The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Fiction Short Story

by Tracie McBride

Pyro

The numbers on Julie’s bedside clock clicked over as she stared at the ceiling, watching a blowfly explore a patch of light. 2:56 a.m. She had been awake since her boyfriend Ralph had come around after the pub had closed, banging on her door and loudly slurring her name. When she had let him in, he’d tripped over the door sill, smashed a plant pot in the hallway, and vomited on impact with the floor, thus destroying any slim chance he might have had of getting laid that night. He snored next to her now in the subterranean sleep of the profoundly drunk. His breath smelled of cigarette smoke, stomach acid, Jim Beam and salt and vinegar chips. She inhaled shallowly and studied his near-perfect profile. A rivulet of drool slithered from his parted lips. Prick, she thought. Wanker. Bastard. Sweetheart.

Now for the second time that evening, someone was hammering on her front door. It was a firm, rhythmic, authoritative knock. She’d bet her left tit the visitor was stone cold sober. She sighed. Sober people knocking on doors in the middle of the night did so either because they wanted more help than you were prepared to give, or because they bore seriously bad news. She waited for it to become more insistent before heaving herself out of bed and putting on her dressing gown and slippers, feigning sleepiness as she opened the door. A policeman stood on her doorstep. Was madam aware that there was a car on fire outside her property?

Julie leaned past him to look. Ralph’s aging Holden station wagon (at least, what was left of it) was parked at an erratic angle on the grass verge next to her front fence. A bevy of firemen swarmed around it. A few flames persisted in rebellious existence, reflecting off the yellow coats of the firemen as they hosed the car down. The scene was cordoned off with road cones, alternating orange and grey in the police car’s flashing lights. A second cop was deep in conversation with one of the neighbours. The neighbour was a forty-something woman with adult acne and an arse that must have been five feet across. They’d never spoken to each other, but had exchanged unpleasantries via Noise Control in a dispute over a raucous party (Julie’s) and via CYPS regarding an assault on a child with a shoe (the neighbour’s, both the child and the shoe). Fat-arse noticed Julie’s scrutiny and turned her back, bending over the cop’s book like a nerd shielding her test paper from cheats. Julie suppressed an urge to laugh.

- Uh, no, she said, avoiding the cop’s eyes.

- Is that your car?

- No, it belongs to my…friend.

- Is your friend here at the moment?

Julie hesitated. If the cop spoke to Ralph in his present state, it would raise all sorts of awkward questions.

- No, he’s out with his mates.

The cop glanced at his watch and flashed Julie a tight, perfunctory “you-poor-bitch” smile. He seemed out of place, standing on her doorstep at three o’clock in the morning. Craning around him again, she took note of who else in the neighbourhood was nosy enough to come out at this hour for a rubberneck. The onlookers were all dressed haphazardly, in pyjamas, dressing gowns, track pants, one bloke braving the autumn air by wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. They were messy-haired and confused, the chemical smoke stench slapping bleariness from their eyes. The firemen, swaddled in their safety gear, moved about the street like oversized plastic-wrapped toddlers. And here was this cop in his pristine uniform, so young and tall and blond and smelling of freshly applied aftershave. She wondered if he kept a bottle in the squad car’s glove box, to reapply before each callout. She fidgeted with her dressing gown, pulling the belt tight, tugging at the collar, pushing one knee forward through the folds, unsure whether false modesty or seductiveness would have more of a positive influence on him. Deciding that she could achieve neither effect successfully wearing pink fake fur slides and what amounted to an oversized towel, she stilled her hands by gripping her elbows across her chest, forming a pale-skinned barricade.

The cop asked her a battery of questions, jotting the answers down neatly in a notebook that was ludicrously small in his big, capable cop hands. What was her full name, her address (again, laughter threatened—he was standing outside her house, and he didn’t know what her address was?), her phone number, her date of birth. He’ll want to know the colour of my underwear next, she thought, and this time a nervous giggle escaped her as she realised she wasn’t wearing any.

He requested the same information on Ralph. Rather than admit to not knowing Ralph’s birthday, Julie made it up. Then he asked –

- Did you hear any suspicious noises outside tonight?

- No, but I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.

- Have you any reason to think this fire might have been deliberately lit?

Julie pondered on this for a few seconds.

- You know, I wouldn’t put it past my ex-husband Bruce to do something like this.

The cop paused in mid-jot. He tensed like a racehorse at the starting gate as he flipped to a fresh page in his notebook. What made her think Bruce might commit arson? Did he have a criminal record? Had he made any threats towards Julie or Ralph recently? Had either of them reported Bruce’s behaviour to the police? What was Bruce’s full name? Address? Preferred colour of underwear? Julie wished he hadn’t started this line of questioning, as it kept her shivering on her deck for a further thirty minutes, and it was a strain on her creativity under these circumstances. Then it was, thank you for your assistance, call us if you think of anything else, we’ll be in touch, and he was gone. She fetched a cigarette and returned to her doorstep, watching the firemen finish up and the neighbours drift back to their beds, until she was left alone and shivering in the pre-dawn.

She waited until morning to tell Ralph about the fire. He stood blinking back bewildered tears as he stared at his car’s burnt-out husk. She told him the fire had most likely started from a cigarette butt he might have unwittingly dropped, or possibly from the shonky wiring job he’d done installing that stereo a couple of days back. He kicked through the grey sodden debris that had been the car’s upholstery as if searching for something. A miasma of burnt foam rubber and melted plastic lifted from the ground, mingling with the cloud of Julie’s exhaled breath and making her cough. Ash settled on Ralph’s dreadlocks like confetti. Julie closed her eyes for a moment, almost overcome with vertigo at the thought of tying the knot with Ralph.

- All my tools were in the back, he said. So what, she thought. It’s not as if you ever got off a bar stool long enough to use any of them.

- Got insurance? she asked, already knowing the answer.

- Nope.

- Got enough dosh to buy another car?

Ralph glared at her with red-rimmed eyes.

- What do YOU think? I can’t even afford to buy a new skill saw, let alone a whole fucking car.

Julie reached out a hand, intending to stroke his hair, then pulled back at the last minute and punched him lightly in the shoulder instead.

- C’mon, she said. I’ll give you a ride to work.

A couple of weeks down the track, Julie’s life was on the up-and-up, thanks to the fire. Now that Ralph had to save up for new wheels and had neither the money nor the means to go to the pub, he was virtually living at Julie’s place, as placid and housebound as a neutered dog. The police had paid a visit to her ex, Bruce. Although they found no evidence that he had set Ralph’s car on fire, they did find enough marijuana plants growing under lights in his spare room to land him in court and lose him his job. Julie thought it hilariously ironic that the conviction also lost him his girlfriend, Skye, to whom the plants really belonged and who couldn’t dump him fast enough in case the cops cottoned on to her involvement.

Julie chanted a Prodigy song under her breath as she squatted in front of her wood burner, bobbing her head in time to the imaginary rhythm. I’m a fire starter, twisted fire starter. There was something else ironic. She had never got the knack of lighting a fire in a fireplace; she usually had to go through two or three newspapers and several fire starters before she could get the wood to grudgingly catch alight. Yet with the aid of little lighter fluid and a search on the Internet, she’d made Ralph’s car go up in seconds.


About the Author
Tracie McBride is a mother of three from New Zealand. She has a diploma in creative writing and is a member of the Wellington-based Phoenix Science Fiction Writers’ Group. Her work has appeared (or will soon be appearing) in various electronic, print and podcast publications, including Alien Skin, Flash Me, Bravado, Gambara, Bound Off and Dark Jesters.