Pyro

Jodie found herself lucid on the ledge of the building across the street, right before the Ash's window. She was afraid. The street was far below her. The building towered into the sky and listed dangerously, swaying like a blade of grass in the breeze. Jodie crawled into the window to get inside.

The living room was lit by a hundred unattended candles, some of them burned down almost to nothing. There wasn't much time. Jodie flicked a light switch, but there was no power. She looked back through the window, up at her own apartment, and saw herself watching from across the street. The other Jodie was crouched down, trying to hide, terrified at the sight of her reflection trespassing in the Ash's rooms.

Jodie turned away from herself, shamed by the display of naked fear. She stepped away from the window, and looked about the room, soaking in the strangely rich detail of her perceptions. She examined a shelf of kitschy ceramic nick-knacks. Red-cheeked angels and cherubic Indians. Jodie picked up a tiny Indian maiden, papoose strapped to her back, and could see the ring of dust which had accumulated under the base of the piece. She set it back down and walked towards the bedroom, trailing her fingers along the walls, amazed at the tactile sensation of their solidity and texture. Clearly, this was no ordinary dream.

Then, from the room she had just left, Jodie heard the front door open. They were home. She looked frantically about for a place to hide. The closet. Four steps away. Jodie quickly and silently ducked into the closet and shut the door mere heartbeats before the Ashes stepped into the bedroom.

Through the slats Jodie observed. She had not seen the Ashes this close before. Brenda moved with a feral, sensual awareness that was in no way virginal. She sat down on the bed and her eyes followed Marcus with such intensity that it made Jodie shiver.

Marcus's face was thin, almost gaunt, and Jodie could see that his long hair was reddish and receding a little in the front. He was grinning strangely, an expression which gave him a hungry, vampirish aspect. Marcus crossed the room to the dresser. From the top drawer he removed a few objects which Jodie could not see.

"Let's do this quick, OK?" Brenda said, her voice flat and mid-western. "I want to go."

Marcus, annoyed, said: "You want to do this first, don't you?"

"Well, yeah."

"So shut the fuck up. We got time."

Marcus held a long taper candle in one hand. Smoke was curling from the tip. Marcus pinched the wick. It sizzled between his fingers and, when he let go, there was a flame. He licked his fingers. It was like a film of someone snuffing a candle played in reverse. In his other hand, Marcus held a short metal rod. He held the tip of it in the candle flame until it glowed red. Jodie realized then that it was some kind of branding iron.

"Take off your underpants," Marcus said.

Brenda giggled. "I ain't wearin' underpants."

She spread her legs as Marcus knelt before her. The glowing tip disappeared up her short denim skirt. Jodie closed her eyes and clamped her hand over her mouth so she would not cry out. Brenda moaned as her flesh was seared. Jodie smelled it, like meat on a grill. She blinked away tears.

"My turn," Marcus grinned.

"Just a minute, baby," Brenda panted. "Let me catch my breath."

"You like that better than the other one?"

"God yeah. Wait 'til you try it."

Marcus stood in front of Brenda and unzipped his jeans, his back to Jodie. She wanted to see his penis, though. It didn't seem fair that she couldn't see his penis. Brenda held the little iron in the flame, her hands quivering, impatient for it to get hot again. She touched her husband with the glowing tip. Marcus cried out loud and Brenda flinched back, alarmed.

"Baby, you made a mess all over my shirt," she giggled again.

"So change it," Marcus was already zipping himself up.

"Maybe I don't wanna," Brenda said, looking up at him. "Maybe I want your stuff all over me."

Marcus shrugged and turned. He was facing in Jodie's direction now. He put a cigarette in his mouth and sucked on it. The end flared red and was lit. No match, no lighter. It had ignited with his breath alone. "Well, let's go then."

Brenda leaned back on the mattress, languorously. She lit a cigarette the same way Marcus had, with no flame. "Do my tits first," she said.

"Come on, Brenda. We ain't got much time."

Brenda opened her soiled blouse. Her breasts were very small, the nipples plump and wine-colored. "Please."

Jodie, leaning forward to see more, lost her balance. She fell into the closet door with a thud. She winced. They had heard the sound. There was no doubt in her mind. Her heart beat twice before Marcus flung the door open and she was spilled gracelessly naked onto the bedroom floor.

Brenda sat up, clutching her blouse closed. "Who the fuck are you?"

Marcus grinned. Jodie wondered if he had known all along that she was there.

"It's that dyke bitch from across the street," he said. "The one that's been watching us. I guess she wanted a closer look."

Jodie struggled to her feet, awkwardly covering her nakedness.

"Come here," Marcus came at her, the lit cigarette held like a dart between his fingers. Jodie was afraid he was going to stub it in her eye, but Marcus speared the cigarette into the center of her forehead. It sank into her skull like a hot knife into butter. When he withdrew the cigarette, it was no longer lit. Jodie realized with horror that the glowing tip was still in her head. The cherry. It was called a cherry. The cherry was still in her head.

The Ashes barked at her, viciously, like wild dogs. Jodie opened her eyes and saw the massive black shadow of Roscoe standing on the bed above her. He barked madly and Jodie knew he could see the cherry burning in her forehead. Jodie touched the spot. It burned her finger, like an intense pinpoint fever. She knew that if she looked in the mirror, it would be glowing red.

Jodie pulled her hand away. Her fingers were stained with blood. Her head was bleeding. Panicked, she touched the spot again with the back of her hand. It was cooling fast, and dry. As Jodie came awake, she realized that it was menstrual blood on her fingers. She was still flowing heavily, and must have touched herself in her sleep. The smell of her menses hung thickly in the air.

Roscoe let out a frightened yelp and then bolted from the room. Jodie groaned and sat up. Her nerves still buzzed with the afterglow of the dream, or whatever the hell it had been. She had smeared blood everywhere, would have to clean herself up. But first, she needed a smoke.

By the next morning, the memory had not evaporated, as dreams do. Not at all. The details were still vivid in Jodie's mind. The chronology was still clear. Jodie wrote it all down, filling four pages. It was the first thing she had written in months. That afternoon, she went out and bought a pair of binoculars.

Her dream had been accurate in many ways. The Ash apartment, seen through the magnifying lenses, was much as she had visualized it the night before. Details she had not been able to see with her naked eye, like the shelf of ceramic Indians in the living room, appeared in the glasses exactly as they had in the dream. There were a few key differences, though. There was no closet in the bedroom, for one. No place to hide.

The Ashes, seen more clearly now, appeared somewhat different than they had in Jodie's dream. Marcus was definitely older, but the age difference was not as extreme or as perverse as Jodie had dreamed. They were not as beautiful, either. The real Brenda was a little heavier than the dream Brenda had been, and Marcus was not as tall as Jodie had fancied.

Jodie observed them over the next few days, keeping a detailed log of their activities. Every time she looked, it seemed, they were either fighting or fucking. In between these two activities, they smoked. Jodie watched them smoke entire cartons, but she noted a very strange and intriguing fact:

She never once saw them light a cigarette.

When she wasn't observing, Jodie was writing. Delighted, she wrote. The words flowed from her freely, for the first time in months, as Jodie smoked and sweated. Carrie had made her promise that she would see to replacing the air conditioner, but this was a task Jodie kept putting off. Not only would this involve social interaction on a scale she did not wish to even contemplate, it would also take valuable time away from her writing. Besides, Jodie didn't mind the heat anymore. She was growing to like it.

What she wrote was formless now, too vague to even be considered sketches, but then her novel had come to her in the same way. Memories and fantasies; dreams and nightmares; images pouring from her without shape or context. That only came later, when she wove the pieces together.

Whenever she was asked what her book was about, Jodie always replied with one word: "Incest." It amused her to see how people reacted.

The book, Snow Angels, was published year before. Jodie received a modest payment, more than she had made from all her published short stories, and the book had garnered reviews in a few little-read but well-regarded publications. For the most part, the reviews had been positive, though not very enthusiastic. "A promising debut." "Interestingly bittersweet." "Almost disturbing." Nothing that would make a good jacket blurb. The biggest thrill for Jodie had been seeing the book at Barnes and Noble, shelved between the works of "real" authors.

Since the novel was published, though, she had been dry. She still had ideas, plenty of them, but they all shriveled when she tried to develop them. Everything seemed flat and contrived. Carrie had always said that Jodie was afraid of success, and now theorized that since Jodie's greatest fear had been realized, she simply didn't know how to handle it.

Jodie felt that Carrie did not understand her at all.

Now the words were crowding out, competing with one another, bottlenecking at Jodie's fingers. She was elated. So far, she had the description of her dream and one other coherent scene. She wasn't sure what it meant, or how it fit in with everything else she wanted to say, but Jodie liked the scene.

A boy of about ten, Marcus, sits in a Mid-Western backyard. (In Jodie's notes, the characters were named Marcus and Brenda Ash. She supposed she would have to change the names later, but feared that she would be unable to come up with ones she liked as much.) He kneels on the ground over an anthill, killing ants with the focused beam of sunlight from a magnifying glass. "That was what we called entertainment in the shithole town I grew up in." (Jodie slipped in and out of the first person, searching for a voice.) The boy finds that he can make the ants shrivel and crisp even without the glass. The fire comes from inside his head.

Later in the story, Jodie would have him practice lighting scraps of paper, staring at them until they smolder and ignite. Young Marcus steals cigarettes and lights them with his mind. "It was great. A secret that I had. Know one else knew. I felt powerful when I did it."

Teen-aged Marcus when he sleeps has "hot dreams," objects in his rooms bursting into flames when he dreams of sex. Of course, he calls it "fucking." He is crude, earthy and sensual. Jodie saw him holding his hand over a candle flame, quivering with pleasure. "Fire couldn't hurt me. It felt good to burn. Like fucking, only better. Better than fucking."

Brenda, where does Brenda come in? Jodie hadn't yet worked out how they meet. Her story started with Marcus. She did know that they fuck for the first time in the backseat of an old car. Dirty sweaty backseat fucking, which Jodie had never known but now imagined. Brenda is like Marcus. The fire is in her too. The car bursts into flames and the young lovers roll out onto the ground, still going at each other, hair singed and clothes smoldering. They laugh. The gas tank explodes when they orgasm. No, Jodie corrected herself. The correct word was "come." The tank explodes when they come.

Jodie smoked as this came out of her. Constantly. She had a bought a carton and was halfway through it in less than a week. She lit her cigarettes with wooden kitchen matches, finding them more sensual than the sterile click of a butane lighter. Strike, spark, sizzle, flare, burn. The sulfur smell. She even liked the way the way the burned-out sticks with their little heads looked in her ashtray, like dead black sperm.

Jodie pulled a blank sheet of paper from the computer printer and stared at it for several minutes. Nothing. She folded the paper in half , then in half again, creasing the edges carefully. She held the strip of paper close to her face, went cross-eyed staring at it. Still nothing. She lit a cigarette and let tendrils of smoke drift from her mouth and curl around the paper. Jodie lit the paper with the tip of her cigarette and held onto it for as long as she could, until the flame singed her fingers. She dropped the burning paper into the ashtray, which was already overflowing with charred scraps.

Beside her, the new air conditioner rumbled. It was set on 'fan,' a function which drew air in without cooling it. Jodie hated the machine. She had become acclimated to the heat and, when the air conditioner had been running, was unable to stop shivering. But when the machine was off, the air in the apartment became stifling, especially with all the smoke. The 'fan' mode was an unhappy compromise which still did not solve the main problem.

The air conditioner blocked her view.

She could still see across the street, but only if she stood on a chair and leaned her elbows on the top of the machine. This was awkward and uncomfortable. No more could she sit at her desk and cast casual glances over at the Ash place, picking up the binoculars when it seemed like something interesting might be happening.

Jodie had considered taking the machine out of the window, but it was even larger and heavier than the old one. It had taken two muscular deliverymen to install the thing. Even if Jodie could have managed to get it out of the window without killing herself or someone else, there was no way she could get it back in before Carrie came home.

Carrie. Goddamn Carrie. This was all her fault. She had been home for three days at the start of the week and in that time had ruined everything. Jodie could have tolerated the nagging, and the silent treatment which always followed, if Carrie hadn't also refused to have sex with her. Jodie was horny, on edge, at the point where near-constant masturbation was no longer doing anything for her. She needed an honest-to-God fuck, but Carrie just turned away from her coldly.

Then, to add insult to injury, Carrie had called and ordered a new air conditioner. The bitch.

Even after she left, Jodie was unable to write. When she read over what she had written thus far in her "Ash" project, it now seemed like the rantings of a lunatic. She could no longer make any sense of it.

Jodie folded another piece of paper and tried again. Marcus had left his cherry in her head, so she knew it would just take practice. All up and down both arms were small red cigarette burns. They shouldn't have hurt, not with the change that was taking place, but somehow they did. Jodie had spent most of that morning in the shower, the water as cold as it would go, sobbing as the water stung her burns. There was one on her right cheek and on each earlobe. She had nearly set the bed on fire the night before when she burned herself in the breast. The pain had been so real and immediate that she dropped the butt onto the mattress and managed to retrieve it only seconds before it could burrow inside.

Jodie re-fixed her concentration. This time, something would happen. She could feel it. The ringing in her ears grew to an intolerable volume and the spot on her forehead glowed white-hot. Roscoe, laying on the floor across the room, sensed what was happening. He stood and started barking like mad. Jodie shut him out, concentrated harder. A smoking pinprick of light appeared on the paper. Jodie's burns began to sing. She squinted her third eye and the paper burst into flames.

Jodie laughed out loud. It was real. The power was in her. She was one of them.

All day long she practiced, burning up dozens of sheets of paper before moving on to cigarettes. She lit them with her new-found gift, just as the Ashes had. Each time she did it, it was a little easier, until she barely had to think about it at all.

Roscoe went ape-shit every time Jodie lit something, until he finally managed to cram his entire cowering bulk underneath the bed. Frightening the dog made Jodie even more delirious with joy.

Her burns were healing, too. The little red blemishes were shrinking before her eyes. By that night, Jodie was able to fully extinguish cigarettes on her skin with a keen, sexual pleasure. The burns did not leave any mark at all. She prepared the bedroom with cheap dime-store candles and fell asleep in a wonderland of light.

Jodie awoke the next morning refreshed and famished. Eggs. She wanted eggs and coffee. Eggs, coffee and a smoke. Every surface in the bedroom was coated with wax drippings and Jodie knew she was lucky not to have burned the building down. Lucky.

As she prepared her breakfast, Jodie worried that it might have all been a dream. There was one way to find out. She lifted the stove top and blew out the pilot light. Then she turned on the gas. Jodie stared at the hissing burner until the blue ring of fire appeared. She smiled. It was no dream.

Roscoe had gained courage during the night. He stood at the kitchen doorway, growling with real menace. Jodie put a cigarette in her mouth and, deliberately taunting the dog, lit it with her mind.

Roscoe lunged. The massive dog sprang snarling at her chest. Jodie was knocked to the floor with the beast's hot breath at her throat. The power flew out of her, unbidden.

The dog fell back, yelping with pain. His eyes sizzled. Smoke curled from his ears. Roscoe let out a final smoking cough and keeled over sideways. Jodie had turned his brain to charcoal.

"Roscoe," Jodie choked. She hadn't meant to do it. It had been an accident, just a reflex. But it was done. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Jodie embraced the dog's corpse, gagging at the smell of singed fur and cooked flesh. She wept tears of genuine remorse.

The door to Apartment 3-G looked no different than any other door in the third floor hallway. Fake wood-grain paneling, plastic number painted to look like gold, glowing fish-eye peep-hole. Jodie stood before it for a long time before building the courage to knock. Before she could rap on the door, though, the peep-hole went dark and then light again. She heard the chain being unfastened, and then the door swung open. Marcus stood there, red hair wild as flames, muscles sheeny with sweat.

"Why the hell you knockin'?" he said. "You got a key."

Brenda looked down at herself, at her thin girlish body. For a second she wasn't sure who she was supposed to be. Then she remembered. Then nearly everything meshed. She smiled up at her man.

"Musta forgot it," she said.

"Well, come inside then," he held the door open. "What's the matter with you?"

Brenda shook her head, trying to clear it. "I don't know. I feel kinda fucked up."

"You get the smokes?"

"What?" she blinked groggily.

"Damn it, I sent you out for cigarettes two hours ago. Where the hell you been?"

Brenda shrugged. She reached into the pocket of her cut-off shorts and was surprised to find an unopened pack. She offered it to Marcus.

"Ultra-Lights?" he said, disgusted. "Since when do we smoke pussy cigarettes?"

"I don't even remember buying them."