Apartment 1 “Fire Mother”

A fire burns in places previously unseen, and it is a sight that is hard to put into words. But I'll try/seek to do so.

When I woke up this morning, there was a smell in the air, coming from one of my cracked windows. It was smoke, and it didn't take long to figure out that it wasn't my house that was on fire.

It was the apartment building. It had been burned to the ground.

The crews said that they suspected arson, but I knew the moment I saw the ashes that there was nothing human in what had been done here. A human does things in certain ways, perhaps to ensure the source of the flame is hidden, or to make sure that the relevant evidence you are trying to find remains for your eyes and your eyes only. Certainly these things overlap, but I am not someone who studies people.

And people didn't burn down the building.

When I was little, I remembered all the stories about candles in windows and all the rest, about mysterious burns and broken homes. I heard these things on the playground, and I heard these things even when I was supposed to be tending to my studies. But I wasn't interested in the stories of the people who built the school. I wanted to know about the things that wanted to tear it down.

And so when I heard the stories on the playground, I made sure that I listened and I listened close, taking in all the details and making sure that I wrote it down, or retained it in memory. I would hear the tale, then I would find a quiet place, a spot that I wouldn't share with anyone, even Tracy. I would go to that place, and I would sit and digest the information, repeating the stories to myself over and over again, making sure that all the details remained the same.

I made sure that I added nothing of my own.

And then I would go searching.

Eventually Mom and Dad took me to a museum, hoping maybe that it would direct my studies, and make me interested in anthropology and more traditional forms of history. But my eyes were always drawn to monsters, and I secretly always believed that it was my dad who thought taking me to a museum would work that way.

But mom always knew better. She saw in me the same spark that resided in her, and she would be dammed if anyone was going to try and hide that fire that was building up inside me. It is a fire she had inside, and it is the thing that I miss the most about her. Her fire made me so happy, brought so much life to our home.

It brought life to Dad.

When he lost her, he lost the light too, and he never really managed to ever get it back.

When I woke up this morning, I quickly gathered my things and headed out the door, not even bothering to make sure that I had done my makeup or done anything to make myself look like a professional instead of the excited little girl that I felt like. I would hear the number of people dead, and it would sadden me, and it did sadden me.

But it wouldn't stop me from looking at the ashes when no one was looking.

I would make my own notes, take the pictures with the sound off when no one was looking, and make sure to collect all the evidence I needed, to follow up on what I knew wasn't theories and were instead the beginnings of a report.

See, when I said I don't study humans, it is kinda a lie. I study them enough to know when they are not there. I can tell when a human hand has touched a place, and when another thing altogether is the actual source. And I could see it, not the the way the fire was started, but in the way it was tended. A person who simply wants to burn evidence or simply gets a thrill out of it, they look to complete the task, maybe linger a little, but they do not tend to go back in.

They do not tend to the fire.

And this fire, for all its barbarism and all of its seemingly pointless reasons, was tended.

I would say that there was a time when I would have missed something like that, but that was a while ago. I have spent my entire life looking into these things, and the fire that I saw felt so close to the fire I feel sometimes. It is a fire that needs to be tended and watched over, one that needs to be focused and needs to be consistent. Because what you are trying to do isn't to destroy, but to create.

And that was what this was.

There were spots in the place, where the flame had burned the longest and had been the hardest to put out, where objects had been placed. And those object were not there anymore, not that it would surprise me if they were still there. The people here know better than to get between a monster and the task at hand.

And I know to never get in the way of a mother and their child.

It was a broken egg shell, something that you expect to be found in the trash of an apartment building. But it wasn't normal as you could have guessed.

Because a regular shell would have burned in the fire.

There's a fire in the sky this morning, and I don't think it is just the sun.