Pyro

"You are fucked up," Marcus muttered. He opened the pack and put two in his mouth, as if to illustrate how inadequate one would be. Both flared to life at once.

"I wanna go lie down."

"OK by me."

He followed her into the bedroom. Brenda looked out the window, up at the building across the street. Sunlight glinted off the binocular lenses. The shadow of the woman was there.

"That crazy dyke is watching us again."

Marcus stood behind her, pressed himself close. "Let her," he said. "I kinda like putting on a show."

He pulled at her clothes. Brenda raised her arms over her head and let Marcus pull her shirt off. His hands were on her breasts. The sensation should have been familiar, but it was strange. Like they weren't her breasts. Marcus's hands moved down, expertly undid her shorts. They slid to the floor and Brenda was naked.

"Lie down," Marcus whispered.

She did as she was told. Marcus undressed quickly. His penis was erect, very large and brown. The head glowed like the tip of a cigar. It was beautiful, like she had never seen it before. She spread her legs, opened herself with her hands. Her clitoris was the same brilliant orange.

"It's a cherry," she said with wonder.

"Girl, I took your cherry a long time ago."

She touched it and pulled her fingers away, surprised. It burned. Marcus just laughed.

"You oughtta know better than to touch it when it gets like that. Now roll over."

"Yes, Daddy."

Marcus chuckled. "I like it when you call me Daddy."

"I like it too," she braced herself. "Daddy."

He burned inside her. It was like the first time.

Later, Jodie lay between them. The mattress was filthy with ash, the discharge of their lovemaking. It was foul and dirty, but Jodie didn't want to move. Marcus and Brenda both smoked, but she couldn't take any more just yet.

"You know where fire comes from?" Marcus asked.

"Where?" Jodie choked the word out. Her mouth was full of ash, her tongue blistered and raw.

"From Prometheus," Marcus said.

"Oh yeah," Jodie coughed dryly. "That's right."

Brenda sat up, surprised. "You've heard of Prometheus?"

"It's a famous myth," Jodie said. "Actually, I did a paper on Prometheus in college. I compared that myth to the story of Jesus."

"Ain't no myth," Marcus said, indignant. "It's true. And if Prometheus ever came across Jesus, he'd burn that skinny Jew up like kindling."

"I told you they don't teach you nothing but shit at college," Brenda said.

"I know it."

Jodie snuggled in closer to Marcus. "Tell it to me," she said.

"You wanna hear it?"

"I want to hear you tell it."

Marcus cleared his throat. "This was a long time ago," he said. "Before Columbus invented America, back in Indian times. See, Prometheus was king of all the Indians. They all had the fire in them. That's how come they all smoked peace pipes."

Jodie saw it as Marcus did, like illustrations from a book seen as a child and never forgotten. Prometheus looked like The Human Torch from The Fantastic Four. He sat on a flaming throne surrounded by throngs of naked Indians.

"Prometheus was a good king," Marcus continued. "All his people loved him. There was no war, no sickness, no death. Just fire. The Indians lived like children, naked and free. They just smoked and fucked and played all day."

The image this conjured was a fusion of Eden and Hell. Naked figures frolicked in a flaming garden. Brenda held her cigarette to Jodie's lips. Jodie inhaled luxuriously and pulled closer to Marcus.

"Then the white men came. At first, the Indians tried to be friends. They tried to share their fire and their love."

Marcus kissed Jodie on the mouth and she saw the Europeans coming ashore, greeted by naked Indians bearing peace pipes. Brenda kissed Jodie's neck. Her soft lips tasted Jodie's breasts, then her stomach.

"The white men called the Indians wicked," Marcus spoke into Jodie's mouth. "They stole what they wanted and killed any Indians that resisted them."

Jodie saw the massacre clearly, white men killing women and children. Brenda's lips fluttered between her legs. Marcus's kisses grew hotter. The room filled with smoke.

"The Indians knew they had to keep Prometheus a secret. If the white men ever found out about him, they would drown him. That's the only way Prometheus could die, drowning in water. So they hid him, in a fire they kept burning all the time."

The Indians carried wood to a blazing campfire, and fed it with reverence. Marcus forced Jodie's head down onto him. It burned her tongue. Her pillow burst into flames.

"The white men finally found the flame that Prometheus lived in." Marcus moaned as Jodie puffed on him, raising billows of smoke. "Before they could put it out, a brave Indian girl swallowed the fire. It burned her inside, but she ate it anyway. She ran into the woods and the white men chased her."

The young Indian girl was thin and shapeless, like Brenda, like Jodie. Her mouth was in flames. The armed men on their horses chased her into the dark woods. Jodie pulled Marcus's glowing tip deep into her body. Brenda straddled his face and his tongue sizzled on her blazing clitoris. Jodie kissed Brenda, forming the apex of this pyramid of flesh. The bed smoldered. The curtains ignited.

"The girl got away," Marcus's voice was muffled by Brenda's thighs, but he continued his tale. "The fire in her belly turned to children. A boy and a girl, spawned by fire. Children of Prometheus."

The Indian girl held a squirming baby at each breast. In their eyes were flames. Brenda, Marcus and Jodie stumbled naked from the burning apartment. They ran laughing down the hall as the alarms wailed and the other tenants staggered from their doors.

"We are their great-great-grandchildren!" Marcus screamed over the chaos. "Direct descendants of Prometheus! Children of the fire!"

"Where are we going now?" Jodie called, laughing.

"Gas mains under the city," Marcus yelled back. "We fuck that and the whole city's fucked! It won't rise from the ashes this time! BURN THE MOTHERFUCKER DOWN!"

Jodie ran naked and unashamed into the street, carried laughing between her lovers, blistered with the ecstacy of it all.

"Gas mains," Jodie mumbled. "Burn motherfucker . . ."

A man's voice, faraway: "She's saying something." Jodie was flying, borne aloft like ash on the wind. There was a man at her feet and another at her head. They both wore white.

"Won't rise from the ashes," she tried to tell the men, but all that came out was a croak. Her voice was terribly dry.

Jodie was carried through a door and sunlight burst down onto her in a sudden, baking explosion of light and heat. Her skin shriveled in horror. She tried to close her eyes, but there was something wrong with them. They wouldn't close.

"He left his cherry on my tongue." She stuck her tongue out so the men could see.

"It's all right, ma'am," one of them said, not very convincingly. "You're going to be fine."

There was a crowd gathered around outside, dozens of people standing around watching. Uniformed policemen were holding the crowd back. There was a commotion, a blonde woman whom Jodie faintly recognized, arguing with one of the policemen, her voice wild and edgy with panic. She ran over to Jodie just as she was loaded into the back of an ambulance. The blonde woman followed Jodie inside the vehicle. The doors slammed closed and Jodie felt motion. Distant sirens began to blare. The blonde woman's face was above her, looking down terrified.

"What happened, Jodie? Jesus, what happened?"

Jodie moved her mouth, but could not make her voice work.

The blonde woman appealed to one of the men in white. "What happened?"

Jodie heard the man say something about a gas explosion, but couldn't quite make out exactly what he was saying. There was a problem with her ears, too. The ringing tone was loud and persistent. She remembered what Marcus had said about the gas mains, and wondered if that was what the man was talking about. But that was just a scene in the book. That was fiction.

The blonde woman was sobbing when she bent over Jodie again.

"It's going to be fine, baby," the woman cried. "You're going to be all right."

Jodie shook her head. She was going to have to revise this dialogue. It was terrible. For a second she forgot which character she was supposed to be in this scene, the dying woman or the anguished lover. Then she remembered.

"I'm almost done with my book," she said, suddenly bright. "You want to know what it's about?"

"Yes, baby," Carrie's tears fell like acid rain onto Jodie's burns. "Please tell me."

"It's about fire."

Carrie frowned, clearly troubled by the answer. This struck Jodie as being very funny. She would have laughed had it not suddenly become very difficult to breathe. Carrie's hair began to smolder, and this was even funnier. Blue flames climbed the inside walls of the ambulance. Soon everything was in flames.