A Short Story : A Story?

- During: The wax began dripping down the sides of the candle once the wick was lighted. The flame was blue at the bottom and ombred up to yellow at the top of the flame. The flame was jumpy and not steady.

Next he moved into the common room and lay a fire in the black stone fireplace, brushing the ash from the massive hearth along the northern wall. He pumped water, washed his hands, and brought up a piece of mutton from the basement. He cut fresh kindling, carried in firewood, punched down the rising bread and moved it close to the now warm stove.

Then he took some matches and proceeded to make a fire. In the bushes,

The flame had been extinguished, the feel of it snuffed out between his fingers nowhere near comparable to the heat scorching through his veins. His Grace had never been like this, had never scoured every nerve inside his vessel as it grew, it had always been warm, been comforting even in the most desperate of times and yet now. Why? Gabriel let his fingers brush over the heated wax, letting it conform to his fingertips before he pulled them back and watched it quickly dry. Pale nubs sat top his index and middle finger, twisting them slowly back and forth as he studied it before her voice caught him off guard. The wax was easily discarded, pulled off and set back at the base of the candle as he turned, almost uneasy at the fact that he hadn’t realized she woken up sooner.

Right now, she is trying to soothe the kids. She does this every night, and every night, the children go to bed with the promise that tomorrow would be a better day. I can hear her walk back into the room, but my eyes remain fixated on the fire, hypnotized by their dance; a fiery consumption that sends up sparks and ash. She silently begins to clean up the shattered mess, sweeping up the shards of glass, and soaking up the whiskey and gin. Her face is a ghostly white, completely devoid of emotion. The soft tinkling of the glass is? accompanied by the low crackling coming from the hungry flames.

They arrived outside at the bonfire. Ana plopped her seat onto a tarp covered bale of hay and set the mugs on the tarp on the ground in front of them. She sat hunched over with her forearms resting on the knees of her split legs, like a basketball player sitting on a bench.

The smoke is filling up more rooms. It’s very hard to see. We have two animals, but where’s the third? She’s nowhere to be found and it’s not safe to stay inside. My dad has breathed in so much smoke. “I just want to lay down Bailey,” he states. He can’t lay down, we are almost to the door. Sirens are blaring from the fire trucks outside. Volunteer firefighters are running in without gear on to try and fight this fire themselves. In a small town, everyone knows everyone and they want to do whatever they can to help out.

Perhaps she had already passed out by the time he stood up, or perhaps she came in after he left, through a second doorway, from the living room. He said that he went down the corridor and tried to reach the children’s bedroom. In the hallway, he said, “you couldn’t see nothing but black.” The air smelled the way it had when their microwave had blown up, three weeks earlier—like “wire and stuff like that.” He could hear sockets and light switches popping, and he crouched down, almost crawling. When he made it to the children’s bedroom, he said, he stood and his hair caught on fire. “Oh God, I never felt anything that hot before,” he said of the heat radiating out of the room.

experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it,

Sam opened the mouth of the cook-stove and stoked the fire. Moving the coals around, he added another log. Taking Maggie’s que he worked silently, considering how her silence could be born from discontent. Moving towards the table, he grew frustrated as he replaced the condiments in the fridge, trying to think of what he could have done to piss her off.

He turned to put more wood in the fireplace. The warmth stretched slowly. Philip pushed the mat up against the door to prevent draft and then did the same to the window in the kitchen. He paced a few times round the room and then poked the fire—it crackled, the clock ticked. He thought it was too cold to play cards. He began to pace, listening from the kitchen, not realizing for a while it was the wind he was listening to, moving through the eaves.

Gwilan silently stared at the hearth fireplace, mesmerized by the crackling fire slowly burning the wood (Imagery). The recent events were starting to become overwhelming. Everyone in her life had left her. Her two sons were both grown up and gone, one starting a family and the other chasing his dreams far away. And Torm, Torm was now gone, thirty years from Gwilan’s life gone in a flash (Hyperbole). “What did this all start with?” Gwilan thought. Hypnotized into a deep sleep, Gwilan was free to dream, and her unconscious thoughts instantly went to the past, when it all began.

I woke up that morning with groggy eyes and spit dried on my mouth. My stomach remained empty, as usual, and dust clouded and burned my lungs with the intensity of a wildfire produced by the utmost potent blue flames. I picked at the rash created by the bed of hay on which I slept. I cursed, spat, and tied my overalls.

“Maybe.” Or maybe not. It was peaceful out here. I heard Evan’s noisy footsteps fade away, leaving me alone once more.

“Uh, yeah! Sure!” When I knew I was l alone I ran all over town looking for the source of the snow. I finally found it at an abandoned warehouse just outside of town. I waited a couple of seconds before saying something but before I could, someone spoke.