Fiction Story 1 — Part 1

I learned to start a tire fire after college. I don’t remember all the details. What I remember is you can’t light it on fire with just a kerosene and a match. You need to burn kindling underneath to get the material hot and dry enough to catch fire — much like with wood or coal. Tires take ten minutes to burn. You’ll know it does when you see black smoke and the flames take the form of bright orange curtains.

I also remember the snapping of the steel fibers as the fire worked its way through the rubber. The pings of breaking metal strands sounded nice, like muffled tiny bells. It added some brightness to an otherwise gloomy Thursday evening, at an abandoned lot that had a tire fire my friend, Greg, and I started for reasons that I’m still unsure of today.