FICTION BY MARK MANIFESTO

Mark Manifesto is a writer, teacher, father, and lover of stories. He’s been writing fiction, essays, articles, and poetry the past seven years. You can find his work published across multiple journals including The Colored Lens, Hightower Magazine, Altered Reality, Guilty Crime Magazine, and many more.

BAPTIZED BY FIRE
by Mark Manifesto

Green-stained glass, rusted chandeliers, and stained hardwood; lacquered and beer-soaked— great for holding a steady burn. Even if it wasn’t the Irish flags of home but instead the proud colors of Mexico, Chet could perform his profession anywhere.

He sipped his whiskey, listening to the conversation around the pool tables. He didn’t speak much Spanish, but he knew enough to understand that they were talking about him. A room full of prison tattoos and knee-high socks, this is where some in the cartel hung out. The irony of murders and drug-dealers keeping an ofrenda was not lost on him.

Chet hid his face, placed a ten on the bar, and headed to the bathroom with his bag over shoulder. Stepping up on the sink, he pulled down the smoke detector. It never failed to amuse him how few businesses put fresh batteries in place.

Clear gasoline glugged across the floor and up the walls. His eyes fluttered to the aroma and deepened the already pulsing desire. There was nothing so perfect—so pure and strong—as a match. A seed. He stared at the wooden totem, its head of flame, and let it go. A quick inhale as the fire caught and spread.

The faint ringing of slots and card tables rang from the basement. They’d make it out. There were good exits in that area. If they didn’t use those exits, it wasn’t his fault.

Chet forced himself to turn from the burn which was so incredibly beautiful. He double-checked that the handle was locked, then lowered his face and walked calmly out the front door—past the mural of a Skeleton Guadalupe and thorn-wrapped saints on the bar’s side—and down the street. Hands slick with anxious sweat and heart hammering, he slid into the front seat of his Civic and watched the corner bar from afar.

Pressure built within the calm, then a rush of women out the front door, then the barman, then the droves hidden in the basement’s casino. Black smoke danced towards the sky. A light glow at first, then a raging inferno. Chet couldn’t control the chattering in his teeth. The holy gift of the gods: that which renewed the earth and wiped everything clean. Man’s greatest tool. What separated us from the animals. And he was master.

Not long before sirens sounded in the distance. He started the engine and spared one last glance at the towering crown of fire. What a life.

*****

Nine millimeters, M10s, and ARs sat alongside red cups and cash in the house; skunk smoke rose in a stagnant sheet below the ceiling. Chet knew he wasn’t as nervous as he should have been.

He waited at the center of the room with arms behind his back while Case stared at his phone. The girls on both sides of Case rested their heads on his shoulders. The man’s muscular build was a reminder why Chet didn’t work out. Why fight for what you can’t have?

A car bumped along the street with sub-woofers strong enough to shake the windows. Case took a joint from the obese man in the recliner and nodded.

“Good shit, Fireman,” Case said, exhaling a cloud.

Chet had his doubts that burning down the Despiadado’s neighborhood bar and casino would do much to change the tides of their little drug war, but he didn’t really care. Hell, if the 25TLs and the Desiadados kept it up, he might become a rich man sooner than later.

He studied the house he now stood in—the stained drywall, old carpets, and strewn junk. Probably some shoddy wiring too. A lot like his home in Atlanta. The place would burn nicely. But he wasn’t being paid to burn this lousy house.

One of the men in the living room stood and slapped the dominos off the table. Case offered Chet the joint a second time but he turned it down. Occasionally he tasted tobacco—heroin when necessary—but today there was too much going on in his head already to add more paranoia.

“He’s all business,” Case said, with a smirk. “Zip, bring our friend his reward.” A man with a scar down his cheek started down the hall.

“I aim to please,” Chet said.

“Any trouble?” Case asked.

Words were difficult, never there when he needed them, constantly scattering like atoms in a particle collider. He shook his head.

“Did anyone make you?” Case asked.

“No.”

Zip tossed a rubber-banded mass of hundreds for Case to count. “You’d better hope no one gets wind of you,” Case said.

“Old Testament,” Zip said. “An eye for an eye.”

Case continued, “You don’t want to hear the stories. Eating eyeballs. Peeling skin down to the bone. Hammer pin nails—”

A harsh rhythm beat through Chet’s head. “I said I didn’t get made!”

The room turned. Considerations of violence hung over the surface. The bulbous man in the recliner stood and drew inches from his face. Chet’s fist balled though he doubted he could actually throw it.

“Leave it, Marcus,” Case said. “He didn’t mean nothing by it. He’s not disrespecting me. Right?”

Chet swallowed his fear and whispered, “Right.”

Case handed him the money and Chet tucked it into his pack. He usually liked to count but what was he going to do? He sure didn’t want to risk disrespect a second time.

Twin columns of smoke spiraled out Case’s nose. “Anyone die?”

“No one gets hurt unless I want it.”

Case stroked his goatee, “Like your sister?”

It was like a bomb went off in his head. “What did you say?”

The man grinned. “Just a story I heard.”

What hell was he talking about? Jessica was living a suburban dream back in Georgia. Two kids, a husband, and a white picket fence. But how the hell did he know he had a sister? Goading. That’s what it was. Looking for an excuse to jump him and take the money back. “My sister’s fine.”

“Same number if we need you again?”

With a slight nod, he turned. The men at the door parted and, with a sharp ringing in his ears, he stepped into the night. One last look from the street and a consideration of where he might start if need be.

*****

Chet didn’t even like instant ramen. He stared at the broth, thinking of the bar, the smell of melting plastic, and the first plume.

He dreamed of summer when the hills were dry. That burn had been something, the biggest inferno yet. Made it halfway to San Diego. Took them three weeks to put it out. He still remembered the videos of little critters running from the blaze like small shooting stars.

Just like Mom.

He hadn’t understood as a kid but he did now. That was the way to go. Jess said he was fucked up, but not as fucked up as a sibling turning their brother out when they had nothing, when the police were hunting like dogs, when the love of his life had abandoned him, when he just needed to figure out his next move. He hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt. How was he to know there were squatters? The center had been boarded up for years. It was just bones sitting there, a shell of bad memories waiting to start anew.

Chest tight with anger and too sick to eat, he emptied the soup into the sink, downed half a bottle of Everclear, and laid to bed. Within the blank and spinning ceiling, he watched the avenues of time and imagined how the paint would bubble under heat.

Sometimes he tried to place the seed of his fascination. The flame’s movement? The product? From fire comes new beginnings. No matter the seed, it was a part of him. He wasn’t a deep man, but when he looked into each fire he saw the soul of the first. Meaning as far as the mind wished to take it. Regardless of the pulsing in his head, he reflected on his childhood and his first experience with fire.

As though a ghost over the living room, Chet watched his younger self crash monster trucks on the carpet while Jess lay on the couch watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Cold whiskey stones clinked in their father’s glass and crisp vinyl from the other room. Mom’s door was closed, asleep after a day-long battle with a migraine if he remembered correctly. A thousand times he’d watched the scene. What interested him was the hallway.

A small flame caught by sparks from mice-gnawed wires beneath the foundation. It could happen to anyone. Like a landslide, the fire rolled across the chemically treated carpet and up the walls.

His dad leaped from his chair, screaming, and hurried to grab the kids. Young Chet stood frozen in fascination as he watched the engulfed hallway. Their father shouted across the raging flames to the master bedroom. The bedroom door opened and his mother met the wall of flame with slack-jawed horror. With no success in saving his wife, the man shoved his two children out the front door. Following his children outside, the man went to the bedroom window and pounded on the iron-barred windows.

The ghost that was his current self stood amidst the inferno, watching his family home burn without feeling. Why should anyone feel something about an accident?

Something twisted in Chet’s stomach. His mother pursed her lips in consternation, looked back to the caged windows, and, with a running start and a comforter as a shield, raced through the hall. Chet let her run right through his chest and turned to watch her go, the tail end of her nightgown already caught. Out the front door and into the night, she shone like a glorious angel, fruitlessly rolling across the lawn as the flames ate through her nightgown and ignited her skin.

Standing at the heart of the inferno, he realized this was his destiny. It didn’t have to stop here. Embers flew with the wind, drifting about the neighborhood until the whole place was caught. A great wave of fire rolling out from the suburbs and over the entirety of Atlanta. Chet imagined that it was the cinder capital of the world, seen from space, where the swell continued to rage across the planet until it was all pure and bright.

Chet woke in a sweat, caught his breath, and realized he was still in his bed. He lit a cigarette, laid back, watched the orange tip, and thought how that was the best dream he’d had in some time.

*****

Heaven. Oil-stained rags hanging from the workbenches, sparks flaring from gutted chassis, the smell of lacquer and paint in the air. The shop’s owner closed the door to his office and sat at his desk. Chet waited with his arms over his lap while the man anxiously smoothed his mustache. He understood the man’s trepidation, most don’t have experience in his field, but you never make the proposition yourself.

“My friend told me you helped him out last year,” the owner said.

Chet nodded. “How’s he been?”

“Knee-deep in Brazilian ass.” His jowls reminded him of his father. He tried not to hold it against him.

“That’s how it goes.” The majority of the time, everyone comes out on top.

“If you did… it,” the owner said, “what’s the likelihood it would come back to me?”

Chet looked at the shop through the window. Unlike his work for the 25TLs, nuisance was key for insurance jobs, but in a place like this—old appliances, stripped wire, and broken outlets— it wouldn’t be hard.

“When did you purchase your policy?” Chet asked, clearing the mucus from his throat and lighting a cigarette.

“Three years ago.”

“Have you talked to anyone about this?”

“Of course not.”

“Criminal history?”

“Parking tickets.”

“You’ll be fine.”

The owner flashed a conflicted smile. “So how much?”

Chet flicked the ash onto the carpet. “Ten grand.”

“For starting a fire? Seriously?”

He stood. “Then do it yourself.”

“Wait!” Outside of professional expertise, what Chet brought was a buffer between ‘good’ people and what they really were. He remained standing until—

“All right,” the owner sighed. “Ten grand.”

Chet exhaled a cloud of tasteless smoke and sat.

“When can I expect it?” the man asked, with a gurgle of indigestion in his stomach.

“When do you want it?”

He massaged the sunken caves that were his eyes and said, “We’re closed this Sunday. Can you do it then?”

The cigarette hissed in the glass of water on the desk. “Saturday night. Gives an air of plausibility. Something left plugged in. Make sure no one’s here. Your claim is going to get a lot more complicated if someone dies.”

“All right,” the owner said, a sheen of sweat mounting over his pink face. “Jesus Christ. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Nothing wrong with falling on your ass,” Chet said. “Might as well get something out of it.”

The man’s fist tightened into a white ball. “Yeah…” He didn’t quite believe it, but he would when he was napping in Hawaii six months from now.

“Naturally,” Chet said, “All cash. I suggest you start taking out smaller amounts now. It looks less suspicious when they look through your bank records.”

His complexion went pallid.

“Breathe,” Chet said. “After I walk out that door pretend you’ve never met me. A tragedy will strike and you’ll misplace ten grand. As long as you forget this conversation, you don’t actually know anything.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding himself into belief.

“Keep an eye out for a blocked number in the next few weeks,” Chet said, rising to his feet. “I’ll let you know where to drop the money.”

The man’s head bounced like a bobblehead.

“Congratulations, Ken,” Chet said. “You’re going to be a rich man.”

Chet strolled out of the office, past the car elevators, and into the daylight. The sun bounced harshly off the parking lot’s asphalt and forced him to hide his face. He spat a glob of brown mucus and pulled his Civic out of the lot.

Down Coliseum, his attention pivoted to the tinted Camaro trailing behind. Left and right it followed. Chet stared into the black windshield from his rearview mirror and saw nothing. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was staring back. He checked the antennas, the types of rims, fenders. Nothing unusual. The Camaro  rumbled forward and pulled to a stop at the light. Through the tint, he couldn’t see anything, but he heard what sounded like a Tejano rhythm.

The light changed and the Camaro pulled off to the right. Non-exempt plates, but that didn’t always tell the story. A chopper thudded in the distance. He heated his cigarette lighter and went westward with the wind. Something about knowing he could burn anything helped cool his soul.

*****

Goopy egg noodles and chunks of chicken that reminded him of cat food. It wasn’t that bad. Cat food, that is.

Chet doused the Campbell’s with Scorpion Sauce until the broth was nuclear red. Just like when he was a kid. He drank half and washed the burn with a Coors. Just like when he was a kid.

Sweat beading on his brow, he lit a cigarette and opened the kitchen window. The concrete jungle of midtown stretched on to infinity with flickering street lights and cracked asphalt. What if? he silently asked himself. What if he had finished high school? What if it’d worked with Danielle? What if he’d never been curious about the match? It always started with curiosity. How would it look? How could she treat me like this? How long until they find me? Sirens shot past in pursuit of an SUV. He breathed the sweet and painful scent of rain.

His phone buzzed on the table. Like most calls, an unknown number.

“Yeah?” Chet asked, pinching a cube of chicken out of the soup.

“Is this Chester Benowitz?” the woman asked.

He froze. No one knew his full name.

“Hello?” the woman asked.

“Wrong number—”

“That’s you, Chet,” she said.

A cramp swelled in his throat. Fear held his mouth shut, but she was waiting. “Jessica?” he whispered.

“You look worse.”

“Why do you keep doing this?” Chet asked, his vision beginning to throb.

“Because you’re my brother,” she said. “Because you ask me to.”

He never knew what to say during these calls. “Why do you always tell me that?”

“Because it’s true.”

He pinched his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Mom and I miss you. The kids too. They’re always asking about their uncle. Tony’s still angry.”

He pulled the blinds down and peered into the darkness.

“Mom doesn’t blame you,” Jess said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t mean to.”

Shooting pains through the heart forced him to stop pacing and grab his chest.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Chet said. “Don’t you have anything better to do than ruin my night?”

“Kids are curious and fire is pretty,” Jess said. “You always liked when dad lit his cigarettes.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

He closed his eyes and saw the dream as he’d seen it a thousand times. The house. Jess on the couch. Dad. The empty hallway.

Then a static dissonance in the image—no longer was he playing with trucks, no longer did the wires spark beneath the rug, but it was him there, standing bemused over the match. The flame nipped his finger and dropped. Slight at first, but then fast. He backed away in silent horror as the blaze rose—Chet slapped himself again and paced through the apartment.

“I forgive you,” Jessica said.

“For what?” Chet said, fighting tears. “You should be the one apologizing! You were the one who turned me out when I had nothing.”

“I told you that you needed help. I’m not calling for me,” Jessica said.

“Leave it.”

“You want to admit it.”

“I don’t want any of this. I just want to be alone.”

“Does it make you feel better that it was the smoke that got us? The kids didn’t feel anything.”

In his mind’s eye Chet still saw them in the window sleeping in their beds, saw himself using the key they gave him to douse the kitchen in gasoline, saw the flames swallow his sister, her husband, and their children.

“Why didn’t you have smoke detectors?” he asked.

“Why do you need to burn the world?”

“Because it deserves it.”

“You’re sick.”

Pain flared through his hand as it drove into the drywall. “You don’t know shit, Jess!”

“I know you’re lost. The fire is a shield. You burn because you’re angry.”

“I burn because I have to. Because it’s what I know… It’s beautiful.” He swallowed the cramp in his throat. “Everything gets taken, but the fire is mine. It starts and ends with me. I’m in control, Jess. I decide.”

“Chet…”

“What have you ever given but nightmares and a broken heart?” he asked.

“At least I gave something.”

“Well who’s breathing still?”

Silence. He hung on, unable to look at the blank screen of the phone.

“Jessica?”

Nothing.

Chet grabbed the bowl off the table and hurled it. Porcelain shattered in shards. Spittle foam sprayed from his lips. “Fuck!” A sharp crack of agony as he slammed his hand against a stud in the wall.

He grasped his broken knuckles and slammed his head instead. When the room spun and blood streamed down his nose, he stumbled to the window and watched the downpour. It was all a trick, a game on him. Nothing was meant to go his way. Not even his own mind served him.

His phone buzzed again. A text. “Heads up. The cartel have been watching you.”

He blinked the blood out of his eyes and saw the text was from Jessica. “See you soon.”

Chet threw the phone at the wall and stood with only the sound of rain. His eyes fell shut. It was for exactly times like these that he always kept a stash.

Relief in the form of bubbling amber over a hot spoon. Shaking in his bed, the lighter’s flame licked the smooth metal black. A light tingle played around the rubber tie-off. The needle slipped effortlessly into the bulging blue vein. Suddenly, things weren’t so bad. He felt a heavenly warmth like a weighted blanket, cookies, and Mom’s hug after the worst day of your life. His head rolled back, limp and beyond control. He rode the euphoria into the dark.

A tender voice he hadn’t heard in so long said, “You’re a star, Chet.”

“Mom?” he muttered.

Arms too heavy to move and head too lazy to lift, Chet’s eyes fluttered to darkness. Hard to place at first through the veil of night, he squinted to better see the shadowed outline over his bed. There was no immediate response, cognitive or emotional, just perplexity, the sorting of realities.

“Buenos días, hijo de puta,” the shadow said.

Chet made out the nine-millimeter over him and the line of men. A sudden chill left him pale. Black jackets, trousers, and gloves. Face tattoos of skeletal Guadalupes, thorn-wrapped saints, and tear drops. Instinct took hold and he shot up, but the harsh crack of the pistol’s butt against his skull sent stars through his vision and blood down his brow. The group pinned his limbs and tied them with tourniquet pressure to the sides of the bed. Panic spurred the beat of his heart and forced high-pitched pleas of innocence, forgiveness, and mercy.

Calloused knuckles tore at the flesh of his face. Harsh cracks of metal bats on bone. Blood stung his eyes. He pulled at the restraints, wailing in a pitch he didn’t know he could hit.

A moment of calm arose, the blows halted and the men caught their breath. The only sound was his breathless sobs.

“They blackmailed me into burning the bar,” Chet cried. “I didn’t want to.”

The Despiadado man shushed him and smoothed his sweat matted curls. “Está bien,” the man said.

“I’ll work for free. I know where Case lives.”

“Your work is done.”

“I’ll light his house. I can get all of them.”

The man’s smile glowed white and gold. “Amigo, we light our own fires.”

A familiar glugging. High-octane ambrosia soaked the bed. He drew a patchy and insubstantial breath as a match broke the darkness and transmuted the shadowed faces into smiling devils. In those eternal seconds, he considered God and all the acts of war he’d committed against mankind.

“You can’t…” Chet said.

“Disfruta, Bombero.”

Then, it hit him. In the match’s flame, he saw his muse, his purpose.

All his worries and pain, his imperfections. Burned clean. He just had to make it past the pain. He’d done that before.

Chet closed his eyes and smelled the gas. With a light huff, the flames breathed the room’s air and the sheets burst into tongues of life. Quick to engulf his clothes and swallow him, Chet’s screams rang hoarse and torturous. It was an agony he’d never known, implausible torture.

The wicked crackle of his skin melded with the hiss of the roof. The white paint cindered and bubbled like boiling water. Soon there was nothing but fire, then nothing at all. He called for Jessica. He called for his Mom. He called—