Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Like a Fire Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

LIKE A FIRE

Maryanne cruised, her head a mess of fury, frustration, and strangely, of hope. It was, as the old timers said, time to blow this pop stand.

The cellphone on the seat next to her rang for the ninth time in the last half-hour: Like a Fire was the ringtone and that’s how she felt. The ring synced nicely with the album that had spun on repeat since she’d first heard it. The stereo was trash in the base model Chevy Sonic, despite the reality that she’d worked three summers to pay for the high-mileage automobile, but the music came out with power, and right then, she was free. Or at least soon to be free.

It had been three days since the strange boy named Kevin introduced her to the rap duo Undercurrent and it was like blossoming vines that trailed into the canals of her ears, bounced through the meat walls of her brain, and shaded the hues of blood pumping in her heart. How had she lived her whole life without these guys?

Close my eyes and burn like a fire. Smash the rules and burn like a fire. Block my ears and burn like a fire. Cast the shackles and burn like a fire. Open the doors and…

Out and moving.

One of life’s great bullshit idioms: there’s a first time for everything. Grounded was the virgin word used—touched for the very first time—and Maryanne had screamed all the louder because of it. Her parents had also used the under this roof line and she said to hell with them. Her boyfriend sided with her parents. To hell with him too. She was eighteen in two weeks, and nobody owned her. Her boyfriend pointed a finger, stating a bad influence was behind the change.

It was on a whim that she’d gone out, skipped youth group in the church basement, and met with the party kids. The kids she and the others in youth group secretly prayed for, the ones always getting into trouble, the ones who showed up still hungover when the Monday morning bell rang, the ones with impenetrable smiles in spite of their sins. They didn’t care about God or sacrifice, or what Jesus gave to save mankind. In fact, they poked painfully logical holes in the theology she’d never questioned.

Until last week, she’d scoffed at everything, but her boyfriend bought her a promise ring and it felt too much like a muzzle or a yoke. A chain nailed to the floor. The promise of ownership by an atomic-minded boy.

What was she missing? What else was out there?

Sex, for one. Drunken comradery for another. Fun in scads. She hadn’t been living, but that changed, and her family and boyfriend had the audacity to tell her—

“Grrr! Screw ‘em all!” she said as she rolled into the Walmart parking lot. She’d need food if she was going to hide out for the rest of the week. It was important that she take the time to clear her head, maybe pray, but maybe not.

Drizzle fell. The cloud cover overhead promised a gain in pressure during the forthcoming hours. She rushed through the parking lot and to the doors. Inside, she bought all the worst things and smiled while doing it. Her body would be a garbage temple. It was too bad that she was too young to buy booze and didn’t really have anyone to ask. In the end, that didn’t matter. It was the freedom she needed and was about to take it, that didn’t mean she had to jump from the highest board.

If sins counted as she’d always thought, it would take some effort to get back to right with her maker as it was.

“Hey, Maryanne! Hey!” Pastor Ron shouted from three back in the check-out line.

Maryanne flashed a grin, bore the sudden urge to flip him off, and turned away, finger holstered. She wasn’t mad at him, but she was mad at what he stood for.

The rain came down heavier and she rushed with her two bags loaded with chips, candy, jerky, Jiffy-pop, and tall cans of Nestea. The bags went onto the passenger seat and she started the car and fingered her phone alive to act as an MP3 player via auxiliary jack. It was an older iPhone. She could upgrade for free, but the plan was to wait until she moved for college and switched numbers.

It rang in her hands.

“Enough!” she shouted and pried open the semi-broken SIM card tray. The window went down and the tiny chip sailed into a puddle.

This was freedom.

The reliable ignition rattled for a tenth of a second before kicking. There was an orange light on the dash. A door ajar.

Funny.

She opened and closed the driver’s door. The light remained.

Doubly funny.

“Ugh.” She took a breath and broke into a run, circling the car, opening and closing each door while glancing through the windows at her camping gear and all the promises that came along with it.

It wasn’t until she reached the edge of town that she wondered how or why the door warning tripped. It had never happened before. Not without a passenger… She spun while she drove, her right-side tires touching gravel. The backseat showed nothing more than piled up camping gear and extra blankets.

“Paranoid much?” She turned up the volume. She sang along where she knew the words. On the album’s second visit of the day, she reached into the Walmart bag and grabbed for Nacho Doritos. One hand on the wheel, one hand on the crinkling treat, she used her teeth to open a plastic-y chasm. The scent was substantial and had her mouth tingling. The bag returned to the seat and she began eating, one hand always on the wheel.

Outside, the rain pounded. At a third of the way through the eighteen-hundred calorie serving, Maryanne stopped eating and fumbled for a can of iced tea. Grease made the operation slightly more difficult than normal, but she managed. After gulping half a can, she burped, and then leaned toward the gear shifter to give her left cheek leeway. The fart was loud and sounded wet. Three tiny machinegun trailers followed.

During the third play of Undercurrent’s Casting Grim, Maryanne began absently digging at her nose. The windows had begun to fog some. The rainy atmosphere was cool against the lived-in air within the Sonic.

She looked at her reflection and stopped picking, immediately thought about the paranoid notion that someone had opened the car door and stowed away behind her. She spun to look in the backseat. Nothing had changed. It was a pile of gear and nothing more.

Bravado peeked through the worried blinds, forcing her to laugh. It was another hour of singing and broken rapping along before she arrived at Camp Green Lake. Their season had just ended. Maryanne would have the place to herself; her situational friend Jacob gave her the details two weeks earlier at youth group. He was a councillor at the camp and had only returned that afternoon, sunbaked with reddish curls where the dark brown curls used to be. The camp would remain empty until fall when it switched from being a place of Bible study and handicrafts to a place of men in orange coats with rifles at the ready, eating canned beans and aiming weaponry.

The best part of Camp Green Lake was that despite its ease to find, it was in the middle of nowhere and that meant privacy. Privacy meant freedom. Freedom meant a chance at mental self-evaluation.

There was a simple chain crossing the entry. She got out of the car, running as the rain came down in something nearing torrents, and opened the path. Pulled through. Re-latched barrier, she returned to the foggy car, wet from scalp to toes. Into the woods one kilometer, the Sonic rolled slowly, the AC pumping hard against the interior fog. She leaned forward to gain a better perspective. It was so much darker in the country and the overhead flora canopy doubled the effect. This was a dark she did not know in town. There were no streetlights, making the moon seem every centimeter of its 384,400 kilometers away. It was unnerving. She hadn’t thought much about the darkness, hadn’t known to consider this much of it.

“There’ll be power, surely.”

She rolled on and finally, after a winding curve, located the bunkhouses. They were old with off-white walls and dark green roofs. She parked in front of the first building and got out. She rushed to the door. Incredibly, it was open. In her plans toward freedom, she’d expected to do some minor B&E. This was nice and despite outwardly revealing otherwise, she knew that inside, she would have felt guilt and shame for breaking that particular law as it meant harming someone’s private property.

Anxious to see the digs, she stepped within just as the car’s headlights ceased to shine. She tapped a damp palm on the wall, looking for a light switch. Found it. Flicked it. A single bulb lit and she smiled. Everything was coming together, she had her freedom, nobody knew where she was, the incessant calls were done, and she was miles from all of her worries.

This was perfect.

The cleaners had obviously been through as nothing remained on the bunkbeds and every surface was clear, the corners were even free of spider webs. Maryanne’s smile grew wider than it ever had in church. Her stomach grumbled.

“Twizzlers or Jack-Links?” she asked the universe and stepped back to the door leading to the empty black night where her car dwelled somewhere in the shadows.

Not seeing the vehicle gave rise to a shiver. It was so dark out there. So dark and that abyss had stolen her car.

“Don’t be such a…” she said, her voice trailing as a fire light danced before a long, gaunt face in the backseat of the Sonic, touching upon the tip of a cigarette.

“Dear God.” She slammed the door.

Outside, amid the constant pitter-patter, came the report of a car door closing and steps crunching over gravel. Footfalls thumped up the three stairs to the door. Then it was silence.

There was a knock.

Maryanne squeaked. Her freedom was so boundless and so sizable suddenly.

A voice passed through the door in a slow, mocking drone. “Cast the shackles and burn like a fire. Open this door and burn like a fire. Taste the freedom and die like a fire.”

Maryanne prayed while the doorknob began to turn. There was a wooden paddle lock. She spun it.

“Open up, Girly, let’s make some music.”

She stumbled in reverse, those lyrics playing out anew on her mind, the recorded rappers mingling with the spoken word poet on the far side of the door.

“Taste the freedom and die like a fire,” she whispered, tears budding.

The back of her arm bumped a counter. She turned and drank in the scene. There were windows, two within five feet of where she stood. Shuttered from the far side of bug screens. In the kitchen, she saw a wood stove, and beyond that, four closet-sized bedrooms and a washroom at the end of the hall. By the sink were drawers. In drawers were utensils. She yanked the first handle, spilling four sets of cheap silverware onto the floor.

The door began pounding inward.

“Girly! Girly, we gonna play a little game and it’s gonna feel oh so good. We gonna sing all night.”

A whimper left Maryanne’s mouth as her fingers dug through a strange collection of bottle openers, potato mashers, whisk, spatula, garlic press, and then, finally, a long, greyed, wood-handled knife.

The door pounded again.

She gritted her teeth and shouted from the sides of her mouth, “Leave me alone!”

She waited, knife pointed out from her middle like an appendage, firm and strong. One step, two steps, she inched towards the door, thinking she’d trick him, turn the lock, swing open the door, and drive the knife into his chest.

Behind the bone of her ribs, the light meat of her breasts, and the layers of cotton, her heart absolutely rattled. The contents of her guts tried to rise. Fingers on the wooden paddle, she turned, knowing if she made a sound, all was over. He’d have her. The thought stalled the turn and she leaned on the door. It banged once. A whine erupted from deep within. She stepped back, staring at the swirling grains of the door. She had to move, had to act. Once he got sick of waiting, he’d break that flimsy lock and take her.

She stepped forward again, closing her eyes, and touching the wood. Behind her, as if by explosion, a window opened and a screen popped inside with a clatter. Maryanne spun to see the tall man slink through the opening and land one foot on the counter and then a second. She screamed and turned to the door. The lock was suddenly a bank vault’s dial and that simple paddle defied her fingers.

“Girly, this gonna be so much fun,” the man said.

Maryanne broke to her right, running down the hall, passing tiny, cell-like bedrooms. The mirror in the can at the end of the hall used her face to beckon. Washrooms always had locks. Locks were promises when you were on the right side of them.

The door slammed. She leaned her weight against it and swung the tiny hook and eye latch together. If ever there was a hopeless lock… Tears streamed. The heavy footfalls approached.

Again, she surveyed an unfamiliar room. There was a Footprints in the Sand poem above the little yellow toilet. The other walls were bare pine. The shower stall had a swinging door that covered the average adult from knees to shoulders.

“Girly? Don’t make me get heavy on you. The music’ll be all different then.”

He sounded disappointed. It was worse than if he’d screamed because Maryanne found herself considering lessening the treatment. If she went out, maybe he’d only rape her, not beat her, not kill her.

“Leave me alone, please,” she whined.

“Open the door and we’ll dance all nice as pie.”

“Go away.”

“You brung me all the way out here and think I’ll leave without at least a goodbye kiss? Without letting me get some of the fire? You’re dreaming, Girly.”

A palm slapped against the door. The hook popped, nearly out of the eye. Maryanne stumbled back, knees bending over the open lid of the toilet. She hopped as if it had jumped out.

The seat fell.

Again, the door shook. The hook dancing closer to letting go.

Up the wall seven feet was a smallish square window. There was no shutter and she climbed up onto the toilet. A spinning arm moved the mechanism within.

The door slammed again, harder, but still nothing more than a tease. Maryanne prodded the edges of the screen until it fell away with a clunk. The thump at the door was business and the hook held better with the stronger strike, but the wood of the door cracked. A long whine vibrated through Maryanne’s teeth as she spun the arm that opened the window. It was like a snow shovel, glass at the bottom, collecting rain. Surely this was a flaw during installation.

The hook on the door pinged after a double bang. Maryanne leapt and pulled, lifting her body out the window to the waist.

“Where you going, Girly?” The man grabbed her left foot.

“Leave! Me! Alone!” Maryanne kicked, shaking the hold and finding a shoulder.

“Ow, you stupid…” the man trailed, frustration in his voice.

Maryanne heard it barely at all above the steady rain. She sat on the open window glass and reached up for the eaves trough. She pulled, grunting as she kicked her knee sideways for a grip.

“Why do you gotta be so difficult?” the man shouted.

The elevated volume elevated Maryanne’s get-up-and-go and she scurried the sopping, mossy rooftop on her hands and knees. At the peak, she stopped and watched. It was black everywhere and the rain running into her eyes tripled the effect the dark had on her psyche. It was as if she’d landed in another world.

It was obvious then. She’d turned her back on God and He was punishing her.

“I’m sorry!”

The man climbed up. She attempted to rise and run, instead she slid backwards, stopping not a foot from the slender hands of the man. He was otherworldly with his deft movements and spindly digits. It struck her then: this was a demon. God used His angels to protect humanity from Satan’s demons. Her actions lifted the veil of protection.

“No!” she howled as she scrambled up to the peak. “Get away!”

“Girly, you’re starting to annoy me. If you’d just stop fighting it.”

The man had straightened and stood firmly on the lip. He took a step, another and another. Maryanne had no traction. She swatted and skidded, her nine-dollar flats proving the worst tools for the current task.

“Girly! Just—!”

Maryanne jumped at his touch and donkey kicked. The man stumbled and she began to slide. The world rushed under her toes and palms. Her shirt dragged up and the roofing tiles brushed painfully against her chest and tummy.

“Goddammit!” the man shouted, his voice trailing away.

Maryanne’s feet found the eaves trough and she managed to cease the motion before she went over. She waited for the man to grab her, not connecting the falling voice or the unhealthy wump she heard below, nor the great snapping noise.

Then it came, like a little boy’s voice, “Girly? Maryanne?”

She turned over and looked down at the man. His back straddled a rock in all the wrong ways.

“Maryanne, you gotta help me.”

How did he know her name?

“Maryanne, please. It was a thing… I’m a friend of your mom and Pastor Ron… We had a… We didn’t want to see you stray… Please, Maryanne?”

Fury climbed as she lowered her body. In through the same window she’d exited. Outside through the same door she’d entered. She stomped to the man.

“It was all a game and you’re a good kid, nobody wanted to see you get off the Lord’s plan. They asked me to teach you a lesson.” The man swallowed often as he spoke. “So you gotta help me. Call for an ambulance. Quick, please… Oh, God.”

Hearing this man invoke the so-called Lord, the one who she had called to and begged to, the one who she thought wanted to save her, the one who was the root of what had happened, Maryanne picked up a rock the size of a watermelon.

“Maryanne?” the man said. The whine in his voice was music.

“Sing for me.”

“What?”

“Sing for me,” she repeated, rock over her head.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the—”

“Wrong song! Smash the rules and burn like a fire!”

The rock came down on his head, sending vines of red rips and cracks through his face. Perhaps this was overkill.

She couldn’t just leave him there. Maryanne dragged the skinny man into the cabin. There were plenty of flammables and he had a lighter with his cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt.

On the highway, homeward bound, she sang the songs of her freedom, thinking she was done with youth group, done with church, done with the Maryanne she had once been.

XX