The Fires Of San Francisco

As the fires in San Francisco flooded the night sky with ashes, and as the glow of their hell tinted the entire sky a golden red, he sat on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, watching in silence. With one arm wrapped tightly around the support beam, his eyes flickered from the flames to the burning clouds, to the heat-bent reflections of the Bridge in the bay. With the back of his free hand he rubbed his dry eyes. Then he put the lighter away, and slid off the beam. He was only glad that the roar of the fire and crumbling buildings blocked out the screams of the dying.

He had known that there were people in San Francisco whose presence he would have enjoyed. But their loss was a small price to pay for the termination of countless assholes who he knew he could no longer tolerate. It had become too much. He had known then that no God would have meant for these cruelly apathetic people to exist. He had known that all these stupid, ignorant men, women and children were an accident, an error in the divine plan. He tried to convince people of this, that there wasn’t room in this world for even small acts of evil, but everywhere he turned his cries were muffled by the mindless denials of evil in human nature; he was outnumbered by the cretins. The only way to make things right would be to lower the ratio.

It really wasn’t difficult to plan; the idiots were too naïve to contemplate a situation in which a person like him could arise. Simple tools, simple actions, and what could they do? He would admit, however, that some of them were more intelligent than the others. This is why he had to do it all at once. A string of incidents would be enough to reach through their thick skulls and they would recognize that something was up. Not that something was wrong, he clarifies, because what he was doing was right.

He planned it all for a winter evening. Better it should be done in the winter, when the days are crisper, when it’s easier to think. Easier for him to think, rather. They would be all bundled up in their coats, hiding from the outside, ignoring their surroundings, trying to creep back into the simple oblivion of the womb. If only they knew how close they really were. Except it wouldn’t matter. They couldn’t appreciate it.

He planned it for a winter evening, and just a few days away from then. He spent a few dollars on his tools, then drove to San Francisco. He liked driving; he liked to imagine that the people driving their vehicles in orderly, straight lines, stopping at the correct lights and following the correct procedures were considerate people. Enjoyable people. Worthwhile people. In the back of his mind there was always a little voice reminding him of the ratio, that it was very unlikely they were really like him, that they were probably with the majority, probably as useless and blind as the children he had grown up around.

It was only a matter of hours before all of downtown San Francisco was in flames, but after that it diffused into the rest of the city in only minutes. At the height of the conflagration, only the gardens in Golden Gate Park were unburned. As he got out of his car to climb up the side of the bridge, not bothering to lock the door, he felt a pang of sorrow knowing that the plants would be covered in ash, and there would be no one to clean it off.