Burnt

I got a Story Engine deck for Christmas this year and this is my first short from the prompts. I am totally into these cards! This one reminds me of an X-files episode. What do y'all think?

Thin tendrils of smoke curled up from his hand, fisted around the phone receiver. The stench of scorched plastic filled the room. No, no, not again, not now. Lionel dropped the phone. The melted tan carcass lay dead on the cheap motel carpet, oozing into a molten puddle that would surely catch.

Thank Jesus the trash can in the bathroom was metal instead of plastic, and solid instead of basketweave. Tepid tap water filled the can; cold water worked better, but he didn’t have the time to run the tap.

Glowing orange lava, flows though crusted over molten volcanic rock Canva Image @nundigital

His wife’s voice still rang in his ears. Their conversation didn’t make any sense.

At first, she didn’t believe it was him. But convincing her was the easy part. Thelma knew him inside and out. “Baby?” The recognition in her voice was everything. That one word made his breath catch in his throat. Just like it did the first time she’d ever called him that. He could get through anything with her by his side.

“They told me you were dead.” She had snuffled. Heat rose in his chest, and a thin film of sweat broke out on his forehead. Those motherfu—he swallowed back the anger, he didn’t want to give that to her.

“When the rig exploded, they said not to get our hopes up.” She’d started sobbing then. “Your momma...” she gulped. “We buried an empty cask—.” Lionel hadn’t noticed the heat coursing through his arm until the phone cut out on that last part. The receiver had gone limp in his hand.

Leaving the shower running, he sprinted back to the main room and dumped the water onto the sizzling mound. He skidded across the carpet that squished between his toes, leaving sloppy footprints. It was coming on too fast to stop.

The large mirror wobbled as the temperature in the tiny bathroom spiked. He focused his eyes on the water, avoiding his reflection. Hot red light coursed through his veins and capillaries in his neck, bright cracks in his dark brown skin, like a comic book lava monster.

His body had become a transit system of burned scar tissue. Skin cracked, scorched from within, and healed almost instantly. The sickness, somehow, counteracted the damage to his body...but only if he let it out proper.

It wasn’t so forgiving if he held it in. He’d tried once, holding back, keeping the fire buried deep inside. Stoking it without release.

He’d been so tired of cooperating. Of the “Just one more test.” “One more blood sample.” He’d held his breath and held the heat. The fire burned his hair off from the inside. His round fro he’d been so proud of in high school went up like moths’ wings. His scalp pulled shiny and taut and ready to split. When he’d finally given up and expelled the fire to the designated immolation target, those early wounds from when he held it in didn’t heal the same.

That time he’d spent a week in the facility’s ICU.

Cold water rained down with a hiss of steam, and his body jerked at the temperature difference. Sometimes he could get this shit to cool out, though. Deep breaths, cold water, and happy thoughts. That’s it, nice and easy. Talking to himself like a kindergartener in a time-out. The heat would recede, leaving him trembling but chilled. But it wasn’t listening no more.

Whatever this thing was, it was getting worse. It had been less than a week since the last fire. The one that accidentally killed that nice young couple who ran the roadside diner. Given him food and a bed in the room overhead, and he’d repaid them by having a nightmare and lighting the whole place up.

He still saw their faces as he caught snatches of sleep under a cold running shower in the motels. Not a lesson he needed to learn twice.

The newsman on the TV said the cops were looking for an arsonist. He’d laughed until he cried, heaving great sobs that dried up before they could fall.

Growing up, he’d been deathly afraid of fire. His brothers used to throw lit matches at him laughing and slapping five on the black-hand side. He’d run crying to their momma who would wipe his face and tell him not to fret. That things would change.

She was right about that.

The military docs at the facility promised they would be able to help him. But after five months of tests, it was clear they weren’t trying to cure whatever this affliction was. They wanted to use him. When he overheard them talking when they thought he was asleep, not about remission but about weaponization, he knew he had to get out of dodge. Hot locks were easy to break.

To his face, they promised he could go home. But talking to his wife confirmed they’d lied from the start, and his homecoming wasn’t never gonna happen.

They wanted him to remember the events leading up to his infection, convinced the cure was in the details. A man came in with a spinning wheel and a metal thing that clacked back and forth. He remembered telling his supervisor the drill was running hot. But weren’t they always running hot? “Ol’ Tricky Dick’s got us running rigs ‘round the clock tryna beat out the embargo. Just do what you can”, was his supervisor’s answer to everything. The men had made it work. For that amount of money, you’re gotdamned right they made it work.

Lionel’s head pounded whenever he thought about that day, knocking him out of any trance. The strange thing in the sky, the flash of light. The explosion, fire, and hot metal rained down. And then nothing until being fished out of the Gulf by men in inflatable silver suits.

The cure may have been buried in his memory, but he figured they were more interested in copying the results. Who knew what Uncle Sam could get up to with a whole battalion of firemen? They would never cure him if the disease could win a war. The problem was control. Couldn’t nobody figure out how to put a lid on the thing long enough to be of use.

The deep stomach clenching need that bulldozed everything, when the fire came on so strong he feared he would sell his firstborn son for the sweet release of the burning that came after. Then, when all the fire was spent, came the shame. The damage, the cost.

Tears pricked his eyes, atomizing to mist before they fell. The cold water billowed huge plumes of thick white steam, filling the bathroom, and he took a few deep breaths. But oh god, the need grew. The searing tendrils crawled up from his midsection to his neck.

Lionel gripped the flimsy aluminum handrail in the motel shower, and it broke apart in his hand, metal droplets falling like pebbles in the tempering water at his feet. It pitted the plastic shower liner, and his soaking wet denim pants and wool sweater started to smolder.

Just this one more time would be okay. Maybe the fire would be contained to just this room. A quick one in the shower and ditch the motel before the police come. The fire inside talked so sweet. Telling him what he needed to hear. A small release. If he did it now, he should be good for a few days.

He would be able to see his wife without worrying that he would hurt her or his son.

His vision blurred, and the aroma of lightly sizzling meat made his stomach growl. He chuckled and dry-heaved at the same time, almost slipping in the shower. He licked his cracked lips and grabbed onto the fabric shower curtain, ripping it free from its rings. Once it was balled it up and soaked through, he focused all the heat into the wet fabric.

His whole body shuddered in shameful ecstasy as the fire crackled and the curtain ignited. The mirror shattered, raining hot glass onto the wet floor. The matted bathmats began to smoke, but it was over. The worst was behind him. He panted, shivering under the cooling water. Goose bumps broke out across his shiny scalp and down his back.

The fire had started to feel good, but it left a pit in his stomach. A deep shame, like when his momma made him tell the pastor about the dirty books he’d kept under his bed as a teenager. He’d wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole. This was like that, but a million times worse. Didn’t nobody ever die cause he touched himself after oggling beat-up magazine tiddies.

The fire was quenched, temporarily satisfied. He needed to get on before it built up again.

As he opened the bathroom door, thick choking smoke slapped him in the face, dropping him to his knees. The curtains and the bed were engulfed in flames. Stupid. Even wet, that flimsy shower curtain wasn’t nearly enough fuel for all that heat. He shoulda filled the tub and aimed for the water. No sense crying over it now. He crawled under the black smoke, toward the motel door, grabbing the keys to the stolen Cadillac on his way out.

Sirens blared in the distance, and he eased out of the parking lot. He prayed nobody was in the room next door. And if there was, they got out in time. He shoulda banged on the door on his way out. Made sure.

But he didn’t know how much time he had left. Since he’d escaped the facility, the time between urges was getting tighter. Maybe he should go back. If he couldn’t stop it on his own, how could he keep his family safe?

The Cadillac rocketed down the highway with the AC on full blast.

After his escape, he had made his way up from Corpus Christi on foot for more days than was prudent because he couldn’t work up the courage to steal a car. No matter who the police were looking for, he wasn’t a criminal. But at that pace, he’d burn down half of Texas before he could make it to Houston.

So, bucked up and found a sweet ride parked outside of a truck stop with the keys dangling in the ignition. The car looked like it belonged to a pimp, which made him feel better about taking it. But he removed the fur coat from the backseat and the fuzzy dice from the mirror and left those neatly folded in the parking space. He couldn’t rip off the man’s chinchilla.

Red lights washed over his street, and he had a brief image of his house engulfed in flames, and he slammed on the brakes. It wasn’t firelight. Flashing silent firetrucks stood sentry, waiting to activate. He eased the car over, parking at the end of the block. They hadn’t noticed the Caddy. Police barricades blocked the sidewalk and the front entrance of his house. Men in silver suits hopped down from the backs of two white panel trucks parked across the street.

They were waiting for him.

After their phone call, Thelma must have called somebody who alerted the facility. Heat flared in his belly, and he doubled over the wheel to tamp it down. The seat under him sagged. It was happening again.—Too soon. He just needed to see them, to say goodbye.

But he couldn’t bear pity in his wife’s eyes, or worse than that, mistrust. She would never let him hold his son again, not with this threat looming over them. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he glanced in the rearview mirror. His dark eyes looked normal if a little wild. Like a man with a slight flu. A touch of fever. A spreading disease.

Holy shit!

They had kept him in a sealed up room. The airlocks hissed when they opened and closed the door. The doctors never came in without the silver suits. Not even the head shrinker with the clicky clacky thing. He’d kept trying to adjust his glasses behind the face shield window. Was the fire catching? He hadn’t even considered that he might be contagious.

Lionel wiped away the fog on the inside of the windshield and leaned forward. The glass cracked under his hand.

A silver-suited man ushered Thelma and little Jimmy into the back of a black car. They were being kept safe...from him.

He squeezed his abs and imagined the fire as a tight white ball in his core. Flexing his muscles to move the ball up from his belly to his chest, the glow in his veins pulsated. It ran tracks toward his heart like runway lights. He trembled, gripping the steering wheel that was softening under his slippery palms. Sweat poured down his bare scalp. It stung as it ran rivulets in the channels of burnt flesh.

Still, he held onto it. Anger and grief and regret stoked the lava in his blood, but he imagined himself from the outside. A bald, scarred man sitting in a stolen car. Making himself the immolation target.

Smoke poured from his nostrils. He pursed his lips tight to hold it in and swallow it down. His tongue crumbled like a charcoal briquette in his mouth.

He held onto the ball.

His head lolled over to the side, and his eyes glazed over. The overheated AC sputtered before it conked out. The fuzzy upholstery began to burn, the polyester fibers rolled up in little brown knots of molten plastic. He thought of his son burning his little fingers touching the hot amber droplets, screaming and crying, and maybe catching this horrible disease.

He held onto the fire that begged for release. The hot need cajoled and negotiated. Just one more time, and it will be safe. You can turn yourself in and say goodbye. It will be easy. It doesn’t have to hurt anybody.

The fire lied.

He willed the heat inward. He coughed through his nose as his lungs collapsed into ashes. If he didn’t release the flames, they would consume him. It needed an outlet, but he held on. His family had already mourned him. He wouldn’t let them do it again.

His wife was right; he was already dead. He just hadn’t known it yet.