Monster Children 17
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Intro
set fire to your life
The back window of my house used to look down across a spare block onto a dirty brown canal. Running along the edge of the canal there was a row of Banksia and, though you couldn’t see it, there was also a little foot track that weaved through the long grass among the tree trunks. Most of the time it was a pretty uninspiring scene. The spare block had become a substitute local tip, a mix of splintered household furniture, a few discarded tyres, an old fridge and overgrown weeds and lawn clippings all piled a good 15 foot high. On rainy days I’d see rats darting from the heap to the grass and back again. In their own environment they didn’t seem so loathsome. They looked busy in weird kind of Wind in the Willows meets north coast ghetto sort of way, though much more housing commission than Toad Hall.
Though the winter months were pretty dismal a summer afternoon from the same back window was a completely different world. As the sun dropped the squalid waterway transformed into a river of lava framed by the branches of the Banksia and heads of bullrush. Around this time shapes would move along the path coming to stop in a clearing just in front of the heap. Usually there were two or three but occasionally up to six. You could never make them out clearly but the humpbacks and collars gave away that these were school kids sneaking off for a choof by the river. From my window I’d see the huddle form, the smoke rise and the subtle dance of rebellion. They’d throw rocks, wrestle, but mostly they’d just sit. It felt good to be a part of it in some strange way - them thinking they were breaking the rules without anyone noticing. Good on em. To me they symbolised a time when rocking rooves and shoplifting and lying in bed thinking about a girl was all you could do to fill in another pointless week of being too old to be a kid and not old enough to be an adult. Good times. Then one afternoon right at the end of the summer I looked out the back window and saw a single figure standing on the edge of the bank. School was going back the next day and his mates were probably at home suffering “no more fucking around, this year is one to take seriously” lectures. But this kid wasn’t gonna change. I looked away or a moment and when I returned he was gone. I didn’t think much of it until a few minutes later I looked out the window and saw the entire spare block consumed by a raging inferno. Rats ran for their lives as plumes of thick black smoke choked out the sky. In the distance I could hear the sound of sirens wailing already on the way. It was a monster of a fire, the kind that had the neighbours watering their houses to prevent the spread of flame, the kind that turned the horizon blood red. By the time the fire trucks got there it was all too late. The spare block was exactly that. Barren. Smouldering, flat and black, even the trees on the water’s edge were nothing more than smoking stumps. With nothing to hide them from the prying eyes of the world it didn’t surprise me that the rats and the underage smokers never came back in the weeks that followed. We’d they’d go? Who knows? But I’d like to think the kid who lit that fire didn’t run off at all. I’d like to think he stayed and watched that giant stinking shit pile burn to the ground. Because even philosophical wanking aside that stupid fucking fire was a goddamn masterpiece. - Adam Blakey
