Immolate – an act of microfiction
This is my offering for Marc’s first microfiction challenge. The challenge is this:
“Write a microfiction story of max 350 words in a genre of your choice and use the word fire, one way or the other”
Very different from my normal post so I won’t be offended if you pass this one by!
Without further commentary, here it is.
Immolate
After the fourth match fail to spark the mummified tinder bundle he threw down the box and swore. Again.
Still cursing he stalked into the woods. A few steps in he stopped.
Who was he running away from?
Before turning back, a deep breath. His lungs filled with the earthy smell of the rotting hummus. It failed to calm him.
As he re-entered the clearing he looked around. The tent sagged to one side with the seams stretched to breaking on the other. His clothes spilled out of the front and nestled lovingly in the mud.
He shook his head. Why was he doing this? It had seemed such a good idea. Get out of the house. Remember her. Forget her.
Idiot. He had no clue what to do.
The unlit fire smirked at him. He stared for a second then dove into his tent. Moments later he emerged triumphantly clutching a bottle of sunflower oil. He splashed half of it over the putative fire. Contemplating it for a moment he pulled out her handkerchief, flung that onto the twigs and poured the rest of the libation onto it.
It only took another six matches before the fire lit.
As smoke rose greasily skyward he felt a prickle of achievement. He could do this without her.
A gust of wind blew the smoke into his face. The sting brought tears to his eyes and he blinked as they ran down his face.
The fire started to splutter and he lunged for his pile of wood. He piled twigs on as the flames ravenously devoured them. More and more of his stack fed the flames and the fire burned hotter and hotter. Then the fuel was gone.
He looked around for more. There was nothing. He ran to a tree and tried to pull off a branch. It bent but did not break. Panicked, he threw on a handful of leaves.
The flames disappeared. All that was left was a tendril of smoke that wound its way into the sky and then, in turn, was gone.
Further reading
I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
If you want more check out the others who have done this challenge:
Thanks for joining and great piece of microfiction Caveman! Loved reading it! The failing fire, his emotions, you describe it so vividly. I could see it all in front of me 🙂
Thanks for setting this up Marc! I had a lot of fun doing it. Glad you enjoyed i
This is brilliant Caveman.
What are we without our women? Throwing leaves and oil onto a fire to get it going, leaving our clothes smeared in the mud, letting our lovely hummus rot! – I love it!
A beautiful depiction of thinking we can do it alone.
Thanks Ninja. What are we indeed without our women (which is my we shouldn’t leave them standing by themselves in the rain…!)?
Glad you enjoyed it (and I loved yours as well).
Seems like you had a good time writing this. It was an enjoyable read for sure! Hope your own FIRE isn’t smirking at you.
Thanks Abigail. You know what, the joy of not monetising my blog is that I can do random things like this to mix it up over here. Nothing to do with FIRE (as opposed to fire) but that’s just fine by me!