I will do more of this later

I love fire.

Oh God, it's not just the rush of it, the heat and the light. No, it's the very concept behind it, the idea that it's the basis for everything that we call "civilization." Everything that we take for granted.

Everything that we think makes us human.

It pulsates. It is warm, but it is not alive. It nurtures life, it destroys it, but it is neither alive nor dead. It subsists on what we breathe and consumes as we do, sometimes flesh and sometimes flora. All that it lacks is a body, a form, but that's what the bottle is for, the rag flaccid with kerosene, gasoline, any-ine and every-ine, whatever we could find to feed its ravenous hunger, and the bottle only does so much to contain it.

Maybe that's why we're warm. That fire burning inside us can't be held in by flesh and bone and sinew alone. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to the fire, a bipedal moth in rancid rags. Maybe that's why I want to see it grow, spreading through rotting, dead wood and copper highways.

It tumbles through the window, a parabolic arc cut short by the floor. There's nothing, for a moment, but the flames blossom, expand and catch on the dry fuel and fill out the floor. Seconds become minutes and soon I've been there for an hour, the sirens still running strong and the metal loops tight against my wrists, constricting my blood flow.