= Playing With Fire
  by Ali Seay


I've always been fascinated by ethics. Trying to figure out the right way to play the game of life. What actions warrant guilt? Which are considered self preservation? Can you believe Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest and still be an ethical being? Good questions. Ones for which I've never really found the answers.

Take my case, for instance. If someone were to witness my husband, Richard, beating me, would they be bound by ethics to step in? Could they turn away if they feared the same treatment from him if they intervened? I never found out, because no one ever stepped in.

It wasn't as if anyone had the chance. Richard, God rest his soul, was that good. He knew just how to deliver a punch that could devastate, stun and cause excruciating pain, yet leave not a single mark. He had trained me not to make too much noise during my beatings, too. If I got too loud one statement from him could cease the cries of pain instantly.

"Traci, you're playing with fire." Which meant...hush up, woman, or it's only going to get worse.

And what is my duty as his wife? I did state before God and witnesses, "for better or worse". It doesn't get much worse. In this case, did "better" mean I should be the best punching bag I could be, or was it okay to take a stand? Another question unanswered, since I never really took that stand. For myself, that is. I might have tried harder if it hadn't been for a story Richard had told me shortly after we got married.

Richard had married his first wife fresh out of high school. When Richard's temper got out of control, she'd tried to run.

The official police report stated accidental drowning; she'd had one too many cocktails and drowned in their above ground pool. Richard smiled when he told me the story and said, "And do you know, they hardly questioned me at all?"

I was never sure what to believe, whether he'd just stood there and watched her flounder or whether he'd held her under. Either way, though, I got the message. In fact, in time it gave me another thing to mull over; is it murder if you didn't actually kill someone? If you simply omitted a vital piece of information that could have saved their life? Another toughie.

These are the kinds of questions I debated in my head every night right before I would drift off to sleep. Richard got up for work at five a.m. so he went to bed by ten every night. Since Richard liked to be in control, I had to be in bed by ten too...whether I was tired or not. Usually, I wasn't. So I would simply listen to him breathe and think of all these things while he slept like a baby.

Eventually, sleep would find me. Except on the nights it didn't.

On that particular night, I had just crossed that hazy line between awake and drifting. I had said my prayers (asking God to save me from my fate with Richard, or send someone who could), gone over my lesson plans for my kindergarten class the next day, and compiled a 'To Do' list in my head. I was finally ready for sleep.

That's when an awful piercing whine began to emanate from downstairs. I sat up, confused and afraid. What the hell was that, anyway? It took me a few beats to realize it was the smoke detector in the kitchen.

For a split second I thought about getting out and leaving Richard. But then it occurred to me that if it was a false alarm, or even a small fire, he'd beat the living daylights out of me for leaving him.

"Richard!" I shook him hard. The man slept like the dead.

"Hmmm?"

"Richard! Get up."

He sat up in bed, his face enraged. "Good god, woman! What is it? And it better be good."

I ignored his roaring as the norm. "The smoke detector downstairs. It's going off." As I said it, I realized I actually smelled smoke. My heart sped up in my chest.

"Come on." He got out of bed, a bear of a man. Hot orange boxer shorts were quickly sheathed by work pants, a "wife beater" T-shirt (how appropriate) covered by a button down.

I sleep in sweats, so I was ready to go.

We descended the steps, and it was like entering the desert. The temperature had risen dramatically by the time we hit the landing to the living room.

I looked through a haze of smoke to the front door. Completely engulfed in flames. There was one clear path...to the kitchen. Not thinking of the consequences, I ran in front of Richard to the swinging door that closed the kitchen off from the dining room.

In my kindergarten class we had an annual visitor, Georgie the fire safety clown. He told all of my kids about fire drills, how to act in case of a fire, and the most important of all...feel a door before you open it. In case of backdraft, or in case the fire's already spread in that direction.

I felt the kitchen door. It was like touching my hand to a cast iron frying pan fresh from the oven.

In the background, I could hear Richard cursing up a storm. "It's the wiring!" he shouted. "The damn wiring. The fire travels all along the walls where that jackass ran the new wire!"

Why he was worrying about the origin of the fire at a time like this was beyond me. But I knew what he meant. We had recently had our ground floor rewired. The house was very old, and if we ran more than one appliance at a time we blew a fuse. Richard had finally given in and paid to have new wiring.

I was just about to tell him about the door when he barreled past me. "What are you standing there for, stupid? We need to get out!"

Richard had never taken to safety regulations, figuring he could push his way through life by brute force alone. And up till now, he'd been able to.

I must be a Darwinian, after all. Because as I saw his meaty hand, five times the size of mine, descend toward the scorching kitchen door, I bolted. I got as far from the ensuing conflagration as possible.

And I didn't feel an ounce of guilt.

I watched him go. I watched the flames do to him what he had done to me so many times. And I even think, in my delirium, I muttered a few words. "Richard, you're playing with fire."

Then it was simply a matter of surviving until help arrived. They did arrive, looking like strange creatures from another planet in their suits. Oxygen had never tasted sweeter, and the outside world had never looked brighter.

My life has gone on. I sometimes feel just the slightest twinge of regret, but it only lasts an instant.

In fact, I have my first date in six months tonight. Six months since the fire made me a widow.

I think I hear the doorbell now. Georgie the fire safety clown is taking me to a bonfire tonight. He was very thoughtful about it, concerned that I wouldn't want to go. Bad memories and all.

I assured him that I would be fine. He could take me anywhere; after all, he saved my life. The fire wouldn't bother me at all.

In fact, I'm looking forward to it.


ALI SEAY lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She was a 2001 Derringer nominee in the Flash Fiction category. Her work has appeared in FUTURES, Mystery Time, The Rex Stout Journal and About.com's Mysteries In A Flash. Ali reviews mystery fiction for About.com. She is currently marketing her first novel, THE CORPSE POSE.

Copyright (c) 2001 Ali Seay