Tag Archives: fire

A-ROCK

music: Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, IV. Gewitter, Sturm: Allegro Armen watched, and then he called out to Sam. Sam turned to him, his eyes glowing with excitement, and he turned back to the updrafts, and the cloud over the Sergeant broke with a cracking, pounding violence that could knock a man onto his heels. Armen [...]

The Standoff

The flames closed in on the ranger. The fiery net constricted on him, forcing him to take shelter creekside where Rifle Creek flowed through a meadow. The fire blasted him with windblown smoke and ash, and consuming the free oxygen. Ranger Searles lay creekside, looking out at the fire encroaching on the edge of the [...]

Rifle Creek

Soundtrack: Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower The heat of the sun broke through the trees. It was going be another hot day; perhaps hotter than yesterday. Sam crept to a patch of cedars and manzanita atop a low rise above Rifle Creek. He could see a camp below. He could see two men standing [...]

Midnight in Paradise

The hound turned and ducked into the old Los Angeles depot near 7th & Main, and bottles rolled and rattled across the back once more, signaling arrival. Upon waking in his seat in downtown Los Angeles, Armen stepped into the city. He walked to the Republic Liquor Store, up to the Nickel, and then circled [...]

Tending Fire

Soundtrack: REM, Oddfellows Local 151 The phantom slipped away from the ring of smoldering coals, its limbs shifting in slight shadows of starlight, here barely perceptible and there vanishing completely. The shadow’s arms extended into bundles of shadow and fire as it burglarized the smoldering fire of the sleeping scouts. It was a female phantom, [...]

The Mirror

She saw white stone—miles and miles of it, and she heard a pulse—she felt the pulse. It was hot. Deep fractures in the rock screamed with superheated water, and as she looked deeper the heat intensified and the white rock acquired a glow around the cracks. She followed the fractures upward and upward for miles, [...]

Pineapple Express

Soundtrack: Bob Dylan, High Water (for Charlie Patton) The fire burned down from heaven upon the vast, white wastes. When stone burns, it is like burning iron: it becomes a red and yellow liquid. So it was with the white wastes. They liquefied in the sun, but their lava was blue; a deep, absorbent blue. [...]

The Girl in the Window

It was about then when Sam began to have the dream. He would find himself looking back on his burning home, and he would see something move in a window. He drew cautiously closer to see what the movement might have been, and looks through the window to see a girl in her nightgown, facing [...]

The Dragon’s Escape

The dragon leapt out of the coffee can and reached out to the tall, yellow August grass. It devoured the hay in big mouthfuls, sucking in the air and exhaling smoke, sending a black-haired boy, a yellow dog, and a swarm of yellow jackets flying in a whirling stinging flurry through the flaming night. Mehran [...]

The Wick

The new turn gave Sam new hope, but no hope the fire water could not by then overcome. The influence of the fire water grew until its scent permeated the house. The very walls, even the frame of house seemed saturated with it, as it were the wick of a lamp. Mehran’s mother opened his [...]