The small thin orangy line moved. Its little legs barely visible, just shadows dancing across the stained taupe cushion. Vermin, of an unknown origin. She wasn’t an entomologist, but statistically they shouldn’t be parasitic. She would have bet they were. It should have been more alarming. Especially when its friends joined the parade. One became two, two becoming many. It was symbolic of her day. Gross, and multiplying at an alarming rate. They would be easier to solve than her life. Just a little gasoline and one match.
She closed her eyes envisioning the flames. Maybe the rest of her life could be just as easy to fix. Just a bunch of gasoline and a match or two.
It would burn. All of it. To the ground, or at least if the property manager had been truthful to the layer of gypsum that separated her and her downstairs neighbor.
Realistically, if her apartment went ablaze and took everything with it, there wouldn’t be any problems left. The art that her ex-fiancé was fighting her for would be gone. Museum glass was strong, but the back was still just cardstock. The abstract figures danced through her living room. Each piece a completely different continuation of the one before. Each easily worth more than its predecessor. Thousands upon thousands of dollars. They had always been dollar figures to him. He never saw them as the priceless art her father created for her, before he was a famous artist. Before his unforeseen “accident.” The figures danced over the flames building in her mind.
Her cat, whose outline permanently reshaped the top of the couch, with her multiple tumors and recently diagnosed advanced cancer would suffer. Based on the rehearsed speech of the vet, tumors and cancer that would slowly and painfully eat her alive. Smoke inhalation would take minutes compared to the tortuous weeks ahead of Velmie. Not to mention significantly less costly to her wallet. It was debatable if Velmie would even know she was on fire until it was too late.
The overflow of papers from Mary Ellen’s desk would only spar on the fire’s vicious path. Pages and pages of depositions, transcripts, everything a prosecuting attorney would need to put her firm’s client away. Pages filled with technicalities her attorney planned to get him off with. . . “Even if he was a predator, the argument the prosecution is making is unethical. Unlawful. You’re a legal secretary. Not judge and jury.” Never a paralegal in the throes of getting her own law degree. The piece of evidence that she, a legal secretary, had acquired. One that proved the state was perjurious, just sitting there waiting to be the catalyst to the rest of the paperwork’s demise. It glowed as Mary Ellen’s flames washed over it.
Embers already scattering onto her own stack of resumes, cover letters – anything and everything she needed (sans her pending law degree) to get a new job as a proper associate attorney. The hours of looking, searching, interviewing between a 90 hour work week and budgeting her life to the penny. Her inadequate title, also came with an inadequate salary. At least the stacks of bills, overdue and waiting to be paid, would be lost as well. The mortgage statements and letters from his attorney along with them. They screamed as the flames zeroed out the balance.
Mary Ellen found herself on the couch. For a moment she thought was still standing, looking at the tiny vermin. Instead billows of black clouded around her, whips of bright orange fighting them off. The vermin long gone, she opened her mouth to scream. Flames washed down her throat as she tried to breathe with them every trace of the matchbook she once held.