The Arsonist

THE ARSONIST

Albert Montag, middle-aged, overweight and flush-faced, meandered
excitedly through the drought dry, intolerably dense web of dry pines,
manzanita, chaparral brush and bulwarks of fallen branches and ancient
timber spread and angled in various directions upon the ground where
they lay.

No clean path was forged into the woods, nor did any singular strategy
mark his agenda for that day-a day when the entire world as he knew it
would pay for his own misfortunes.

With purposeful vengeance, Albert would raise the veil of his anger in
an act that would redeem his shaken dignity. His only concern, his only
perplexity for that driving moment lie in a momentous decision as to
where to borne the greatest conflagration in such a short time without
betraying his culpability and failing in his mission.

He exhibited no cunning, no artful daring, only an insidious will to
inflict harm and destruction upon an uncaring society who cared naught
for Albert Montag.

Albert marveled in the quietude of the woods, the absolute silence of
the thirsty copse that he surveyed. The tranquility of the forest
milieu seemed to inflate his erotic sense of power, for he knew in an
instant his tentative dominion would explode with rage and the
tentacles from such an inferno would lay the land naked and bare just
as his soul had lay naked and bare before man's contemptible and
callous nature.

His conscience fleetingly brought to surface the pointed, probing
fingers of accusations; the haughty, mocking laughter of his peers; the
deliberate passed promotions; the disparaging unfulfilled wife; the
silent condemnation of passersby's and their subtle repulsion to his
weak stature and sloppy frame; the stinging barbs as to his
timidity-all piled high and stored as justification for his war upon
nature and mankind.

In an instant-in a fraction of time Albert would unleash his wrath with
just a flick of his lighter, delivering spark and ignition to the fuel
starved timber and brush-matted earth that wilted under the summer
sun.

Albert knew he would have to act quickly; to loiter would increase his
chances of being seen. The fact that he might forget his way back to
his car did not disconcert him. The trailing cacophony of traffic would
be his lifeline back to his vehicle. He knew he could easily retrace
his steps towards the roar of big-rigs and other ambient sounds of the
teeming highway.

Albert, his heart pounding and face wet with anticipation, tore brittle
weeds from the ground and bunched them together in his fat hand. He
inhaled deeply and looked about nervously before striking the weeds
with his lighter.

Strike?

Fire-beautiful and pristine leaped voraciously at the dry bouquet
clenched in Albert's hand. Albert watched deliciously as they became a
consuming torch, a baby monster that would grow and multiply and devour
living, breathing things.

As Albert mused over the power he held in his hands, the torch crackled
and snapped with the language of destruction, and he felt the embers
burn against his bare arms.

Reacting to the immediate pain, he whisked the torch in every
direction, negating the construction of a pyre under a pile of debris
as he had previously hoped.

The flames spread quickly amongst the dead and water- starved denizens
of the forest, quickly extinguishing any evidence of the bustling
highway that brought Albert to this place. The only sound heard was the
incipient snapping and popping and whoosh from the fire that was
becoming rapacious with every passing second.

Nothing stopped its appetite for fuel, nor did anything go unconsumed.
The fire's tongue licked at the trunks of large pines and solid oaks
and almost instantly ran up their sides to satiate their hunger upon
their limp boughs and helpless branches.

Within a minute the area was alive with sound and fury. Albert was
astonished with the speed in which it had spread. Now the weak popping
and snapping quickly turned into a tornado-like roar of a jet engine.
He turned and ran in abject panic as the fire began to wall him
in.

The sight and sound of the fire confounded Albert's efforts at
rationalization. All his senses combined into fear. He had forgotten
his diabolical objective to vindicate himself to the world, and was
instinctively concerned with his own survival.

The fire soon broke through the air like a predatory machine-callous
and driven. With tremendous force, it moved ineluctably and was
successful in stripping everything that stood in its path without
remorse; a mindless engine spurred on by its lust for
destruction.

Albert escaped through a narrow aperture of flames before being ringed
in completely, only to tumble blindly down a small declivity, breaking
his arm.

He rose to see that the fire was now leap-frogging from spire to spire;
a chain reaction that was unremitting under the arid atmosphere.

With one good arm, Albert flailed at the thick, intractable shrubs that
hemmed him in solidly, while the inferno surged toward him from behind,
devouring the dry grasses and turning them into ash.

In desperation, Albert began to drag his weighty frame under and
through the brush, while momentarily escaping the choking air around
him. He crawled awkwardly on his side, like a swimmer performing a
sidestroke; his broken arm lying limp across his waist.

He dragged himself that way for a few feet while in unbearable pain;
only to finally break into a small clearing that was presently
unscathed.

He threw himself deliriously into the wind, running and panting like a
dying animal, stumbling now and then in his haste, his hurting arm
cradled in his other like a sling; head down and horribly dehydrated,
mumbling and sobbing from the force that stalked him.

Above the lowly figure that strayed aimlessly, was an atmosphere of
gloom, a black-hearted assault of misery that whipped through Albert's
numbed psyche; an angry sky ablaze with a crimson halo abuzz and
thunderous.

Albert's flesh baked against swells of pure energy, and his lungs stung
dagger-like with cinder and ash. At his heels the small spark from his
lighter now boiled into a full-blown firestorm, seeking to brand its
mark of death upon him, leaving ruin in its wake.

In every direction trees were combusting and cinders were crisscrossing
like shooting stars; every sort of animal from small rodents, foxes,
rabbits, raccoons, and deer ran wildly to escape cremation, flooding
past Albert as he expended the last of his energy.

He fell to his knees as the heat stole his breath. Covering his head as
if to shelter him from a bombing raid, Albert felt the skin on his arms
melt and smelled the stench of his seething hair as the fire descended
upon him.

Albert was resigned to drown in the flames where he knelt, but with
huge effort rose and moved forward because his instinct to live was
great and in the depths of his memory he knew that accountability for
his actions would be demanded if he were to be caught at such an odious
deed.

Through the black curtain of smoke and storm, Albert spied the metallic
flash of his automobile parked off the highway shoulder a quarter mile
distant. With a sudden flurry, he cried out in vain hope as he ran
deliriously toward salvation.

But the flames suddenly seized Albert as they rolled and jumped ahead
and circumvented his escape. Like a mindless army without command or
leader, the fire swept over him like a plague of locust, stripping its
prey with an unsated appetite.

Albert's lifeless figure sizzled under the blanket of fire and heat;
his shoes liquefied then hardened into a deformed mass; his hands
grotesquely gnarled; his body black and frozen in rigor mortis. His
neck was arched backwards in perhaps his last gasp for oxygen; his eyes
vaporized and his sockets gazed void; his teeth were barred and jutted
forward in a macabre grin.

Finally, robbed of fuel, the fire surrendered where the gravel bank met
the interstate beyond Albert's crusted corpse.

All that remained where he lie was a smoldering netherworld, a
no-man's-land of barren ugliness, and the futile schemes of a destitute
soul.

The End