How to Fight Fire When Everything Around You is Burning
How to Fight Fire When Everything Around You is Burning
A Micro Fiction by Emma Phillips
You’ve been told the Lord works in mysterious ways since you were tall enough to sit between your parents on the pew, that old plank warmed by the heat of their bottoms. The Lord’s work carried you between your father’s jobs, held him from the temptation to douse the devil with liquor and gave your mother reason for damned near everything, from your brother’s poor grades to the time your hen got the umption and quit laying.
When winter chills picked off their crops, the townsfolk gathered in the warmth of the church where at least they had the blood of Christ to sustain them. You looked at the pale faced pastor and wondered if God ever laughed. He could put a man on the moon, you exclaimed, but still folk don’t have enough to eat. Your mother said while your feet were under her table, there was no room for blasphemers.
Nobody mentioned the ones who had left in case the fires of hell would consume such a thought. When you met him, you stole a map from the mission, folded it small like a ticket. You’d resented the growl in your stomach so long, you didn’t take much persuading.
In a parking lot, by a diner where you measured his worth in bottomless brunch, you learned the original sin. Devil child, he spat in your ear, as you summoned away his demons. Same time next week? he winked as you left. Your lips burned with swallowed confessions.
Author: Emma Phillips is a teacher from Devon. Her work has been placed in the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Free Flash Fiction Competition and Best Microfiction Anthology 2022. Her novella-in-flash Not Visiting The SS Great Britain is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press in September. She's quite excited.
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