Prescribed Burn

Ms. Iosefka’s house stood at the end of the cul-de-sac, in a gated community near my Dad’s condo. Nondescript, with stucco walls and Spanish shutters. The standard Southwest feature set.

But her landscaping resisted.

While the other properties had yielded to AstroTurf during the drought, Iosefka’s yard remained an oasis, with a menagerie of eucalyptus trees, rose bushes, and birds of paradise. Algerian ivy gripped tight to the windows. A bed of trilliums covered half the garage door. Less a garden than an improvised jungle. I was surprised her HOA allowed any of it.

Inside, the rooms were near-empty. Cream walls and mahogany chairs. Barren shelves. No paintings. No tchotchkes. Not even a film of dust. Only a faded postcard of the Blessed Virgin, taped to the corner of the hallway mirror. The interior reminded me of a parish office. A place for whispered prayers and paperwork.

My Dad had lined up this house-sitting gig for me. A favor called in to extract me from his guest room. His friend-of-a-friend from pickleball league was the old lady’s accountant.

On my first day, I found a lone TV in the basement. Two folding chairs faced the screen side-by-side. Nothing else was down there.

I fiddled with the remote and a feed stuttered onscreen. Grainy trail cam footage. A clearing in an oak forest, viewed from above. Then a hard cut to a dimly lit burrow. A mother fox curled around her kits, their eyes glowing green in the night vision.

The video kept looping. Fifteen seconds forest, fifteen seconds fox den. I tried changing the channel. No cable. Just this private stream and nothing else.

I continued to watch, held still by the feed’s rhythm. The kits drank from their mother’s teats, and all I could think about was her warm milk. How it must taste sickly-sweet and gamey. A gust knocked a pair of pinecones to the ground. And outside, the wind howled in tandem.

After half an hour, I turned off the TV and went upstairs.

* * *

A knock at the door woke me from a nap on the plastic-wrapped divan. For a moment, I wasn’t sure where I was. The house stared back at me, blank-faced.

Another knock, this time louder. 

I pulled on a stained t-shirt and ran to the door.

A middle-aged man squinted at me through polarized frames. “How’s it going big guy?”

“Fine,” I said.

He wore a reflective red jersey, with seven white suns circling a gothic typeface that read: GREAT SPIRIT PANELING. “Is the homeowner here? Or maybe your mother?” He grinned. Veneers stretched his skin taut.

“No, I’m just house-sitting.” I fought the urge to slam the door.

“That’s a shame, especially with this heat wave. I was told the owner here was interested in solar power.” He bowed his head in mock-humility.

“Sorry. I don’t know anything about that.” 

“Mind if I come in and take a quick peek at the roof setup?” He leaned his freckled hand against the jamb, in a maneuver that felt playful. More gentleman's duel than home invasion.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable.” I pushed forward, until the door squeezed his knuckles. He sighed.

“I’ll try again next week.” He handed me a pamphlet. On the cover was a pinup robot-lady sunbathing.

I smiled and closed the door, locking the latch with a loud thud.

Upstairs, I watched him from the window. He didn’t solicit the house next door. Instead, he half-jogged to the cul-de-sac’s opposite end and vanished at the turn. A group of boys were playing soccer in the street. They chanted a schoolyard rhyme in the man’s direction, set to a tune I couldn’t quite place. A hooligan song, repurposed for the blacktop.

          No one likes us, no one likes us,

          No one likes us—we don't care!

          We are bad boys, super bad boys,

          We are bad boys—save your prayers!

* * *

Days passed and I fell into a familiar lull.

I’d wake up around eleven, sleeping in, but not late enough to signal a full-on episode. I’d drink two cups of coffee and scroll through headlines: Wildfires Blaze Across the County. Drought Continues With No Rain in Sight. Then I’d switch to the “For You” feed and soothe my caffeine jitters.

A run around the neighborhood followed. Past the school, the church, and the golf course. Back at the house, I’d strip naked and smell my clothes. My own musk both repulsed and thrilled me. I imagined love to be like this: an obsession with another's stink.

Afterwards, I’d stand naked in the mirror and admire my runner’s body: skinny, but not too skinny. Lean. I’d take photos, sixty or more, with subtle variations in lighting and position. On the couch in Ms. Iosefka’s robe, I’d sift through the pics, narrowing them down to ten selects.

By midday, a dull horniness would creep in. I’d reach for my phone. First: the dating apps, where my conversations were polite and aimless. 

Where are you from? 

What do you do? 

We should grab a drink sometime…

Eventually I'd fold and switch to phase two: the hookup sites. The “looking-for-now” ones. It was there I let the mask fall, my truest self a headless torso. 

location  

into

more pics

When I fell into this spiral, I’d give myself a firm ultimatum: find someone in an hour—or else. 

Or else what? I wasn’t sure. I never forced myself to find out.

Before bed, I’d check on the kits. Their eyes were just starting to open. They looked like old drunks, pawing at the dark, awoken from a wine-soaked stupor.

* * *

Men came and went from the house:

• The lawyer who wore a chastity belt under his khakis.

• The ER nurse who smelled of antiseptic and cried when I asked how his shift went.

• The yoga instructor who insisted on playing Sublime from his Android, mouthing the lyrics to “Santeria” as he pushed my head down: “What I really wanna say, I can't define…”

• The strawberry-blonde who wouldn’t let me finish, admitting he found sperm to be an "unclean substance.”

• The closeted swim coach who made me close my laptop, paranoid that I might be filming him.

• The 19-year-old go-go boy who hid an ankle monitor under one of his tube socks.

* * *

One of my last visitors was a Best Buy employee. He came straight from work, still in uniform, the royal blue polo tight across his chest. Auburn hair curled through his unbuttoned collar. Half a foot shorter than me, with his face slightly pinched, like a munchkin. Yet he had a masculine carelessness I was drawn to. I could tell he had horrible handwriting. Unreadable, most likely. 

We shared a glass of tap water in the kitchen.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m a philosophy student,” I lied, hoping to end the small talk.

He nodded. “Sick.”

I led him to the basement, where I’d set up an air mattress, afraid of soiling the sheets in the master bedroom. The Best Buy guy didn’t seem to care. We kissed hard. I bit his lip. He scraped his stubble against my neck, then pulled back.

“It’s too quiet down here,” he said. “The silence—it’s like roaring in my ears.”

I looked for my phone, annoyed.  But he’d already found the remote. 

“Let’s just turn this on.” He booted up the TV. Trail cam footage faded into focus. The kits were suckling.

“Whoa. Is this real?”

“I think so,” I said. “It's a live feed from a burrow, somewhere in the canyon.”

He watched the vixen stare into the lens. She offered the look all nursing animals give. A face that screams: God, why have you forsaken me?

Best Buy guy looked at me with concern. “You mean you don’t know for sure?”

“I don’t live here,” I admitted. “I’m just house-sitting.”

“I see.” He dropped the remote. “So whose house is this?”

“Some old lady’s. I’ve never met her.”

He nodded. “Sick.”

A moment later, his hands were around my neck.

“Open your mouth,” he said.

A glob of cold spit fell into my throat, tasting faintly of tobacco.

On the TV, just behind him, a pack of coyotes prowled through the underbrush. I tried to scream out and warn the mother. As if she might hear me through the screen. But the guy put his hand over my mouth.

“Not too loud,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to mess with nature.”

* * *

At some point, the world outside became unavoidable. The fires reached the next town over. Our neighborhood grew gray with soot.

The boys played soccer in N95s. I wore an industrial paint respirator on my run. Paper fell from the sky. Not ash, but burned-up junk from people’s homes: envelopes, receipts, tax returns, fortune cookie slips. The yellow haze over the golf course gave me an aesthetic jolt. I tried to take a video with my phone, but the camera app kept color-correcting the image. Its end-of-the-world quality was lost in playback.

Everyone in town still went about their little tasks. Women in visors sold doughnuts on the church steps. Landscapers raked charred leaves into discreet mounds. But when I saw the oak trees on the hillside burning, I sprinted home, my feet unsteady. As if I were being chased.

Inside, the house was dark. I raced down to the basement.

The trail cam flickered in the heat. A forest up in flames. And below, the burrow empty, save for one kit. It crawled naked in the dirt, its milk-white eyes searching for mother. Smoke rolled in. Trees collapsed.

I sat in one of the chairs and watched until the cameras melted.

* * *

I waited for the second knock before opening the door.

“Would you like to come in?” I asked. “I just made some coffee.”

The salesman lowered his sunglasses. “Sure. I can do that.” He paused to wipe the grime off his New Balances. The white suns on his uniform had browned with smoke. “I’m guessing you’ve reconsidered solar?”

I looked past him, to the soccer boys in the street. Shirts vs. skins. The team captains edged toward a fistfight, their insults muffled by masks. “Let’s talk inside.”

I pressed BREW on the Nespresso and watched him remove his mantis-like sunglasses. He looked younger than I'd thought—or better preserved. No real crags or creases. Botox, probably, but tastefully done. Salt-and-pepper hair in a perfect gradient.

“How do you take your coffee?" I asked.

“Black is fine.”

He sat at the kitchen island and looked out the window.

“You take good care of the garden.”

“Trying to, at least,” I said. “It’s a tall order.” In truth, I hadn’t watered the plants in days. Everything still appeared lush, untouched by ash. I handed the man a UCLA mug and met his gaze. His eyes were pale blue. Almost gray. I wondered if he was wearing colored contacts. Or maybe I’d never looked at him properly. 

“It’s a miracle this neighborhood survived,” he said. “Was touch-and-go there for a minute.”

I nodded. For the first time since adolescence, I felt malleable. Flames had cleared the canopy. New roots could finally take hold. 

“Did you get in touch with the homeowner?” he asked. “Because with all this dry heat, there’s no better time for solar.”

I didn’t flinch. “This is my house,” I said. “I am the homeowner.” 

The salesman looked at me, intrigued. He flashed his megawatt teeth. Bright and slick. As if they’d just been buffed.

“Can I show you something?” I asked. “It’s in the basement.”

“Of course you can,” he said, setting his coffee down. “You’re the man of the house, after all.”

Ryan D. Petersen is a writer living in New York City. His work has previously been published in Forever Magazine, Soft Union, Hobart, and Charm School. Follow him on Instagram or Twitter.