There I was, sorting my late great aunt’s garage. I was in the middle of nowhere, at least with family. I was lucky I got along with them so well. Many people were not as blessed.
A little old home from the fifties, sturdy old wooden frames that had not rotted; the walls included healthy heavy real brick walls that would survive tornadoes never to manifest. Gosh and to think the plan was to sell the cozy old home. No doubt to some evil flipper or developer.
Not that they would have much luck in the boondocks, though there was that solar and data center project that was in the local paperwork. They might buy this little plot of land.
My parents, good lord what was I doing with them, I may as well be watching out for them at this point. I was nearly a caretaker. How old were they? Late sixties? I in my early thirties. They had no business fixing homes at this age. Which I suppose is why they brought me along.
I was lucky enough to be able to say yes, they were lucky I could watch out for them. I hadn’t a job at the moment. I didn’t miss working either. But how had life ended up this way? I was sorting a garage I had played in as a child, at age thirty. I didn’t own anything aside from my rusty old SUV, maybe my clothes and computer if you want to be pedantic. But I didn’t have a million dollars like I thought I would as a kid.
I barely had enough to live on my own for a few years. Maybe I would commit to a mortgage next year when the market finally crashed, maybe that money I had in the darn stock market wasn’t going to under-perform inflation again. Right? Gosh I had been waiting for the apocalypse since I was twelve.
Bah… I was too old now… How had life passed me by so quickly? Minecraft? I blamed Minecraft. Microsoft was evil.
I chucked the old lithium battery into a cardboard box.
It crackled,
:(
It popped,
“That’s not right.” I said out loud. The battery was only a little one for a little portable electric drill.
Smoke began to escape the plastic casing.
A fire?
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I picked up the cardboard box empty aside from the old battery that was manufactured twenty years ago.
I placed it in the middle of the driveway. Far away from any foliage, far away from anything flammable. The pitbull pranced around me, and playfully, it looked in the box as if I had put a surprise in it, I suppose I had. It sprang back the same way it does when it sees a snake. It hates snakes.
The flame only took four seconds. I took a step or two back and it ignited catastrophically. I watched the battery burn down in the little cardboard box. The dog yelped as if it needed to.
That dog, that feral, yet disturbingly polite and patient pitbull. That dog had adopted this old home, and my parents, and I suppose myself. It was cute to watch the beast “Gatormouth” “Wendy” “Catwalker” “Wendesday” (we hadn’t decided on a name for it because only mother wanted to keep it.) frolic and throw the ball for herself. Feral mutts had that wild intelligence that the domestic just lacked. She really was a surprisingly healthy young dog, practically a puppy. She only had pinworms, and by now she shouldn’t. The critter had reformed herself from tormenting rabbits and local cars when we had introduced her to tennisballs.
Well more realistically only baby rabbits born somewhere far away were having babies now.
“What is it!?” Called my mother from inside the home.
“Old battery!” I called back.
The battery burned itself out, the cardboard box feebly attempted a burn as well but it was nowhere near as impressive.
“What!?”
“A!” I began… turning around.
How was that tree on fire?
It didn’t look real, the fire I had just seen was realistic, this new fire around the old and giant sycamore tree stump looked like a low poly render. That wasn’t right. The pitbull yapped in a panic. Which was odd; that little critter never panicked.
The barks skyrocketed in frequency, it didn’t sound real.
I ran back to the front door. Should I yell fire?
“We have a tree on fire!” I managed. I looked in the old house, an ancient couch, in the living room, old by the time my parents were young, was on fire. It wasn’t normal fire, it was that low poly render.
That little pitbull coonhound mix was sounding less like a dog and more like a fox. Something wasn’t right.
“I shouldn’t enter a burning building.” I said to myself.
I ran around the side of the long little home. There were mom and dad briskly walking away from the little brick external water heater shed. The little freestanding masonry structure was also on fire, surrounded by that crazy “Nintendo burning bush” particle effect.
“We have fire everywhere.” Dad stated the obvious, the little dog hurtled down a dirt path towards civilization.
There was fire everywhere, every tree I looked at was picking up that “fire.”
“I’ll call the fire department.” My mom said.
“I’ll pull the fire alarm, you guys get out of here.” I volunteered.
Father began to guide mother away from the home, down the path led by that wily little pitbull. Mother produced her cell phone.
I dimly reminded myself that father would get the fire alarm in the water heater and hurried to the screen door under the hummingbird feeder in the back of the house. The house full of low resolution fire.
“In and out, I just gotta pull a lever.” I thought to myself. “Isn’t that a terrible idea?” I replied out loud, “Not in a dream.” I finished as I ripped the flimsy little screen door off its hinges.