A short story of righteousness and pyromania in Upper Manhattan
Tell no secrets. Admit no lies. That was the creed Feathol lived by. Or was it admit no lies, tell no secrets? After four thousand centuries, he couldn't quite keep the words straight in his pea-sized brain. No matter. After such a long time, the fire-demon's lifestyle had settled into a comfortable lull and he figured he was doing just fine for himself. Just fine indeed.
His mornings began with a romp through the neighborhood's incinerators. The silly people of Manhattan were always burning something. His afternoons were spent sunning his incorporeal body on a rock in Central Park. Sure, it was a rather reptilian thing to do, but fire was fire – no matter what the source. And the big glowing ball in the sky provided plenty of it.
Nighttime was when Feathol truly shined. He would hop from flaming trash can to flaming trash can. The homeless men and women of the city streets would catch glimpses of him through the corners of their eyes, an occurrence that happened usually by the fire-demon's choice, sometimes by accident.
It was one such accident that landed Feathol in his current predicament. Flames whipped around the central core of his essence. Sparks tapped along brick as his fingertips examined the prison in which he was confined. He could hear voices afar – though in truth they were no more than three feet away.
“How was your day, dear?” The sweet, heady voice of a young woman shimmered through the glass front of Feathol's prison cell. He looked outward, toward the world. The fire-demon saw a playground of flammable material – skin rugs, wooden walls, papers and enough Naugahyde to satisfy his burning for days.
By a stroke of bad luck, Feathol had ended up trapped in the fireplace of one of the wealthiest couples in Manhattan. All he had done was tip the trash can of some poor schmuck trying to get some heat. It was all a bit of fun and all in a day's work for the conflagrant spirit. Feathol hadn't quite caught up with the times. The man stood up, and looked right at the fire-demon.
It hadn't occurred to Feathol that this week might have been the perfect time to lay low in his favorite hideout – the local hibachi restaurant. On Tuesday there had been a mass excommunication of priests, accused of all manner of atrocities. Some of them were innocent. Most were not. With no place to go and no home but their Mother Church, these men had flocked to the streets by the dozens.
Feathol could tell by the light in this man's eyes that he was innocent – guilty of no crime, save perhaps over=zealousness, a crime which Feathol knew God didn't look too kindly on anyway. It was that very same crime that had landed him this combustible gig in the first place.
The aura of righteousness ablaze around him, the priest uncorked a half-empty wine bottle and poured the contents to the ground, a mock libation to whatever deity would listen to the cries of a holy man stripped of name and title. Mutter, mutter, grumble, grumble. That's all these priests and holy men ever did. Most of the time the words meant nothing....few of them spoke the Old Language anymore. Unfortunately for Feathol, this one did.
The world began to whirl on its axis, turning faster and faster. The one solid constant was that damnable priest and his Boone Farm bottle, sticky around the edges from the cheap blue vint. Turning ever faster, swirling and pivoting, the world came alive to the cries of the man's passions. Pirouetting like a toy dancer on a string, the world eddied and gyrated until Feathol couldn't see any longer.
The priest had hurled the bottle at one of the older homes in the city, hitting just right so that it shattered in the chimney. He had a hell of an arm, that priest. Feathol thought he must have coached little league at one point. There was no sport more holy than little league, except maybe hockey. But hockey, by and large, wasn't a sport priests cared to encourage. The holiest things weren't for everyone, you know. It was one of the first things you learned, priest or demon. Hurtling toward the fireplace of the family's abode, Feathol lost consciousness. “GOAL!” His mind screamed. “TWO POINTS!” The man upstairs certainly had a sense of humor, narrating the score of this trivial game.
And he'd woken up here. In hell. Was there such a thing as hell? Feathol didn't rightly know. It should have been something he did know, after all, he was a fire demon, but it hadn't been included in his welcome seminar and it didn't seem appropriate to ask – his trainer, a demon so old he'd walked the earth when the grasses still struggled to bloom, was a right asshole. It just didn't seem worth the torture he'd bear to get an answer.
Feathol watched the scene through the glass-front cell. Tapping his ethereal fingers against the bricks around him, Feathol saw a family in the room. They weren't looking at him. They didn't even notice he was there. The fire-demon pounded the walls, shook the bars, rattled the glass. And still nothing. After some time, he settled.
“Dear,” that infernally sweet voice spoke again. “Don't you think it's getting to be too warm to keep a fire? It's nearly July.” The woman leaned over the Naugahyde chair and kissed the man sitting there. He nodded his agreement.
“Yes, sweetheart, I do believe you're right. Have Ilsa extinguish the fire for us, would you?” Feathol's flaming eyeballs widened. He pounded the walls, shook the bars and rattled the glass even harder. The woman left the room.
The strange man stared directly at the fire, directly at Feathol. “You know, not every homeless person is homeless by force. Some of the ones you torture do have families, some of them do have recourse. There are some who choose to live as they do. My brother did the right thing sending you here. We're going to get you the help you need.” A demon intervention? Feathol thought it was passing odd. His panic quelled but for a moment before the bucket of water was poured on his essence.
The last thing Feathol remembered was the kindly chimney sweep who pulled his tattered and worn spirit from the fireplace floor. Washed away down a drain, Feathol wondered in passing if there was a job market for slurry demons. Surely there had to be a waste management plant somewhere in need of a resident spirit.
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