Pleasure to Burn by Kihin Ranno

It was a pleasure to burn.

He stood beneath the crumbling building, sweating through his black clothes but refusing to remove one stitch of them. Groans filled the air as support beams weakened and bent, bringing ceilings down to floors and taking the walls with them. Curtains behind every window were caught in the red whirlwind, blackening and vanishing. Windows blew out, sending fireworks of glass into the air, glittering like tiny razors flying to the ground. A teddy bear became a demon and a scream rang out like Armageddon.

He inhaled the scent of ruin and ash and glowed.

-----

“Are you a superstitious man?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t, right?”

“You would be surprised.”

“I don’t know about that.”

She didn’t quite smile at him, but her expression changed. He would remember it however he liked and blame it on the incense if ever proven wrong. “Your hand.”

His fingers twitched against his pant leg, but he obliged. His shadow blacked one of the cards in her tarot deck, still face up from the previous reading.

Her skilled fingers ran over the smooth recesses of his palm, perfumed skin occasionally interrupted by a jagged nail that never quite drew blood, although their stain seemed to suggest otherwise. He watched her with interest, taking note of the wrinkles that appeared on her young face and the tongue that darted out, wetting chapped lips. Shadows flickered across her pale features as candle flames jumped and swayed as if they wanted to fly.

He longed to be near them.

“You have a scar,” she remarked with mild interest, running her thumb over skin whiter and more translucent than the rest.

“I held my hand over a flame when I was a kid,” he answered.

She arched a dark eyebrow, a painter’s slash against a white canvas. “Why would you ever do such a thing?”

He took his free hand and passed it over a nearby candlelight. It flickered and flared with every moment, and he smiled. “Wanted to see what it felt like.”

“You like fire.”

His shoulders rose and fell. “I guess.”

Silence fell between them for a time. He continued to dance his fingers around the fire, directing its heat and scorching skin long dead but unmarked. He noticed her only once during the next five minutes, smiling like a child returning home with a trophy from school.

Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she flipped her hair – deceptively violet in her tent’s light. “The scar interrupts the lifeline.”

He chuckled. “Does that mean my life will be cut tragically short?”

“I wouldn’t say tragic.”

His fingers closed around the wick, snuffing that point of illumination out. “Hey, I’m not paying you for that shit.”

“You’re not paying me,” she announced, fingers slipping away from his wrists like rain. “You can go.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “The hell?”

The jade of her eyes felt like a cage. He thought of steel bars and barbed wire.

Shiver.

“I see more than lifelines and the arrangement of cards.” Her voice was low, a panther circling and waiting to pounce. “I see far more than that, and you will regret soon that I was not blind.”

He scoffed, shoving his hands into his pockets. The chair fell to the ground as he rocketed upwards, swears falling from his mouth like broken glass.

A missing light returned. His eyes vaulted upwards and he saw that she had not moved.

“Freak,” he accused, never showing her his back during his hasty retreat.

Now there was no mistaking it: she smiled.

-----

He returned home in the early hours of the morning, stripping off blacker than black clothes as he made his way to the bathroom. His legs dragged against the floor and sweat dripped down his quickly bare back. He hadn’t stopped shaking.

A thousand candles surrounded his bath, but he couldn’t bring himself to light more than one next to the window, constantly glancing over his shoulder for a mystic with green cages. He never saw a thing.

The water filled the tub, a grey cloud spreading across it as he stepped into it. One more glance around the room revealed candles screaming for fire and no one else. He waited and watched. Still, nothing but stillness.

He sighed. “Stupid bitch.”

A shout, and he slipped beneath. His hands reached to pull himself upright, but they were slick against porcelain and he couldn’t grip. He twisted violently, bruising his hips and leaking blood. There was pressure at his neck and he pulled. It stayed, and he thrashed, spraying water into the air.

Darkness came just before.

-----

She gazed up at the one light in the house vanish as if swallowed. She nodded slowly and turned as if pulled by wires, shaking her hand dry in the sudden breeze.

“Not tragic at all.”