Hold Your Fire

by Lisa Mangum

  Beside me, Agni smiles. “Imagine what we can do together.”

  As expected, Kimiko hated Agni’s story. So did Shareef, who’s more squeamish than I thought.

  I was surprised they seemed to like mine. Rua said I should consider writing young adult fiction. I don’t remember much else. My mind was elsewhere, thinking about what I was going to do with Agni after writing group was over. Thinking about a condemned house out near the county line.

  Going out with Agni is thrilling. Exciting. Riding around on the back roads, looking for abandoned buildings, feeling like I’m a teenager again.

  The feeling might be more suited to someone Agni’s age, but I can’t shake the vehement belief that I was robbed of this sensation when I was an actual teenager. When I was ashamed of my need to stay home on Friday nights, burning things in the shadow of the bush lot instead of going out with kids at school. With the friends I was afraid to have, lest I lose my temper.

  I’m tired of playing it safe. In my writing. In my life. I’m tired of trying desperately to pretend I’m just like everyone else. I’m tired of writing things that people think a woman like me should be writing.

  Most of all, I’m tired of stories created solely to bleed my energy and keep my fire at a low smolder.

  I don’t stay up all night writing to exhaust myself until I’m worn-out enough to sleep without dreams. Now, I stay up all night because I’m inspired.

  I tell stories of djinn and wyrms and daemons.

  I write about what might happen if I lived my truth openly.

  I write the kind of stories I want to share with Agni.

  Except for nights like this one, where I don’t write anything at all. Agni and I are out dancing on the razor’s edge between late last night and early this morning, dressed all in black, looking for things that will burn.

  I can’t take my eyes off the structure in front of me. “Are you sure?”

  “We’d be doing the owner a favor. Get rid of this, and it’ll be easier to put up condos or whatever on the site.”

  It’s an abandoned convenience store. The windows are broken. The brick walls are covered in graffiti. Yet it seems different than collapsed barns or condemned farmhouses.

  Perhaps it’s because it’s in town. I can see the huge empty parking lot of a shopping mall across the street. There are other businesses beside it: a dentist’s office on one side and an auto repair shop on the other. I’ve parked my car in front of it. We stand on the sidewalk, and a truck drives by on the road behind us.

  I feel as though igniting this building will mean crossing a line. Part of me can’t wait to see what’s on the other side.

  The other part of me can’t ignore the undercurrent of trepidation running beneath my excitement. “Maybe we should just head back to the municipal dump.”

  “We’ve been to the dump twice this week, and honestly, garbage is boring. I mean, we’ve both been burning garbage all our lives, right?”

  I hesitate. “Have you been reading the local news at all?”

  Agni shrugs.

  “People are starting to notice that there are an awful lot of suspicious fires lately.”

  “So you’re saying you want to quit,” she says skeptically, like one addict to another.

  “Not quit. Just lay low until things quiet down.”

  “Is that who you want to be? The kind of person who’s living some kind of half-life, pretending to be someone you’re not? Thinking about how you’re supposed to act instead of how you want to?” Agni’s words sting because they’re true. “Come on. You and me, we can burn anything we want.”

  She’s right. I’ve been so cautious my whole life, hiding what I am, that I’ve ended up not really living at all. Not until she came along.

  I answer her question with a wave of my hand.

  A tongue of fire rises up on the other side of a cracked and dusty window.

  Agni grins and joins in, raining sparks until the roof shingles combust.

  It’s breathtaking to watch.

  Someone shouts nearby. Time’s up. “I guess we should leave,” I say reluctantly.

  “There’s no proof we did anything. We’re just walking by, right?”

  I hesitate. Despite the gap in our ages, I listen to her. She’s the one who inspired me to live my dreams.

  “Come on, Kenna,” Agni wheedles. “Half the fun is watching the show.”

  I’m not sure I agree with her. My pleasure is in the act of creation. The release I feel when a flame I made starts burning. I don’t think my creations need an audience.

  Then, to my horror, the door of the convenience store swings open from inside. Two figures stagger out. I can’t tell how old they are in the dark, but the taller one has his arm around the smaller one, who’s wrapped in a tattered plaid blanket.

  The taller person looks back over his shoulder. “Markie!”

  Are they local teens looking for a place to party? Addicts, seeking a spot to use? Are they homeless people who wanted somewhere dry and quiet to sleep?

  Does it matter?

  Our glorious fire is growing so very big. Smoke pours out of the broken windows. There must be all kinds of combustibles inside. Trash, old carpet, maybe a mattress. Flames dance to their own tune, a low, sensuous hiss.

  “Markie!” the person in the blanket cries.

  The taller man lifts the front of his T-shirt over his nose and mouth as he walks toward the door.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Call 911? The police will want to talk to me for calling it in. I don’t want that kind of attention.

  Stop the man from going back into the building?

  Go in myself to search for Markie?

  Ask Agni if she can snuff this fire?

  My head turns to Agni. Why did I never think to ask her if she can control her flames once they’re lit? If she can extinguish the sparks she’s created?

  Agni smiles at me.

  Raises her hand.

  Snaps her fingers.

  The plaid blanket ignites.

  The person inside it screams, high and shrill, and throws the blanket away. I still can’t tell if it’s a woman or a child. They’re thin, and they hop around, shrieking, before they remember to stop, drop, and roll on the broken asphalt in front of the shop.

  Agni is laughing.

  I stare at her, like part of me can’t understand what’s happening.

  From the corner of my eye, I see motion at the door of the store. The taller man is back with his arms around the shoulders of a man in a brown jacket. I’m guessing this is Markie.

  “Take your shot,” Agni purrs.

  “What?”

  She looks back at me. Her smile is gone. “I said, take your shot.”

  I don’t know where to begin explaining to her that I’m not going to burn people. Especially not people who’ve never done me harm. People whose lives are already hard enough.

  “Too slow,” Agni says, and raises her hand again.

  You and me, we can burn anything we want.

  She’s been an inspiration to me—right up until this moment when I realize I don’t want what she wants after all.

  I grab her arm. Yank her hand and her attention away from Markie and his rescuer and the slim person panting on the ground, watching the blanket burn. “No!”

  Agni’s eyes spark fire.

  Heat sears my skin, burrows down into flesh. I know this sensation. When I was Agni’s age, and the flame within became more than I could handle, I would focus my fire and burn lines into my skin. A vow that if I absolutely had to hurt someone, it wouldn’t be someone innocent.

  Agni’s sparks lash my entire body. They sting my ankles and burn holes into my clothing. But they’re nothing next to the deliberate scars that I seared into my arms myself. Either she’s not really trying or she’s so surprised that she is failing that she can’t focus well enough to light my clothes.

  I’m angry, of course, that Agni would attack me of all people. An
d I’m curious, too. I have better self-control than she does. I bet I could burn her in a way that would hurt.

  “What the hell,” Agni spits. She struggles, but I hold firm to her arm.

  “Agni, you need to stop.” I hate that I sound like a parent lecturing a teenager. We’re supposed to be equals.

  “Nobody is going to miss those people,” Agni argues. “Nobody cares what happens to them.”

  “You don’t know that.” What’s more chilling is that she doesn’t care. I don’t know how to argue against that.

  “Don’t you want to see how far we can go?”

  A rising wail in the distance focuses my attention. “The fire trucks are coming.”

  “So?”

  “You’re in university. You’re going to throw that away for … what? Spending the rest of your life moving from city to city to stay ahead of suspicious fires in your wake?” I hate that I have to frame this argument in terms of self-interest, but maybe that will break through to her. “Ahead of suspicious deaths?”

  “Better that than spending it like you.” Agni tears her arm out of my grip. “I’d rather die than get old wishing and hiding.”

  It hurts because it’s true. I wasn’t happy when I was pretending to be the person I thought I should be: so bland that nobody would notice me. I can’t go back to that life.

  Yet I won’t fall headlong into Agni’s life either. My talent doesn’t give me a license for needless cruelty.

  “Go back to your fiction,” Agni sneers. “You don’t have the guts to make it real.”

  A fire truck comes around the corner, splashing us in lurid red light.

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do.” Agni lifts her hand as if to wave at the firefighters. Her eyes are fire. Her smile is ice.

  I may not be responsible for what Agni does, but I can’t stand back and watch her hurt people, either.

  I take aim. Not at Agni herself.

  At the gold bracelets on her wrist.

  “I won’t let you do this.” It’s hard not to release my anger. Particularly when that lizard voice inside me is raging that Agni has brought this on herself, and it would serve her right if I lit her up like a Roman candle. It takes all my willpower to keep my focus.

  I snap my fingers.

  “Stop it!” Agni claws at her burning left wrist with her right hand. “I … I’ll burn you!”

  I’m not afraid. She already tried. Her anger is wild, impulsive, and unfocused.

  “No. You won’t burn me, or those firefighters, or anything else in my city. Because if you do, I’ll find you.”

  Then I turn around and walk back to my car.

  I can hear her howling behind me. Part of me expects my car to ignite, or the fire truck to explode. But nothing happens. I climb into my car and start the engine, and I can see Agni in the middle of the road, staring at the melted circle of gold wrapped around her wrist.

  Agni doesn’t come back to writing group. Doesn’t email or text.

  Two months later, I ask Kimiko if she’s heard from her. Kimiko tells me that Agni dropped out of school. Nobody knows where she went.

  I don’t know what to feel about that.

  Relief, that I don’t have to make good on my threat?

  Anxiety, that she might start burning things—or people—somewhere else?

  I scan the news, looking for signs of Agni. There are no stories about firebugs that I can find, but not every suspicious fire makes the headlines.

  She’s not your responsibility.

  Still, I can’t undo what she’s done.

  Back in my apartment, I meditate on a single candle flame.

  Agni was supposed to be my inspiration. She’d taught me to accept what I am. She’d opened my mind to a world of possibilities.

  But just because something is possible doesn’t mean I truly want it. Or the consequences it brings.

  It’s time for me to figure out what I really want. I watch the candle until an answer comes to me.

  I want to make this world better for having lived in it.

  I can’t do that by setting random fires just because it feels good. I take a deep breath. My nighttime excursions were thrilling, but they’re also over. I think I can be at peace with that.

  What will I do with my fire now?

  I snap my fingers and light all the candles in my apartment. Then I sit down at my computer.

  In a far-off land, there lives a dragon who loves to burn. She’s defeated the knights who tried to destroy her, but now she’s all alone in her cave. She wonders, What place is there in the world for someone like me?

  I’m writing it for me, but I’m also writing it for the kid that Agni used to be. The kid I used to be. For all the kids with no words to talk about their concerns, and the kids who believe that everyone they know would reject them if they tried. I’m writing it for anybody who feels like nobody else would ever understand the fire in their blood.

  I think that when I’m done, I’ll find a way to share it.

  About the Author

  Mary Pletsch attended Superstars Writing Seminars in 2010. In the years since, she has published short stories and novellas in a variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror. “The Fire Sermon” is based on a nightmare about the destructive aspects of creative inspiration and the ability to use art (writing, drawing, crafting, building, designing) to channel that energy. She lives in Ottawa with Dylan Blacquiere and their three cats. Visit her online at fictorians.com.

  One-Hit Webster

  Brian Corley

  I’m sorry, kid; it’s out of my hands,” the muse drawled in his West Texas accent. He was the type to wear aviator sunglasses inside at night and was a good six foot four when he wasn’t sitting down. He absentmindedly stroked his dark beard as he rocked back and forth in a creaky wooden rocking chair that always happened to appear whenever he did. It barely fit in Matt Webster’s crackerbox of an apartment, and Matt usually ended up sitting at an odd angle on the couch to accommodate it.

  “So, you’re on strike?” Matt asked. “That’s funny.” He set his guitar back in its stand.

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” the muse replied.

  Matt tried not to panic. Maybe the old demigod was just pulling his leg. It wouldn’t have been the first time. “You mean to tell me I’ve been calling you here for the better part of five years, and now that I have my shot at making it big on Music Row, you’re on strike? The song is due by 11:59 tonight!”

  Music Row was the heart of Nashville’s entertainment industry, and every major label mover and shaker had a spot in the area. It was a songwriter’s dream to get a call to submit a song, and Matt was living that dream. At least he thought he was. With his muse on strike, it was starting to feel more like a nightmare.

  The muse shrugged and adjusted the hem of his jeans over his custom-made cowboy boots. He cocked his head like he did whenever he was about to say something profound. “Union rules are tools for fools, but schools for a jewel like me.”

  “What?” Matt asked.

  “You better not take inspiration from that,” the muse said.

  “From those lyrics?” Matt shook his head. “Not hardly. They need work.”

  “Heh,” the muse chuckled. “I guess they do. Just saying I’m a union man.”

  Matt ran a hand through his stylishly unkempt brown hair and exhaled as he threw himself back against the cushion of his ratty old couch. He’d found it next to his apartment’s dumpster the day he’d moved to Nashville, and dreamed about upgrading to something that didn’t smell like someone else’s bologna. “So, why’d you even bother to come?”

  “I don’t know.” The muse sighed. “Guess I like you. ’Sides, ain’t got anything better to do. We’re on strike.”

  “Well,” Matt said, “thanks for nothing.”

  The muse chuckled again. “You’re welcome, kid.” He took off his black cowboy hat and examined its brim before setting it on his knee. “Look, what I’m a
bout to tell you don’t count as inspiration, alright?”

  Matt leaned forward. He was desperate for anything he could get at this point. He only had a few hours before his deadline, and he was stuck without a song. “Yeah, okay. I won’t be inspired—promise.”

  “You know the Parthenon over at the dog park?”

  Of course he knew about the replica Parthenon in Nashville’s Centennial Park. It was one of the weirdest sites in the whole dang town. “Yeah?”

  The muse dabbed his head with a handkerchief before retrieving his hat and easing himself up from his chair with a grunt. “Now, you didn’t hear this from me, but you may want to give it a visit.”

  Matt thought about it and decided he was in the bargaining stage of grief. Grief over lost opportunity and the death of his career before it even had a chance to get started. “Centennial Park is way over on the other side of town! Can’t you do anything to help me here? I don’t have time to go on some wild goose hunt.”

  “Ain’t askin’ you to hunt, kid. I’m telling you. If your mind’s as song-blocked as you say, there’s folks over there that’ll do you a deal. Oh, and don’t forget to bring your guitar.” The muse donned his cowboy hat and flicked the brim. “Vaya con dios, mi amigo … At least go with some of the lesser dioses, if you know what I mean.” The muse winked and vanished in a cloud of smoke. The smell reminded Matt of closing time at the honky-tonks his grandfather used to play. Back before all the smoking bans.

  “Great,” Matt muttered under his breath. He grabbed his grandfather’s old Fender Telecaster and eased it into his gig bag. Actually, it was much more than just an old Telecaster; it was a 1959 Tele and worth a small fortune. Worth even more to Matt, though. He’d watched his grandfather play it his whole life, and the old man had bequeathed the instrument to Matt with his dying breath. He always thought it was strange his grandfather had waited until that last moment, but if he didn’t know any better—and he didn’t—he’d have thought his grandpa had done so deliberately.