This story should have something in it about a fire, or be about the fire. Something on fire that falls from way up there, from a balcony or catwalk or a hayloft or rafters. And it could be symbolic, probably should be, but it should be real fire. And everybody, of course, wants to put it out before it burns down the theatre or the Henderson barn, but somebody set the fire, somebody who wants it to burn forever, even though the nature of fire is only to burn until there’s nothing left to burn. Fire pre-supposes its own death and then the peaceable presence of total destruction.

Maybe the patrons bolt from the theater—the tuxes and gowns all in a sort of black and red dash for the exits. Or maybe it’s more orderly and nobody gets hurt. On the Henderson farm, Henderson himself leads the animals out, all the while talking to them, whispering directly into their long or lopped ears, “It’s okay,” and “Here we go, now,” and “Just a few more steps, Old Duke, and we’re in the clear.”

You can see the fire walleyed in Old Duke’s great black orb of an eye. From the safety of a field fifty yards off. A safe place, but still hellacious. If the fire comes from someplace up there, and it should, does that mean from God? Or, say, an angry farm hand or an incendiary student revolutionary? Ha, ha. Lightning? A meteorite? Afterward, as in a few days go by or maybe a week or two, somebody should stand by the ruins and think, or even say aloud, “I remember when we built it.”

Contributor Bio:

Paul Luikart is the author of the short story collections Animal Heart (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016), Brief Instructions (Ghostbird Press, 2017), Metropolia (Ghostbird Press, 2021), The Museum of Heartache (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2021), The Realm of the Dog (J. New Books, 2024), and Cult Life (Tenpenny Books, 2024.) He serves as an adjunct professor of fiction writing at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He and his family live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.