Man on fire

It was still an hour before sunrise, the kitchen was dimly lit with an oil lamp sitting on the linoleum floor, lighting up the cupboard doors as if the rug was on fire. “Why do you use that thing?” William looked up at his wife standing in the doorway leaning on the frame. “We have electricity; you know” She said smiling. He was sitting on the linoleum next to the oil lamp that he bought a year earlier from ‘Your junk, my junk’, a thrift store at the edge of town that sold things that people didn’t want anymore. “I like it” William said, turning the knob on the lamp making the shadow behind the toaster grow and shrink and grow and shrink. “It stinks” She said, and sat down next to him on the rug. “You stink” He said staring ahead at the dishwasher door. She scoffed and leaned her head on the drawer behind her, dropping her hand into his bare lap. “I deleted my Facebook and my Instagram last night, LinkedIn and twitter, too. I don’t exist anymore” He said, his eyes were closed and he was smiling, but it didn’t feel like a smile to him. “I saw that, but then, here you are” she said, opening her hands as if she were presenting him. He opened his eyes and looked into her face. “But am I?” he asked. “Why did you delete all of your stuff?” She squeezed his thigh. “Because I don’t know who I am without a past and I don’t know who I am without a future. All of those photos and filters and likes and comments. I feel like I’m drowning in it and none of it is real. The whole wide world is drowning and no one is even trying to float. They all wear the same thing and say the same thing and post photos of their food and pretend to be happy and pretend to give money to homeless people, even the homeless people use a sound track. No-one is real. I want to know who I am without all of this” He said waving his hands in front of his face gesturing around the room. “What am I when I have nothing, no stories to tell, nothing? Where is God? What the hell are we doing here?” He asked, “I want to know who I am without all of this” He said again, cupping his face in his hands. The clock was ticking on the wall; the refrigerator was humming against the floor. “Without me?” She whispered. He was quiet for a few seconds “Without you” He said. He didn’t look at her. She patted his thigh and stood up, walking out of the kitchen without saying anything. He watched the light dancing in the crevasses of the cupboards and drawers and closed his eyes again.

The sun was coming through the blinds and resting on Williams forehead like a hot blanket. He could hear the traffic outside his window and he smelled coffee coming from the kitchen downstairs. He could hear Kimberly on the phone in another room in the house. She sounded busy going from room to room. “Yes, yes, I got it. It’s already in my bag. I’m leaving in ten minutes. I’ll see you there. Okay, okay! Bye!” She hung up her phone, tossed it into her bag and threw it over her shoulder, she was smiling and rushing to get out the door. “Keys, keys, keys” She found them on the kitchen counter next to a fresh bouquet of flowers with a card sticking out the top. “Kim?” William yelled from the top of the stairs, looking down the rails towards the front door. “Kim?” She rushed through the hall opened the front door and was gone. “Hey!” William stood there in his underwear looking out of the glass onto the front porch. “What the hell?” He said under his breath and noticed his left hand that was resting on the railing, he could see right though it to the wood grain beneath. He slowly raised his hand to his eyes and looked directly through his own palm as though he were a jellyfish standing on two legs. He turned, leaned against the bannister, slid to the carpet and dropped his legs out in front of him. He closed his eyes tight before opening them again to refocus, hoping for cataracts. He lowered his eyes slowly, he felt as if he were under water or inside molasses, his world felt slow and thick and sticky. When he looked at his belly it was like staring into a fishbowl made of Chinese rice paper. He could see own his intestines, his stomach and his foggy ribcage trying to protect his translucent heart. William squeezed his eyes together tight one more time. He thought that he might get sick but then he realized, he couldn’t actually feel anything at all.

The smell of coffee touched Williams nostrils like a feather landing on carpet, just a faint aroma and he was immediately standing in the kitchen. The sun from the window filtered right through him and onto the counter top like smoke from a cigarette. He stood there looking at his reflection in the glass of the back door and suddenly realized he wasn’t sure where he was. He didn’t recognize the coffee cup sitting on the table and he couldn’t remember buying the rug under his feet. The face in the reflection looking back at him felt like a stranger on the city bus. He felt no connection to it at all nor to the rest of his body. He reached out to take the card sticking out of the top of the flowers, his fingers felt artificial, plastic and not real. It read, “Kimberly, I love you from every corner of my soul. Love, William” He looked at the card for a few seconds and realized that his hand was a little less translucent. “William, William, William” He repeated, feeling the familiar sound of the name. He knew it belonged to him, but it didn’t feel like it meant anything. Just then the doorbell rang, startling him back into himself. He suddenly felt the soft rug beneath his feet and he moved towards the front door. As he reached out to turn the knob his hand was as solid as it had ever been. Standing there on his porch grinning from ear to ear was his mailman. “I believe this is for you, Sir” The man held out a package and waited for William to take it. “You might want to put some pants on next time” He said, laughing as he turned to leave. “Thanks” William whispered, taking the package and watching the mailman run across his front lawn and jump into his truck. Just then an Amazon Delivery van passed the front of William’s house, and there, on the side of the dark blue van in white letters, it read, “Everything you could ever need is inside” He watched the words as they passed by all of his neighbors houses until the van was out of sight. He stood on the porch with his face turned upward towards the morning sun, it was already too hot for this time of year. He could smell the sweet cherry blossoms from the trees next door and the dog shit on his lawn next to the steps. He could hear Mrs. Scott playing piano from across the street and the T.V blasting from the neighbor’s garage. He felt like all of the answers to all of the questions ever asked were swaddling his very soul in the air around him, but there are no words for answers like that. “I think I'm having a stroke” He said quietly, looking back up the street and stepping inside his house.