brushfire.

short story for advanced fiction writing...

Jody’s bedroom was like a bad dream. It was so dirty and cluttered, she feared creepy things might actually be living amongst the debris. Spiders in her flannel shirt pocket; rodents in her sneakers. Worse than the mess even, was the smell. Rotten banana peels underneath dirty, wet clothes, underneath sweaty matted dog, underneath black mold, and finally underneath patchouli and incense, which seemed to linger in the corners where the walls meet the ceiling, in the way smoke rises.
Each week, her therapist gave her a new assignment—a goal—that, when reached, would represent something within herself, some jarred parts, falling back into place, in order that she might see some way out of herself. Jody’s mother liked this about him. He called the place Jody seemed to get stuck in when things felt worst, the swamp; her thoughts were swamp water—murky and encompassing. During their last session, he had asked her to close her eyes and imagine her mind as the swamp, and to think about what would have to be done—to the swamp—to make it more inhabitable. Sunlight, she said, to dry up the water, and burning. Burning? he asked. You know, to clear out all the brush. So, as it was the most immediate source of stress, the assignment became to clean up her room.
The landscape of your environment, he said, is a direct reflection of your internal landscape, and the conditions of each, perpetuate the conditions of the other.
It was the day before her next appointment, and she still hadn’t cleaned. After school, she stood in the doorway to her room and surveyed the damage. Her stomach turned. She couldn’t imagine organizing because it felt too much like starting over, and the thought of doing laundry made her want to sleep. After a couple of minutes of immobility, with a deliberation she hadn’t known in months, Jody started hoisting everything she could find—shoes, clothes, electronics, stuffed-animals from her childhood—out of the window that overlooked the back yard. After everything was out, she ran downstairs with a box of matches in her hand, into the back yard, and lit it all on fire. She thought the burning in her eyes was bits of ash from wool sweaters and the chemical smell of burning rubber. As quickly as the tears came, they were dried by the flames like rivulets against her smoke-stained cheeks. She closed her eyes and, standing close enough to feel scared, imagined her swamp drying up only to find roots and bones where all the water used to be.