Under The Ash

On a regular street, in a regular suburb, you will find a regular house. At a glance, it is not noticeably different than any of the other homes around it. The bricks are worn yet jaunty, the wooden door is tired and in need of another coat of paint, but they all have an almost cheery quality to them, suggesting many happy memories layered into its bones. There is a neat little fence, surrounding a neat little yard, with a neat little swing set tucked into the corner. The yellows and reds of the swings shine a plastic smile at the trim green of the lawn, with its four legs poking into the tufts of grass that the mower just couldn’t reach. Sparkling windows with crisp curtains look out towards the street, but with their fabric drawn just closed as if embarrassed of the attention and attempting to preserve their modesty. And a strong chimney stands above a strong roof, proudly looking out and around at all the other perfect little houses up and down the block.

And inside the same happy story continues, with bright walls festooned with pictures capturing frozen smiles of the family that makes this house a home, all of them the very image of a perfect family. Toys strewn on rugs in the heart of the home are framed by plump sofas on each side, and everything looks out and back on each other with a strained face that says, look at how great everything is! Everything here is perfect, just as it should be!

Everything but the fireplace, that is.

Hunkered against the wall, it once served proudly as the star of the room, with its fine carved mantel and bright shined poker drawing the gaze of all the furniture around. But now its fine white colour seems tainted by something beyond dirt, its carvings sunken and bittered, and the poker standing darkly beside it with its coat of cracked patina. The chairs and couches, pictures and tables, all now stand with their backs to the fireplace, quietly ignoring its blemish on the happy picture the room presented. But the fireplace continued to glare out at the room, with the bad taste of old lies ever rancid on its sooty tongue. The other furniture may come and go, forgetting and ignoring all it saw, and the rugs may be scrubbed and scrubbed again to beat the stains out of their weave, and even the walls freshly painted to cover up old scars, but the fireplace always stayed embedded where it was. And although its belching flame may burn up all that its fed, it remembers it all in the ash and the embers clogging its long throat and blackened mouth. Because fire always has a will of its own, and eventually, fire burns away all lies leaving the naked truth open to the world.

The fireplace remembers when it all changed, when the tiny little lies stated twisting together more and more until they became a monstrous snake that needed to be burned away. The little lies the Mother told her friends and her children about the bottles hidden around the happy house, the little lies the Father told about the young colleague he brought to the house when everyone else was away and the way he touched her and the noises she made. All the lies that stacked up one on top of the other as the Mother hid more bottles and cancelled more plans and suspected more about the clothes she found that were not hers, and as the Father grew bolder and found more excuses to work from home when everyone else was out and spent longer and longer each time with the smiling woman who did not belong. All these little lies, haunting the corners of the house and entwining further and further into their lives until finally, they all came crashing down.

That day, the children were away playing with friends and the Mother had slipped out to somewhere, somewhere the Father did not care about, because his friend was here and he felt the dirtied flame of passion call to throw caution to the wind. And so he succumbed to his pleasure, and they threw themselves to the couch without waiting to move to the bedroom, and in his enraptured state he failed to hear the click of the door as it opened, and even the steps on the floor coming closer and closer as the Mother finally walked into the lie she had secretly known. And then came yelling and screaming, and the scamper of afraid and guilty feet as the woman tried to flee in shame and fear, away from the vengeful Mother and pleading Father. And then everything else passed in blur, and the fireplace looked on as there was a fight, and then a struggle, and then a fall against the mantel that cracked the head of the women. And at the end, a terrible silence as both Mother and Father looked down at the limp form slumped on the floor and just for a moment, it seemed the air itself held its breath in shock. But then shock passed and left in its wake fear, heady shaking fear that in turn found itself mixed hand-in-hand with fresh anger that bounced back and forth within the walls. And then finally, even the fear and anger passed, and left behind something cold and hard that knew what had to be done, that had to be done, no matter what any quiet voices deep down said, no matter what. And so Mother and Father worked with nary a word to the other, hurrying quickly to drag and bury in the dark and dusty crawlspace beneath the happy house, and to scrub and to clean and to cover the floors, and all the marks and the shame. And as they heard the car with the friends of the family bringing home their happy children, in a rush they took the last of it, the photos, notes, gifts and all and threw it deep into the maw of the fireplace where it burned up, every last bit.

And then the days passed, then the weeks, and the months, and the Mother and Father smiled and laughed with the children and their friends and went on pretending in the happy house. And as their faces smiled and laughed, their eyes looked at one another to remind them both of what they had to lose if people saw that they didn’t smile and laugh in their unhappy house. And over time the couches were thrown out and replaced with fresh innocent ones, old guilty walls were painted over, and everything in the façade glowed brightly once again in the heart of the home.

Everything but the fireplace, that is.

But fire always remembers, no matter how long it takes to burn away lies. And so one night, you might have seen a flicker behind the crisp curtains of the sparkling windows, a flicker that grew and grew. And then in an instant it seemed to be that the happy house was glowing more brightly than it ever had, but this time the glow came from flames that devoured the tired door and charred the scarred bricks, that withered the lawn and melted the swings, and that brought the strong roof and proud chimney crashing down on top of it all. And then as quickly as it seemed to have started, morning broke through the clouds to shine a light on the crackling ash and glowing embers that sat where a happy house had once stood. And later all the friends, neighbours and firemen too all cried and shook their heads, wondering what could have happened and how it may have started. Was it an accident? A terrible mistake or something else? But fire is fickle and does not need a reason. It has patience until the moment it has none, and it decides to finally burn away the dirty lies it held in the ash of its grate. And even later, as they dug through the wreckage to salvage what they could, they found something buried beneath the ash, something uncovered by burning away the lies above it. And as the truth lay naked for the world to see, the crumbled remains of a blackened and ashen mantel framed a sigh, as the final lie burned up in a dying ember.

Right in the heart of the fireplace.