Incendiary

Terri Griffith

incendiary, a.  1. having to do with the willful destruction of property by fire. 2. causing or designed to cause fires, as certain substances, bombs, etc. 3. willfully stirring up strife, riot, rebellion, etc.

Despite the debris, the stench, the loss of life, fire is cleansing. Perhaps even because of these things. Violet stands in front of the burning bungalow-style house that barely stands at the end of a long tree-lined residential street. A house that was home not even an hour before. The now-displaced family huddles on the opposite side of the street watching as their dreams of Christmas, graduations, or even some future intimate back-yard wedding, burn to the ground. It is this purification that makes fire so exciting.

Every present member of the family is crying. Tomorrow, after phone calls, it may be that other, more distant members cry as well. They cry for the loss. What no one seems to realize is that fire wipes clean the slate—that in the morning these people will wake up without the burden of what came before.

There are five types of fires: natural, accidental, unknown, suspicious, and incendiary. Who is it that decides these terms? And what do they know of the aftermath? Violet thinks that while some fires are suspicious, accidental, unknown, or even incendiary, it is unquestionably obvious that all fires are natural.

works referenced
Holmes, Ronald M., Stephen T. Holmes. Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool. “Gilbert’s Five Types of Fires.” Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. 2002

Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (unabridged), second edition. New World Dictionaries/Simon and Schuster. New York, NY. 1983

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Terri Griffith is the literary correspondent for the art and culture review podcast Bad at Sports. Along with Nicholas Alexander Hayes, she is co-authoring a transgressive retelling of the Greek Myths. Their versions of "The Rape of Io" and "The Story of Tantalus" have appeared in Bloom and Suspect Thoughts respectively. Her essays appear in the anthologies Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing-Up Working Class and Are We Feeling Better Yet? She lives in Chicago and has a deep affection for little fluffy dogs.