Different books incinerate in different ways. For instance, due to the thin paper of the Bible, it burns at a fairly rapid pace. Large coffee table books, on the other hand, char at a much slower rate. Opening the books and fanning out the pages allows for more surface area, and thus more expedient cremation. I prefer watching them burn slowly; it soothes me.
Burn hundreds of history books and scientific theses and it's an act of oppression; burn a couple dozen self-help books and it's a spiritually liberating experience.
"There was a whole box we had forgotten," Cindy said, awkwardly carrying a heavy packaging crate filled with paperbacks and hardcovers. She eyed me, annoyed. She hoped that I would lend a gentlemanly hand. I just love the face of someone with unmet expectations.
Expectations make the world less surprising. Things become dull and trite. With enough expectations, everything begins to resemble a Bob Ross painting. Happy trees under happy clouds with happy fence posts. Landscapes of alleged beauty.
"Here." She plopped the box of literary fuel next to me. She expected me to feed the fire like I was some sort of zookeeper feeding a lion. The chip on her shoulder made her somewhat cockeyed as she sat in the lawn chair next to my sister. She wore facial expressions like masks and put on a concerned furrow, showing a degree of pity that other psychiatrists might deem unprofessional. Because of the botulin that swirled beneath her skin, it gleamed like it were made of plastic.
"Hurry up with those things, I want to get the hell out of here," she said half to me and half to the fire. Her spindly legs crossed one another as her spindly fingers scrabbled for a cigarette. A fifty-year-old spoiled brat.
You become a very dizzy person when it seems as though the world is revolving around you.
People with expectations hope to build a society that is reverential of peace and order. They actually expect to have the right to live, as if that were even their decision to make. They draft a constitution, pay taxes, vote, work, buy shit, cram that shit down their children's throats, and eat heart-fucking-healthy Cheerios in hopes of fulfilling their expectations of perfection.
At least when your kid is a fat-ass, you know he won't slip through the cracks.
"Cindy, don't start. I hate it when you two fight."
"Honey, it's because of the likes of him that you haven't been able to properly adapt to the world. That's why after tonight, communication with him stops. We talked about this, remember?" I must've been invisible because she made little to no effort to whisper her statement or divert her eyes from me. I said nothing. I had said enough already.
"That's just temporary, right?"
It was then that I saw the most strained and contrived nod in my life.
White Fang, The Mantras of Me, A History of France by G. W. Kitchin, Mommy and Daddy's Special Hug: How to Talk to Your Child About Sex by Helen Back, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, The Satanic Bible, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, My Teacher is an Alien by Barb Dwyer, and stacks of hardcover books about drawing the female figure were slow to cook, probably from their weightiness. They cringed and curled, as if trying to recede away from the orange fire.
An entire scaffolding of starlight hung over the Arizona desert with no one to cast a spotlight on to. The crackling inferno and chirping crickets both seemed to taunt my sister. She simply simply sat there, staring somewhere beyond the flames like she always did. Breathing in the smell of her burning children.
Because of the glossy pages of some of the coffee table books and the ink-laden pages of the various photography books, a nauseating scent can permeate the air. Some of the thicker paperbacks that are bound heavily by glue also exude a distinct smell. Coupled with the ink, it can cause a strange taste to formulate in the back of your throat.
"Tell me, sweetie, how do you feel right now?"
She always called her sweetie. I hated that. Retinas burn from gazing at the white Sun, moths fry from their attraction to light bulbs, men lust for a few precious seconds of vaginal penetration. Truthfully, we all yearn to go back to the nothingness we came from.
"Like something crawled up inside me and died."
The Joy of Sex, Sun Tzu's the Art of War, a compilation of Garfield comics, Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, The Better Gender: A Book on Female Supremacy by Samantha Holland, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Sword of Shannara, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his lesser known Fantastic Mr. Fox, What Curls My Toes: the Autobiography of the Woman Who Orgasms 125 Times a Day, and a coverless chapter book were quick to burn. While wimpy and thin, they were also sophisticated, civilized books. Castaways frightened by an onslaught of inflamed primitives.
"'Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, my pile of books is a mile high. How I love them. How I need them. I'll have a long beard by the time I read them,'" my sister sorrowfully recited. She was quivering underneath her crochet coat. Whether it was from the cold breeze or from her crying, I couldn't tell. Poor Velouria.
I smacked my lips and cleared my throat to try to rid myself of the taste. But the back of my tongue just continued to writhe in a sauna of tartness. It felt almost as if I were attempting to swallow the words of Jack Kerouac himself. As if Kurt Vonnegut were force feeding me sour and spoiled words of an unpublished piece.
Cindy consoled my sister with a somewhat patronizing arm around the shoulders. The only thing to console my shivers was the fire. It never patronized me. It was never reluctant to show affection. If anything, its whipping tongues reached for me to come closer. I guess books didn't seem to fully quench its appetite.
"I feel like I'm going to be sick."
"You remember what to do when you feel anxiety, right? Just take a deep breath, close your eyes, count backwards from ten, and exhale." Velouria obeyed Cindy's instructions. The witch was fattening up her meal.
Curious George Goes to the Circus, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the entire catalog of Penthouse circa 1989, Short Stories by Short Authors, Raw: a Vegan's Guide to Cooking by Seth Poole, Self Analysis by L. Ron Hubbard, and a survival pamphlet on how to start campfires were fastest to twist and turn black. Hellfire and brimstone smote the pornography and children's books, leaving a sort of flyleaf excrement. The survival pamphlet was opened to a page about what to feed the campfire with.
After a while, I became somewhat lightheaded from the glue and ink. In a way, I felt like there was a second bonfire going on in my head. Just as I chucked fuel into the flames, book-by-book, I felt as though I were fueling some other monster in my brain, neuron-by-neuron.
Velouria began to weep. Seeing the last of her books die must've been shocking. She nestled against Cindy's chest as Cindy patted and shushed her, never letting go of her cigarette. At various times, her red hair would seemingly blend into the fire. She was certainly camouflaged for an eternal afterlife in Hell.
Sick of huffing the last sentences of Benjamin Franklin, I went to the truck to load up the remaining empty crates and cardboard boxes. The desert grounds seemed to slither with life. Coyotes could be heard in the distance. Countless bushes and cacti dotted the surrounding hills, sheltering an unimaginable number of snakes, scorpions, and lizards.
It was in this setting that I felt calm.
Animals take comfort in bleak darkness; only humans scramble for torchlights and matchsticks. We spend precious calories, hours, and gems on refueling them. Stacking firewood, drilling for oil, splitting atoms, all to perpetuate the safety and security of the fire. To keep alive something that will inevitably die.
I sat in the cab of the truck, in the stillness, in the darkness, almost reveling in it like any other wild animal would. Like any other self-respecting human wouldn't. I waited. Growing impatient, I tried to see why Cindy and my sister hadn't yet extinguished the flames.
Cavemen who obsessed over the campfire's maintenance became evolutionary successes. Cavemen who lingered in the darkness became meals. While basking in the campfire's luminescence, with bellies filled and content, these early humans would spend their evenings devising new forms of entertainment. Dancing, music, language, art, cooking, all originated by the fireside.
Sometimes one must befriend one destructive force in order to escape another.
Now, if I were like any other person, fearful of having shattered expectations and crushed preconceived notions, I would have been horrified by what I saw. I will even admit, certain deeprooted instincts were somewhat irritated by the sight. The two pairs of lips, one tear-moistened, enclosing, interlocking from behind the orgy of licking fire. I swear I even saw the whites of Cindy's eyes glare at me for an instant.
Prometheus gave man fire so I could bear witness to this shit?
Flash.
Earlier that day, I was taking photos of and cataloging every book in Velouria's collection. She was obsessive-compulsive from the day we came out of mom. Even when we were being born, she was clinging on to mom's uterus in utter fear. Needless to say, I was the first to pop out of that hell-hole. I sometimes wonder if I smelled like cigarettes and cheap liquor when the doctor pulled me out.
Flash.
I'm not totally sure why I became a photographer. Then again, no one really knows why anyone does anything. I suppose I had some urge, a drive, when I was younger, to capture images as they are as opposed to painting them as they ought to be. No interpretation involved. No idealization. Just reality.
Cindy monitored every moment of that day. She was like some sort of matriarchal midwife. At times, it seemed like her role as a watchful psychiatrist changed into that of a control freak. It was rather ironic that she was so obsessed with treating my sister's own obsessions. Of course, that was before I knew of their little affair.
Flash.
Sometimes I fancied myself as some sort of forensic documenter. Photographing the deceased remains of the world as if it were going to be used as evidence in court someday. As if the decaying remnants of this Universe could somehow be justified. I hoped to prove to some unknown, cosmic jury that a crime had taken place. Existence.
The whole room was empty besides the bookshelves that lined the piss-yellow walls. Even they were growing empty as Velouria and I gutted them of their treasured literature. We constructed tiny mountains of the books we had already taken pictures of, while a small train of the ones we had just picked off the shelves waited for their closeups on the hard wood floor.
Flash. New roll of film.
"After tonight, you're going to feel like a new woman." Cindy leaned against the door's threshold, crossed arms, white turtle-neck, that unusually wide mouth that always made her seem like she was grinning, even when she wasn't.
"I just don't understand why we have to burn them," my sister murmured with a transfixed shake of her head. The tears hadn't arrived yet.
Flash.
My sister would become a zombie when she felt anxious. She'd freeze. Her eyes would simply glare at something a million miles away and she'd stop listening to what you were saying. It was her defense mechanism; if a threatening gesture passed her by, she'd immediately clam up. I guess the logic behind it was if you're going to become dead, you might as well become the living dead.
I sometimes wondered what far away place she was staring at.
"In many cultures, cremation symbolizes the overall consummation of one's life. These were once objects of your worship; they deserve a proper sending-off." Cindy knelt next to us, never once lifting one of her well-manicured fingers to help us sift through the heaps of text. Never once looking at me. "Or maybe you'd prefer a burial?"
Flash.
"She'd probably just dig them up," I said as if my sister was deaf. In a way, in her state of mind, she was.
Cindy stood back up. As if her nostrils were cross hairs; like the bridge of her nose were sights on a gun, she glared down at me. My sister continued to stack books like an autistic simpleton.
"You know, Melvin, as Velouria's psychiatrist, it is my job to pinpoint all the factors in her life that are responsible for her behavior. It's like cancer; sometimes it's spurred on by a tumor, but after a certain point, not even removing that tumor will do away with the disease; sometimes you have to cut off an arm or leg." She rummaged through her pockets, lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke and resumed.
"There is really no one culprit here, you see; it's just a mixture of many things that eat away at her mind. But I have to say, from what I've observed, from what I've heard, I consider you to be the most fucking cancerous, malignant tumor in her life.
" With squinted eyes, she pointed at me, accused me with the tip of her cigarette as she said this. "That's why, as a part of her treatment, she will no longer have contact with you. From this day forward. We've discussed it and we both agree that it's for the better." Velouria awoke from her deep gaze and looked up at her with worry.
"It's temporary, of course. Until she gets better," Cindy said as a reluctant promise.
Flash.
I looked up at her gaping nostrils and smirked. She moved to the fireplace and rested her elbow on the mantle to breathe more fire. Returning to her happy place, like some robot librarian, Velouria just continued foraging for more books from the starving bookshelves that surrounded us. I treated my sister like she was deaf because she so often acted like she was deaf.
She hummed that same stupid fucking song she always hummed. I remember it pretty well. When dad was kicking mom's ass she would just stand there and hum. When dad was on top of her, she'd just lay there and hum. Even when I pulled the trigger with my thirteen-year-old fingers and blew his fucking head off, she just sat there and hummed.
I suppose if you hum loud enough, you can ignore anything.
Cindy, you're a cunt. You know it, I know it. The problem is, I'm afraid my little sister here doesn't know it. I'm afraid that, once again, she is going to cling on to a stronger person than herself and call it love or friendship. I'm afraid that you're going to manipulate her and twist her until you get what you want out of her, whatever it may be. And yet, people have called me a heartless brother because I treat her with a little dignity and respect, because I don't pity her. In the end, I'll be the only one that hasn't hurt her. At least, that's what I wanted to say. But I didn't. I just kept silent, continued smiling and shook my head.
"You actually think what you did didn't hurt her?" She must've read my mind. My grin had melted away. That's when I kept silent for the rest of the night.
Velouria would eventually snap out of it. She always did. With a little bit of time she'd return. She'd hug me and cry and thank me and cry some more. Dad's brains clinging to the wall. She'd even tell me on occasions that the only reason why she'd return, why she'd come back, is because of me. Otherwise, she said, she'd just stay in that humming abyss forever.
Flash. I don't know why, I'm not sure what compelled me to do this, but I took a picture of Cindy; of her slouched, bony form, resting against the brick fire-pit. Of Satan's queen. I suppose, I wanted that photo for some future date. I knew it would come in handy, it had to. Somehow, someway, when something is framed differently, when an image is captured in just the right light, the true beast within everyone comes out. Maybe Velouria would see this picture and realize. A crime had taken place and it was Cindy.
But poor Velouria just kept on with her business. Ignoring us. Humming.
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