Tiger Fire

The house was on fire.

The house was on fire and she was ok with that. Better than ok. Good. Great, even? It hadn’t been planned. At least not consciously. But sometimes, she thought with grim certainty, things worked out better when you didn’t see them coming. And she hadn’t. Seen this coming, I mean. The satisfying scratch of the match and slosh of the petrol had truly been a spur of the moment choice. She had never once smoked a cigarette in her life, but here, standing solemnly next to the smouldering house (it’s burning like it has something to prove, she found herself thinking absently) with soft overgrown grass whispering about her bare ankles, she found she suddenly craved one. She trailed a rough hand across one ashen cheek and noted, with mild surprise, there was a dampness there. Blood, she thought immediately and held out her palm to examine the wet smear across it. In the flickering light of the fire she made out, with modest certainty, that her palms were clean, from blood at least. Ah, so tears then, perhaps, she concluded. She felt no sadness nor did her eyes sting from the smoke – she was much faster than she looked and the flames had done little in the way of physical damage to her. Nothing compared to the things she had burnt up inside those flames. The tears, she reasoned, were most likely something pent up that was trying to work its way out. Like the tiger in the too-small enclosure at the zoo she had visited on her eighth birthday with her mother. She saw it now, pacing agitatedly, weaving amongst the flames. Her flames. Hunting. Prowling.

Eat them all

It wasn’t a command, or even a wish. It was an acknowledgment. She imagined the great, restless orange beast nodding its head and stalking back inside. “Don’t worry” her mother had told her back then “they feed him lots” she had reassured, smoothing a soft, dry hand across her trembling cheek. She had watched it, toying lazily with a hunk of gristly pink flesh. Uninterested. This image had stayed with her for many years. She had cried over it, more than once. Cried over it back when tears felt healthy and warm. The hulking great tiger. The tiny, cramped enclosure. The rotting slab of meat. She had wanted desperately to release it. She was terrified one day it would escape. She had many nightmares of it eating her, feasting on her mangled body for days leaving only a single slab of decaying carcass to amuse itself. She understood it now, she thought. The loneliness. The isolation. She had seen the tiger and then she had been the tiger, and now, she had set herself free. What was next, she wondered. The house was burning. The tiger had been fed.

  The bruises on her ankles and wrists throbbed and with a start, she felt something soft and unfamiliar curl around her ankles. She glanced down in surprise. A cat was twining attentively between her dirty feet. It looked up, eyes wide and knowing, and let out a loud yowl. She chuckled disbelievingly, allowing the feline to nuzzle into her calf. In the half light she couldn’t tell what colour it was precisely, but she rather thought he looked ginger. Feeling half mad, at the very least, she leant down with a groan and lifted the cat into her arms. She felt weary, she swayed much more than she ought to for such a simple task. The cat was still and content, huddled into her bruised wrists. She wasn’t certain he was really there, but this thought did her no good so she discarded it quickly.

“I’m leaving them in there,” she told her companion, conversationally. Her voice was hoarse and slow. “I’m leaving them to be eaten” she murmured assuredly. The cat gave her a slow, understanding blink, and she was sure he didn’t exist.

  A month later, the woman was different. She was no longer standing barefoot outside a burning house, for one thing. Her face was no longer grimy nor tear streaked. Her hair was combed and she smelled of nothing. The bruises, however, were still there, if one were to look closely enough, which of course most people would not because people are, for the most part, extremely self centred. The cat, which had kept her strange company for most of that night, had vanished, of course. And the name she had known herself as that night, was dead, of course. She was on a train. Somewhere she did not like to be very often, but somewhere she often had to be, of course. Two men were stood beside her. One tall and lean, and the other not-so. They were dressed smartly, and because of this she did not trust them. Because of this she kept her distance. They spoke loudly, of course they did, and try as she might to tune out their voices, her interest was captured.

“-burnt to the ground with every fucker inside. Really awful stuff. Said they found some kind of weird dungeon inside and a heap of remains-“

“Human?”

“Well it wasn’t the remains of their Sunday fucking roast was it?”

“Piss off Gavin, it’s not funny that’s right near where my brother used to live, you know Neil, with the kids? Always thought it was a nice area, never thought twice about taking the kids to the park-”

She had stopped listening then. She had done more than that. Her vision had gone strange and behind them she caught the wide furtive eye of a large, orange tabby pasted on grubby pet adoption poster. She stood so suddenly both men broke off, casting her a strange, searching look, before turning back to one another. She didn’t mind. Her ankles throbbed. Her throat grew warm. She strode past them, into the next carriage, trying all the while to supress a wild cackle of laughter.

The house was on fire, but she would never be free again.