Salamander
by Corinna Sara BechkoStanding up, she watches until the last pixel dies on her computer screen. Content not to think about work for two whole days, she hoists her tote bag and heads into the corridor.
The knot of people hesitating in the lobby reminds her to dig out her umbrella. Now eight hours too late, she recalls leaving it on the train. No matter. The last rainstorm had been more of a windstorm, flaying umbrellas alive. Since then she has been afraid of poking someone in the eye with an exposed spoke while carrying it on the crowded street. Besides, a little water never hurt anyone.
She steps past secretaries bunched under the awnings and into the cold drizzle. Oily patches of asphalt shine on the road, broken into tiny rainbows by passing cars. She walks fast, hoping to reach the subway before the rain turns to hail or sleet. The mist makes the street feel undefined, as if the edges of things might yield under pressure. Even the glare of passing headlights seems softened.
These are the nights when she must be the most vigilant. The dampness in the air seems to blister the skin of reality. The signal will be faint at first; she is afraid to find out what will happen if it appears and she misses seeing it.
Quickening her step while carefully avoiding catching her heel in the grate she turns the corner. Half a block more and she will be in the warm ozonated air of the station. Maybe tonight she won’t need to take her Keds from the tote bag. She has never seen the signal below ground or in her apartment. Maybe this weekend she can relax.
Halfway down the stairs to the train, just as the street is about to vanish above her head, she spots it. The brickwork of the insurance agent across the street glimmers as if an oilslick puddle has been hung there.
She considers ignoring it and heading home. Maybe curl up on the couch, listen to the rain tap against the windows. Instead, she pushes her way back up the stairs to the street corner, her pulse accelerating as she waits for the light to change.
By the time she crosses the street it is gone. She pauses in a doorway long enough to slip off her heels, carefully balancing with one hand against the door jam for support. The last six years working downtown she has marveled at the idea that people would change shoes just to walk to the bus or subway. Now she wonders if perhaps they too have secret lives. Or maybe they only wish they did.
Feet thus fortified she sets out, looking down every dark alley and small street. Sometimes she catches the glint from the corner of her eye and has to change direction. Several times she is misled by reflected neon light or a submerged soda can in a debris-choked gutter. Each time the oily light reappears mockingly close but still out of reach.
After half an hour she is in a part of the city she barely knows. At last she espies it waiting in an alley, illuminating a tiny piece of chain link at the far end. She feels fear: fear of the unknown but more strongly fear of the known. Fear of being female and alone in a strange place at night. Then power, as she takes that fear and steps with it into the dark anyway.
This is the seventh time she has met the Salamander, as she calls it. At first it had terrified her. It still held the ability to alarm. She suspects it enjoys that aspect of their relationship. Why it had chosen her as an accomplice she could never fathom. Maybe she was just in the right place at the right time. Or was it a good judge of character? Perhaps a bad judge? Her answers changed with her mood and she had finally tried to give up wondering.
Tonight it manifests at the end of the little alley as a disembodied arm holding a torch. The torch burns the brightest but the entire entity is wreathed in pale flames, defying the rain. A cold wind blows through the chain link that separates their patch of grimy asphalt from a small park on the other side.
She is warmed by a sense of purpose now. Shoving her tingling-numb hands deeper into her damp pockets, she looks through the flames to the small park on the other side of the fence.
A bench, a garbage can flipped by dogs or raccoons spilling wet refuse, and a small bare tree almost fill the open space between buildings. The back of the bench faces her so that she can’t tell if anyone is sleeping there.
Soon this forlorn place will know joy. She holds on to that thought as she prepares for the worst part of the ritual. Squaring her shoulders she walks forward, straight through the brightest part of the torch.
Cold, slimy, disgusting sensation. No heat, no light in the middle. Like walking through a curtain made of the scum that forms on dirty dishes left too long in the sink. Like being felt up by toads, she thinks.
Once through, the nauseous feeling persists, but she knows how to fix it. Shoving aside rain-melted boxes and dirty tarps she pulls up one corner of the fence. Obviously others use this same route to the park. She slips through easily with only a small snag in her skirt.
She runs to the tree, carefully peering over the top of the bench when close enough. There is a mounded shadow taking up most of it, but after a moment she decides that it doesn’t conceal anything human.
Lowering her bag to the ground and feeling inside for the Ziploc pouch of rags and the glass jar of lighter fluid, she is soon savoring the process of dipping each strip of old sheet, each fragment of ripped up t-shirt, into the jar. It is now that she misses her umbrella, instead using her body to protect this fragile beginning from the rain.
Gently she wraps each pungent rag around a branch of the slender tree. At last she recaps the jar, repacks her bag, and produces a cheap lighter from a zippered compartment of her purse.
The tree becomes a bouquet of flame. The lumpen mass on the bench moves just a little but she is too consumed by the sight of her creation to notice. The blaze is all that matters.
Later, back at her apartment, she is showered and wrapped in a blanket but still chilled. Worse, the gradual beginnings of remorse are being felt. After all, the tree was a living thing. What if the fire spread to the surrounding tenements? Any thought of the mound on the bench she pushes away. But the night is too rainy, the air too bitter for the flames to spread. She burrows further into the blanket and replays the glorious burning tree in her mind.
By Monday afternoon she has a full-blown head cold but slogs through work anyway. She wants to go home, has almost left twice already. She figures staying through lunch, past her break, all the way to five pm, is penance.
When the Salamander had first made her understand what it wanted her to do she had hated it. Now, she hated her cold enjoyment even more. She wondered at herself and meted out private retribution to counter her secret.
By Tuesday she feels no better. The cold is worse and she fears a nasty cough can’t be far behind. The stormy weather has blown itself out for the time being, replaced by pale sunshine. She knows this only from going down to the newsstand in the lobby at lunch to get cough drops. Her office is off an interior corridor many stories above. Every season there is uniformly 69 degrees and lit by fluorescents.
She stands with her head pressed against the cool plate glass of the window next to the revolving door, sucking hard on a cough drop and hoping that the menthol will clear her head. She watches the second hand of her watch sweep around and around, waiting until the last possible moment to head back to the elevator bank, to her desk.
Pushing back from the window, she looks past her reflection to the shadowless street. Pedestrians fill the sidewalks. Between them she can see the row of mailboxes standing by the curb. They are clean now from the weekend’s rain, but one still wears an oily splotch near the bottom.
Squinting through the glare, she desperately pretends this isn’t a signal. It can’t be. She will be missed if she doesn’t come back from lunch. It’s broad daylight. It isn’t even cloudy.
She calculates the odds that her fever is spiking and deliberately turns away from the window, walking purposefully towards the elevators. The shiny doors open and disgorge three business men while she is still yards away. Two hold tan briefcases, the third a stylish leather messenger bag. On its flap is an ugly oily residue.
The men are engrossed in their conversation, unaware of any threat. They slowly cross the lobby, laughing and gossiping their way to the entrance of the parking structure. She follows, acutely aware that she doesn’t even have her purse with her, much less her equipment. Her wallet was the only thing she had thought to bring downstairs with her to the newsstand.
Afraid now of what will happen if she is not able to create a fire, she runs back the way she came. The news proprietor is standing with his back to the lobby, stocking a small refrigerator with juice and soda. Leaning over the counter, she grabs a handful of matchbooks from beneath the register before racing after the men.
Barely catching the door before it closes behind them, she glimpses the newsman picking up the phone. Imagine how this must look, she thinks. But how could he think that she of all people would steal form him?
She lets the door slam behind her and pounds down the stairs after the men, trying not to imagine what will happen if the Salamander thinks she is being disobedient. Since their first encounter she has been plagued by images of conflagration, both grotesque and sometimes magnificent. She has read everything she can find on so-called spontaneous human combustion, wondering if maybe she is not the Salamander’s first conquest. Does it place these things in her mind? Perhaps, she thinks, it doesn’t need to.
On the third level down the men leave the stairwell and enter the parking structure proper. She follows, but the signal has left the messenger bag. The expensive leather looks burnished and new.
Turning in circles, she spots it again on the door of a car near the exit ramp. She expects the splotch to move up the ramp as she gets closer. Instead it appears inside the vehicle, right in the center of the steering wheel. Peering through the side window she sees that the car’s owner has dropped the keys on the front passenger seat, probably while gathering papers and juggling coffee that morning.
This is theft of a lot more than a book of matches. But I will bring it back, she thinks, besides my Keds are upstairs under my desk and who knows how far I will have to walk in these pumps?
The signal leads her onto the expressway and out of the city. It is surprisingly easy to follow with the car, appearing on street signs as a colorful damp sheen.
An hour later she exits near the lake. The signal leads her to an empty parking lot and disappears as she pulls up next to some picnic tables. Grills, a volley ball court, and a dingy public bathroom stand forlorn against the pallid sky. The area is used by sunbathers and families during summer days and by drug peddlers at night year ‘round. There is no reason for anyone to be here during the day this early in the year. The lake is still frigid and an icy wind blows intermittently off the water. Far off on the bike path she can just make out a stick figure walking a tiny dog.
She enters the ladies’ side of the bathroom and checks every stall. Nothing. She knocks before entering the men’s side. No response, so she nudges the door open with her foot and slips inside. This side smells even worse. Two condoms lie on the tiled floor, making her think of termites after their mating flight, when their wings come off.
Garish blue-green light emanates from the second stall. She moves over quickly, banging the door open hard against the wall. Filling almost the entire space is a sick, burning, car crash victim of a thing, spilling the swimming pool colored light from eyes, nose and mouth. The blackened man-shaped body is wreathed in yellow flames as if burning and drowning all at once.
She steps back involuntarily. Here is a small portion of punishment to fit her momentary disobedience, by far the worst manifestation she has seen. Certainly worse then the torch-bearing arm from last Friday. Even worse than the time it had appeared as only a head with blackened lips and flaming eyes.
But the worst part is that she recognizes this thing. It is the dreadful what-if afterimage of the man with the messenger bag.
She steps back against the wall as the apparition floats into the center of the bathroom. It hovers there, just above the condoms. X marks the spot, she thinks with little mirth.
She wills herself to stare at it, to find her purpose, but it will not come. The thing is just too awful, her guilt over involving a stranger too strong. She narrows her focus, looking for the sharp anticipation that precedes the burnings.
At last, she finds a small spark of excitement. Holding on to it, she finally knows her target. Touching, passing through that cold burning apparition is almost more then she can do. But she continues through to the other side, the slimy feel of it sticking in her nose and throat as she emerges near the bathroom door.
Practicality returns as she plans the burning. With no kit and the biggest job yet before her she almost despairs. She will need more then just the matchbooks for this.
First she checks the trunk of the car for flammable materials. There are a couple of text books in the trunk and a metal coffee cup – no doubt the owner is taking night classes, trying to better his position in life. Judging by the age of the sedan it’s probably a good idea, and she is sorry to have to destroy the books.
She methodically tears the pages out, dumping half in each side of the restroom. Next, she unwinds all of the toilet paper until the floors are awash in gauzy white. All of the paper towels are next, thrown around a random and heaped up under the sinks. She searches around the trash bins and down by the shoreline, finding very little that will burn but cheered by the discovery of a length of rotten garden hose.
This she takes back to the car, planning to siphon gas from the tank into the metal coffee cup. It takes her five minutes of searching to figure out that the car has no gas tank release and all she has to do is flip open the little door.
Cursing the wasted time she hears a German-accented voice float up through her memory. “Never, ever, siphon by mouth,” says her high school chemistry teacher. It is unfortunate to have to disregard the only thing she retained from that class, but at least it reminds her to be careful.
The cup is filled again and again, until the smell of gasoline makes her woozy. The top layer of detritus in the bathrooms is at least damp in places, soaking through the tissue and into the paper below. She quickly finishes and is about to fish out her matches when she remembers one more item from third period chemistry. She moves to the sinks and carefully washes her hands with soap and water.
Standing outside the men’s room, she isn’t at all sure her plan will work. She isn’t even sure that the car has enough gas left in it to get her away from the scene and back to work. She strikes a match on the back cover, opens the book and lights one corner of the cardboard. She makes sure the flame takes before flinging it into the center of the bathroom. The reward is a great whoosh as the fire catches the fuel. Encouraged, she races to the ladies’ side and repeats the procedure. The fire catches here too.
Shaking herself free of the wonder of it, she retreats to the driver’s seat of the car and watches the flames rise up and show themselves at the tiny high windows which ring the bathroom. White-grey smoke curls from the doors, followed by a sound like popcorn in a microwave. Tiles exploding free of the walls and floor, she assumes.
Starting up the car she gazes longingly at the fire for another moment before backing out of the parking lot and turning towards the city. Flames now engulf the dingy, graffiti-stained building. Marvelous to behold creation.
The car does run out of gas on the return drive, but not until she is almost back to work. She coasts it into an alley and locks all the doors, putting the keys in the trunk last of all. No sense leaving it there just to have someone else steal it. She decides that a note of thanks to the owner would probably just make him mad, and walks the last few blocks to her office.
It is now well past five and getting dark. She slips into the building through the door next to the large revolving entrance. Even the newsstand proprietor is gone for the night, leaving the building all but empty. Security guards have already started rounds.
She hopes that the door to her own office has been left unlocked. Without the keys in her purse she can’t get into her apartment. The thought of the images she left on the garage’s security cameras make her feel exposed standing alone in lobby, loath to ask a night watchman for company. Better to take the stairs than to wait for the elevator.
Still, the exhilaration from the lakeside burning lingers in her mind. It makes confronting the empty corridors easier, the thought of discovery more palatable. But under it all she is starting to feel curiously dull, like a worn-out gear or a stripped bolt.
The burning had been big, and lovely, but the remorse is worse this time. Another thought hovers around the edges of her consciousness too: this is no longer even remotely in her control.
The Salamander's flames are cold on her flesh but she fears it has the power to make her watch, helpless, as it consumes another. Worse still, she fears that she would enjoy watching.
With this melancholy thought she creeps up the poorly lit stairwell, counting off the exit signs on each floor. The dark encourages her to climb faster, her breath coming hard from more then the exertion.
Something must be done about the Salamander. How had she ever let it go so far? How could she ever give it up?
At the top of the ninth flight she leaves the stairwell. Door after blankly closed door extend into the gloom, but at the end of the hall pale light spills from beneath the next to the last one – her office.
The muted light is yellow but not inviting. The last thing she wants now is to deal with a coworker, of all things. She listens outside the door for many minutes, straining to catch any sound from within. At last, her discomfiture at being found by a guard overcomes her trepidation.
Gathering her courage while feigning nonchalance, she goes over her story one last time (I got sick, had to leave quickly, forgot my purse...). She turns the knob and pushes the door inward.
No one is inside, and not a single light is on. The illumination is coming from her desk, behind the computer.
So soon! Not even a signal this time.
It looks beautiful, happy even. A reward for a job well done? But the light is still pale and sickly, forty-watt bulb through old-blinds yellow. The Salamander is pulsating in the center, moving between images: egg, larva, pupa, and beetle. Each flowing seamlessly into the next.
It floats above the desk now, moving towards the center of the room. In the clear area between work spaces it hovers at chest height, inviting.
She looks at it and knows. This will be a big job. It will free her; let her devote herself full time to starting fires. It won’t be easy. Her office is in a very large building. But she is smart, and tough, and there aren’t many people around at night. The security guards are bound to get out in time, once the alarms sound.
What a glorious burning. She can see it, taste the smoke, feel the heat. This creation will be supreme. She will feel like a goddess.
The Salamander waits, seductively small and playful. She steals herself and walks to the edge of its luminous penumbra.
Now or never, she thinks. It is passing through egg when she darts forward, hands cupped to encircle it. Now larva, slimy and almost weightless. On her hands, the sensation of damp shower door mildew.
Unflinchingly, she brings it up to her face. She opens her mouth, shoves it in, swallows hard to avoid gagging. The thing has no taste, just the feel of cold grease and soapy water.
She keeps her hands clamped over her mouth, fighting to keep it down. It struggles as she swallow again, but once inside her the Salamander feels as if it had never existed. She had expected pain, or cold, but instead she sits on the floor next to her desk and sucks on cough drop after cough drop, until she feels sick from the menthol instead, and she promises herself that as soon as she has the strength to stand she will throw away her Keds.
The author, Corinna Sara Bechko, is a wildlife rehabilatator with a degree in zoology. Her work will soon be seen in All Hollows and her story "Sooterkin" has been short-listed for the Aeon Award. She is currently working on a graphic novel with Gabriel Hardman, an illustrator on the upcoming Superman movie. When she isn't writing or being bitten by ungrateful sea gulls she and her husband are looking after their menagerie of four cats, two lizards, and one tarantula, all of which are ungrateful rescues themselves. She resides in Los Angeles. .
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