Burn It
By Ryan Owen
With daylight fading, Andy can’t be rational. Soon, he, Joe, and Uncle Bruce will have to flick on the hallway light. And then they’ll see.
It’s been a week since Mike pushed Mona down the stairs. Mike and Mona are Andy’s parents. Joe’s too.
Blood streaks on the paneling. Fresh scratches where Mona’s rings scraped at the wall on the way down.
Like they were trying to claw into the fibers of the wood and slow her descent into her death and Mike’s ruin.
Mona died before Mike sobered up. But the police knew about Mike’s temper and his addiction to the bottle. He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit at the House of Corrections now.
Uncle Bruce’s finger is on the light switch, but he stops before he turns on the light.
Andy’s convulsing, rubbing at his eyes, as if the light switch will unstick time and he’ll have to face that his mother is gone.
Uncle Bruce turns the corner into the bedroom, upstairs.
They’ve got a mattress to claim. Andy beat Joe at a game of 45s to win it. It’s their last monument to their relationship with their parents.
Everything else sold at the yard sale.
Mona’s dementia came like a snake through the grass. Mike just drank more and didn’t notice the misplaced glasses, the forgotten plans. The blank stares.
Mike and Mona moved into the top-floor apartment of Uncle Bruce’s house so she wouldn’t be alone all day when Mike’s anger and hangovers faded so he could leave for work.
She fell at 3am. A clatter of arms and legs and flesh hitting each step as she descended into death.
Maybe she lost her way to the bathroom. Maybe Mike pushed her. The cops only care that he could have.
“Andy, why don’t you wait outside?” Uncle Bruce says.
Andy’s useless, almost catatonic - a corpse trying to get out of its own way.
Uncle Bruce and Joe are at the top of the stairs, blocking the yellowish light coming from the single, sixty-watt bulb that swings from a plastic cord sprouting from the ceiling.
The edges of the mattress sweep the floor, scratch against the sand painted into the ceiling.
Joe has the bottom. He’s hugging the mattress, grimacing like it’s a decomposing body.
Andy sees why.
He studies the grease stains on the mattress’s pillow top, like Mona died on the mattress, twice, once on each side, and leaked her life oils into the fabric.
He goes outside.
His shoulders heave, but the sobs stifle in his throat. The tears stay locked, red-hot in his eyes.
The house needs paint. The gutters need to be cleared of saplings. It’s all work he won’t do. Rent they won’t pay.
Andy never wants to see this place again.
He helps Uncle Bruce and Joe at the last possible minute, sliding the mattress into the dirty bed of the truck. New stains. The honest dirt of a work truck mixing with the dried oils of years of sleep.
“Where we taking it, Andy?” Uncle Bruce asks, not unkindly.
Joe lights up a cigarette, wipes his brow, and takes the posture of a job completed.
“To Manning Field,” Andy says, surprised by the void of emotion within him – like a nothing has replaced the everything that was there before.
“We’re going to burn it.”
THE END
Author Bio: Among the glacial erratics and waist-high stone walls of central New England, R.W. Owen resurrects antique typewriters and writes all first drafts from their glass-and-chrome keys. Ryan’s fiction has been recognized with an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest and has been published or is forthcoming in Literally Stories, Five on the Fifth, Writers Resist, Idle Ink, Litbreak Magazine, and Penumbric Speculative Fiction Mag. Find Ryan on Twitter/X, @4gttnNewEngland or on Bluesky, @iviesofinkribbons.