn them up front that it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.

I was ready to get on with what I was born to do. The answer to the question my dad had asked me every year for as long as I can remember.

“What are you going to be when you grow up, son?”

***

What you wanted to do, and what you were always going to be, had nestled into  your soul so long ago. I put it there. A tiny spore, ready and waiting to grow and flourish.

***

I don’t remember exactly when dad stopped ruffling my hair when he asked me that question, but my answer has always been the same.

“I want to clean up the evil in the world”.

When I was younger, my parents would smile their knowing smiles, even when I would say indignantly, “No dad, not like a caped crusader. Those guys are fictitious. I’m the real deal.”

When I launched my new career by doing a year’s voluntary work with the New York Fire Department, my parents displayed their pride like a coat of armor.

I loved every moment of it. Finally, I was doing what I felt I was born to do. A year after that, I aced the application process, including the psych evaluation, and became a fully-fledged member of the FDNY.

I can still feel the weight of my dad’s congratulatory paw on my shoulder. The elated nods of approval. Mom of course would have preferred me to do something less life-threatening, and for a while, our conversations were punctuated with the crackling flames of her anguish. But she sort of got over it. In the end she even made a little joke about my knack for putting out fires.

***

I have never let you forget that evil is real. It has hovered around you in every shape and form you could imagine. I’ve helped you clear it away, and together we have prevented so much suffering.

Even when the sun shone its blinding light into your life, evil was clawing at the door, trying to infiltrate your inner sanctum, looking for a warm, comfortable place to settle and grow. I couldn’t let that happen.

I taught you one of life’s most valuable lessons. Evil is never satisfied until it gets what it wants. For so long, it fed itself on your innocence, and then turned that innocence upon you, insinuating itself into your life, insisting it belonged there. Your quest to vanquish it has become our burning desire.

***

Even as a small child, I knew about evil. I learned first-hand, because it got into my birth parents. That’s when fire and I became friends. We understood where evil was born, and together we harnessed the power to fight it. With the first purifying flame I ever made when I was five, I was able to sweep away a life that would have certainly destroyed me.

***

When you were born, evil disguised itself in the cloak of drugs and alcohol, and drove the people who created you to violence and cruelty. Its grip on your birth mother was vice-like, until she mostly didn’t know, or didn’t care that you existed.

Evil took control of her and made her a ragged, filthy toothless skeleton. Then, when she was powerless to fight for either her life or yours, she just gave herself up to it.

Once she was gone, evil unleashed your birth father on you like a rabid dog. In his frenzy, some of the bones he broke in your body never healed properly. Those are your battle scars. They are there to remind you of your purpose in life.

Even at such a young age you knew with utter conviction that your life would have been one of horrendous pain and suffering – probably even death. That’s when you knew that unless you banished it yourself, evil would always be with you.

A year ago, evil took the form of cancer and wormed its way into your father. Oh, the humiliation, the destruction of his capacity to hope.

Then, not content with your father, evil came back for second helpings, and tunneled into your mother’s brain. It started eating her memory, slowly, mercilessly vacuuming out everything that had ever meant anything to her – including you.  

***

And now I stand here in my parents’ apartment. My bunker gear is heavy and unbearably hot, but strangely, I feel weightless – as though I’m wearing a space suit. With lustrous cadence the fire and I have taken control. As we were always meant to.

***

I weave my way around your parents’ living room, drawing all material evidence of their earthly existence into my hungry maw – and the evil along with it.

Together we dance a ferocious, cannibalistic, satisfying dance.

***

Most people think that fire destroys everything in its path, but that’s not true. It’s not a malevolent force at all. It’s the opposite. Fire is the enemy of evil. It compels life to regenerate. It cleanses and heals. It takes away the painful, the ugly and unnecessary, and leaves a path for new life to grow again.

With the help of fire, I let go of the sadness of losing my parents, and revel in the utter joy of watching what we’ve created, and the pain and suffering we’ve stopped.

***

When I met you, I promised you I would be like your genie. I gave you one tiny flame, and granted your wish for a better life.

Your new parents loved you unconditionally, but they didn’t understand you as well as they thought. They didn’t know anything about our other quests. And now they never will. You saved them from that suffering too.

***

Fire is very patient with me. I know it will never be tamed, but we have an understanding.

Like when we saved countless lives in Chelsea only a few month ago by razing a crack den. The price that had to be paid to rid the world of the evil inhabitants of that building was well worth it.

And the van containing seven tiny young girls, barely more than fourteen, destined for a sex slaughter house. Together, fire and I made sure that they had been safely removed, and that the van and its drivers would attend a magnificent barbeque in which they would be the main course.

***

For a very long time, the cocoon of joy your parents created was like a protective barrier, and evil didn’t dare reveal its treacherous façade.

But sometimes I had to remind you about the two people responsible for your existence. I would wait until you were asleep, dreaming about me, and I would allow them to creep, like dark shadows into your mind. I didn’t want to do it because of the cruelty, but I knew if I let you forget about their hatred, and their utter disregard for precious life, you would never fulfil your quest. Our quest.

***

Sometimes the shadows would try to block out the images of the kind, beautiful souls who gave a damaged little boy a wonderful life.

My parents, the ones I loved, made sure I wanted for nothing. So my duty to them for a lifetime of caring was clear, from the moment that the evil that came to destroy them showed its ugly face.  

***

You are trained to look for, and drag out survivors, but we both know that today there aren’t any. Your parents are gone, saved from the horrors that evil had in store.

I watch you looking at the shell of their bodies lying together in a final embrace in the bedroom. I made sure I took that room first.

**

Fire has forced me out onto the sidewalk. Inside my parents’ bedroom, it whispered that I must go now. My backup crew is dealing with what remains.

For a fleeting moment, inside that apartment, I wanted to join my parents. But then, it was as though their spirit touched me. They reassured me that I should listen to the fire. That I must continue to make them proud and keep fighting to contain the evil that lurks on every corner. I know this to be true, otherwise why was I born at all?

So I double over and sink to the ground, ripping my helmet, and protective gear from my head. I radio the chief and tell him, through choking, smoke-induced tears that it’s not an ambulance we need for what’s left in here, but a different mode of transport.