Monday 20 June 2011

Fireworks

We'd expected a bit more excitement from the bride burning, but it was a bit of a damp squib. Joaquin had given her a box of fireworks to clutch, telling her that it was a chest containing relics that his ancestors had brought back from a Crusade and Michelle had been soaking her clothes in ethanol overnight, so we were quietly optimistic that things would go with a bit of a bang. Sure enough, around about 11am Gorman chased her out of the house, screaming imprecations at her again, and then dashed into the garage. He returned with a can of petrol which he started throwing at her, and she started screaming, knowing what this portended. While Gorman rummaged in his pockets for his lighter, which most evenings he left in the pub anyway, Joaquin nipped forward and gave her the fireworks, and then retreated to a safe distance. Gorman found the lighter, stepped forward and touched the flame to the hem of her dress.


*

"You're the wrong ethnicity," said Jules, eyeing Gorman cautiously. "You can't go burning your wife and calling it a bride burning. It's just murder."
"She's my wife, she's my property," said Gorman draining his double whiskey and picking up Joaquin's shandy.
"Arson then," said Jules rolling her eyes. "Either way, you can't go doing it."
"She gets the bacon wrong," said Gorman. He always sounded petulant after his first pint, this far into the evening he was onto sulky and childish. For probably the eightieth time I wished that he wasn't Joaquin's housemate, or that he would find some other people to drink with.
"Isn't she Muslim?" said Michelle. "I thought that's why you married her. What would she know about bacon?"
"I make her sleep with it so she learns it!" Gorman spat the Shandy out. "What is this filth?"
"I'm driving, aren't I?" said Joaquin, who wasn't. I was. "Get your own drink, you pikey."
"Why did he marry a Muslim?" asked Jules as Gorman lurched towards the bar.
"To punish her," I said. "At least, from all the answers he's ever given, that's the one he's avoided and fits his behaviour."
"Can't we do something? Get the poor girl away from him? There are hostels for abused women...."
"Could be tricky," said Michelle, who made no secret of the fact that she thought she should have married Gorman and was still sleeping with him. "She's kind of illegal."
"I don't think immigration would be a big issue--"
"She's eight."
That silenced Jules, and most of the rest of us in fact. Until Gorman came back with eighteen pints and tried to force Joaquin to drink them all.


*

The flame touched the hem of her dress and there was a brilliant white light that seemed to blaze out straight towards me. Everyone else says the same thing, so I guess it was emanating in all directions at once. I got the impression of something moving in the light, something tall and beautiful, something that might have had enormous wings that reached from high above its shoulders down to its feet. I think it was picking someone up.
Michelle screamed. Gorman screamed. Joaquin was praying, and I couldn't have moved or spoken if I'd tried.
The light faded and my vision went stripy, all colours of the rainbow in thick bands. It kind of faded and swam as my eyes tried to adjust back to normal, and I realised that Michelle was burning in a pale blue flame, thin trickles of smoke wreathing around her head. Then there was a pop and a crack, and fireworks started erupting from Gorman's body, soaring overhead splattering us all with gore and exploding in the sky. After a few of them I realised they were spelling out words, but I only managed to make out "Bacon." I was too busy dodging the splatters and gobbets of flesh.
When it all died down, I looked at Joaquin who was on his knees, his eyes tightly closed, still praying. I bent down, lifted him to his feet and hugged him. Behind us, the cratered remains of Gorman still popped and hissed a little, and ahead of us, Michelle had mostly melted into some kind of human wax-work. Her eyes had run and melted and made me feel nauseous.
And Gorman's bride... well, I sincerely hope she and her protector have gone. Else there might just be more fireworks to come.

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