The house had always been on fire. That is what they said, at least. There were records, of course – birth certificates yellowed by heat, brittle marriage licenses curling at the edges, death notices with soot still clinging to the ink–but no true memory of when the first match had struck. Some murmured that the blaze began with a forgotten quarrel, others insisted it was a divine punishment meant to remind them of their place. But most agreed it had always been like this, a fire not fierce enough to consume, only to linger, and, on occasion, flare.
It was not a dramatic fire. It did not leap at the sky or scream through the rafters. It settled. It simmered. It threaded through the wallpaper like ivy, bloomed in the hearths without prompting, whispered beneath floorboards in tongues no one tried to understand. The flames were quiet companions, and over time, the residents stopped noticing the way their clothes always smelled faintly of smoke. They got used to the scars and saw it as something like affection.
They adapted.
Children learned to crawl around glowing embers as if avoiding them were a game. Elders wiped ash from their tea cups without pausing conversation. There were rules: do not step barefoot after midnight–the floors were hotter then, more likely to blister; do not trust metal door knobs–they held the heat longest, even when they looked safe; do not mention the smell–everyone knew it, but saying it aloud made it real. Lovers met in the warmest rooms and called the heat romantic, believing conflagration to be a kind of blessing. “The flames keep us warm,” they said with soft, singed smiles, their eyelashes occasionally curling at the edges.
A girl who lived in the house tried to put it out once. Poor thing. She dragged in buckets of rainwater, tore down smoldering curtains, cracked windows to let the smoke escape. She walked barefoot and blistering through every room, whispering apologies to the floorboards, as if they too had suffered. The others watched from the stairwell, eyes wide with something like pity or amusement, and did nothing.
She became of age and left not long after. Her hands were red and raw from a childhood of blistering, and her voice hoarse from pleading. They were glad to see her go. The house, they said, could not be changed.
The ones who had originally struck the match lifetimes ago were long gone, of course. They had built the house, or inherited it, or simply walked in one day and declared it theirs. No one remembered them now. No portraits remained. But the flames did, licking softly at chair legs and bedposts, ever ready, present.
They loved the house, truly– deeply, in the way one loves a thing that has shaped them unconsciously. The fire curled around their memories, warmed their laughter, softened their grief. Even those who left, and there were some, carried it with them, a longing in the marrow, a taste of smoke in the back of their throat. They sought the same heat in others, built new houses with the same crooked blueprints. They gravitated towards anger, towards passion, toward anything that roared; they did not know the comfort of a cool breeze, how to sleep in a well-ventilated room. They did not trust silence. In the stillness of kinder homes, they missed the low, constant crackle– the sound of home.
They tried to recreate it, in small, ruinous ways. Left stove burners on too long. Lit candles and let them splutter down to wax puddles, even when there was no one present. They fought with their voices raised, not out of cruelty but necessity, for how else would they hear themselves above the consuming quiet? They called it love, because it was all they had ever known. The fire taught them early: warmth came with blisters, affection with smoke. This was the rhythm of things – wounds dressed with ash, forgiveness doled out in flickering half-light. So they grew up tracing that same pattern onto others, thinking it devotion to endure pain.
Outsiders stood at the edge of their yards, blinking through the smoke, saying, “Why don’t they just put out the fire?” As if it were as simple, as if the buckets of water hadn’t already been carried in by trembling hands, once, and poured into rooms that only hissed and steamed and kept burning anyway. There was talk, too, among the house’s older inhabitants, of leaving like the others, of finding somewhere cooler, clearer. Sometimes it was whispered in confidence, afraid of the judgement it would bring. But the idea always dissolved like ash in water. Where would they go? Who would take them in, so thoroughly charred? And besides, the fire wasn’t so bad all the time. You could live with it.
And so they did.
Abigail is a student from San Jose, California. In her free time, she enjoys painting, reading, and doing arts and crafts.