Deal with it

by Giuseppe Grassi

The heat came into the shack even before the light of the flames, even before the screams. Tim woke up, sweating. In his ears My Way, but the Limp Bizkit one. The wall thermometer, that his wife bought and abandoned before she left, marked a rapidly rising furnace temperature. The door to the hall, left open to cool the room, had become the fan of an oven whose heating element was not in the house. And as soon as Tim leaned against the doorframe, he saw it: the blaze of fire devouring the Madison's barn.

Cookie, his cat, lying on the porch, was focused on that scene that did not have the meaning of devastation or loss for her, but something that only a feline's disaffection for the material things could explain. In short, it had its own interest, it certainly carried a lesson for the future, but nothing that could concern her at the moment.

At a due distance, the Madison family was screaming and despairing in a low voice, as if they were more concerned about the embarrassment and clamor that a fire in their property bring, than losing anything of value.

Along with them, a pack of exagitated dogs, as if a bear was eating their meal, kept running around waiting for a charging order that would never come.

Tim descended the few stairs that separated his shack from the communal yard and started walking toward that huge pyre. He passed among the Madison family without even looking at them, without even listening the requests made of them, while old Madison, kneeling, looked at him for no real reason.

But Tim didn't care. Really didn’t care at all. He had already lost so much that he could not bear any more, even if the thing affected didn’t belong to him. So, he kept walking in the direction of the flames as if those belonged to him, as if those, recognizing him, would not want to hurt him.

The Madison’s stopped screaming, more out of shame at having been ignored by that weirdo neighbor, than out of concern at seeing him so close to crossing the threshold of hell. And so was for their eyes. Tim shot out of that world as they had known him, only to rise burned with a patch of smoking hair, but leading a parade of horses that, like him, seemed indifferent to the flames.

Tim dropped the reins near the Madison’s, then continued toward his shack. But the animals, now bound to him by an invisible thread far firmer than a notarized paper, continued to follow him to the front door.

On the threshold Tim stopped, and for the first time since his awakening looked back. The nobility of those quadrupeds was no surprise. If they had been human… well, there would have been to jump out of the chair - that’s for sure. But now even the dogs had to calme down, and with a disinterested frown pretended to follow an imaginary scent that, from the air, they found near the shack.

Cookie was still there, looking at that picture and thinking: “bunch of fucking idiots.” Tim laughed at this supposed thought and began to watch the people arrive to console the Madison family. From the horses and dogs there was nothing to fear, neither from the Madison’s by the way. They would have said what they wanted, as always. Even that it was Tim who had started the fire, just to be the hero of the day.

But he was certainly not a hero. As already said, He was just tired of seeing wonderful things go up in smoke, even if those didn't belong to him. Which is, if you ask me, the only possible description for a hero that should be.

Written in Italian for the free online Thursday Night Writes class with Jacob Krueger. Now translated and adapted from script to prose.

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