Bill Engleson is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today. (In case of a tie, the writer who submitted an entry first is the winner per our rules.) Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Tools
by Bill Engleson
We are on alert, of course. Every year it seems to hit us earlier. This year the heat came like a storm of furnaces. Blazing heat melting the day, and that hot dead air you can barely breathe long into the night, creeping over your skin as if you are doused in gasoline and someone had lit a match.
We just aren’t ready.
Most of the town is out past midnight, hosing down the dusty soil, our homes, ourselves, cooling the earth, trying to.
When the woods burn at night, the smoke settles on your soul. The flames menace in every direction and the urge to cut and run is painful and ever-present.
“I’m afraid,” she says over and over.
Our two kids cannot sleep, haven’t been able to for days, for nights, except in fits and starts so here we are at 2:00 am, hosing down our lives, our children sitting in the plastic pool that’s just not deep enough trying to lower the burning prickles of heat that cause them to squirm and shiver all at the same time.
We have already lost a neighboring town this year. Gone in a fiery flash. Just the concrete bones left, the scorched metal hulks of cars.
Firefighters from around the world are winging their way here.
I’m afraid it is all for naught.
We may have the will, but we don’t have the tools.
The Earth has become our monster.
And we are our own Dr. Frankenstein.
