Burn | Short Story
The thick, dark smoke burned the back of Maura’s throat. Her eyes watered, not just from the itchy discomfort deep within her nostrils, but from the sight of her family farm ablaze. They sat on the cold ground just outside the fence, saving their strength for what was to come.
She kept the signs to herself for a few weeks. There was no harm in holding on for longer—all the farms nearby had been razed, and there was no one left to notice it while passing by their fence. Maybe the red spots were just rust, a strange mould, or paint splatters she hadn’t seen before. Once the rot set in, it could not be stopped. It crept deep within everything and everyone, corroding them from the inside. Structures collapsed, spreading contaminated dust into the air. Animals and humans convulsed, frothing at the mouth, covered in purpura, terrified of light and sound, biting and scratching anyone nearby.
But before they had to burn it all to keep the contagion from spreading, they could live with it for a while, circling around the black hole of death until they couldn’t hold on to its edge any longer.
So, she embraced the sweet comfort of denial. Her morning coffee tasted the same, and Arthur’s embrace was just as warm as ever on those wet late‑spring nights.
One day, while shearing sheep, he noticed the unmistakable red spots on the animal’s skin. His world stopped—the slight backache didn’t matter; the scent of summer in the air and the distant noise of the tractor faded. He let go of the sheep—there was no point in shearing it any longer. It had to go with everything else. His eyes welled up with tears—for the animals, for the old farm, for the end of a life he had embraced fifteen years ago. Maura’s dream had become his own, and their joint lives revolved around the daily tasks her father, her grandfather and his grandfather before him had performed—different tools, but the same sun, sky and soil that had nurtured them for generations.
“Let’s wait a little longer,” she pleaded tearfully when he told her what he had seen, and he didn’t have the heart to report it. He agreed. Not yet. Not until the last moment, when paint could no longer hide it and when the smallest animals wandered around, more skittish than usual, disoriented, with blood‑shot eyes.
As the roof collapsed in flames, she remembered how safe she had felt all those years living and dreaming under it. How her great‑great‑grandfather built it with his own hands, in a time when holy water and penitence would have been the remedies of choice for this curse. How large the off‑white fence seemed when she was a child. How vast his flocks seemed, flowing like clouds over the green hills. How loud his herding dogs’ barks still rang in her ears.
Her memories wandered to the good days—feeding the animals on clear summer mornings, the smell of the soil after a storm, the feeling of the cool, prickly grass underfoot, and the cats that roamed the barns. The fire took with it the last remaining echoes of her grandmother singing in the kitchen and her father’s war stories.
“What would grandfather think of all this?” Maura wondered aloud, more to herself than to Arthur, who was still holding her hand to keep her anchored to reality.
“He was from a different time. Not the sort to be sentimental about it, no matter how difficult,” he replied softly. He had once been such a man in his youth, when impressing others with a hard façade seemed more important than being true to himself.
“Is that what we should do?”
“This isn’t his time any longer, Maura,” he whispered, smiling through his tears.
“I’m not ready yet,” she sobbed. Life had been so sweet, even with its occasional bitterness. She loved the work, even after all her childhood friends defected to the city. It was hard and unglamorous, but the gentle eyes of her animals, the legacy she carried, and her dinners with Arthur after a long day made it all worth it.
He had fallen in love with the work just as he had fallen in love with her—over a long period of encounters, hardships, triumphs and compromises. It didn’t come easy at first, but a life worth living was not meant to be easy. He never longed for the office job he left behind nearly as much as he longed for the quiet evenings with her when he was back in town.
“Let’s stay a few minutes like this,” he said, holding her tightly. He hoped to make those moments slow down to a crawl, to make them endless, to glue himself to her love, to the warmth of her embrace, to feel seen and held one last time.
She was sorry they had to burn, too, at the height of their happiness, but once the rot set in, there was nothing else to do.
Everything, and everyone, had to go.
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