Baptized By Fire by Mark Manifesto

Baptized By Fire by Mark Manifesto

Green-stained glass, rustic chandeliers, and stained hardwood. Lacquered, beer-soaked and great for holding a steady burn. Beautiful. Even if it wasn’t the Irish flags that hung anymore and instead the proud colors of Mexico, the bones remained. Chet sipped his whiskey, listening to the conversation around the pool tables behind him. He didn’t speak much Spanish, but he knew enough to understand that the men in their denim jackets and knee-high socks were talking about him. He kept his face down, shadowed, ignoring the prison-tattooed glares. A ghost. That was always the goal. Just as important as the job. Well, maybe not as important. Without the fire, there was no Chet.

He placed a ten on the bar top, shouldered his bag, and headed to the bathroom. A quick glance around and he grinned. More hardwood and an interior door lock. He stood on the sink and twisted the smoke detector loose. It never failed to amuse him how few businesses actually put batteries in them. The faint hint of slots and card games rang from the basement below. They’d probably make it out.

Clear gasoline glugged from the bottle, trailing across the floor and up the walls. The scent rolled his eyes back and deepened the already pulsing need to get it going.

There was nothing so perfect, so pure, so strong as a match. A seed, a moon which pulled the tides. He stared at the wooden thing and its teardrop head of flame, and let it go. A quick inhale rang as the flames caught and spread.

Chet watched a moment longer but forced himself to turn, and, double-checking the handle was locked, walked calmly out the front door. Down the street and past the mural of Guadalupe, hands slick with sweat, heart hammering in anticipation, he slid into the front seat of his Civic. The spot wasn’t the best, but it still held a fine view of the corner.

First, a hurried trio of women burst out the front door, then the barman, and then throngs—likely from the basement. Black smoke danced in faint trails. A light glow at first, then a raging inferno. Chet’s teeth chattered in a strange swirl of ecstasy and reverence. A holy gift. Flames that brought ash back to the earth, wiped clean. Man’s greatest tool. What separated us from the animals.

Sirens sounded in the distance. He started the engine and spared one last glance at the towering crown of fire. He loved his work.

& & &

The lone light face amongst a room of ebony, Chet knew, wasn’t as nervous as he should’ve been. Nine millimeters, M10s, and ARs sat in clear view atop the dining and coffee tables alongside malt forties and weed particulate. Skunk smoke hung in a stagnant sheet below the roof.

Chet waited at the center of the room, arms behind his back, while Case stared at his phone awaiting confirmation. The girls on both sides rested their heads on his round shoulders, eating hot Cheetos and scrolling through their phones. His build was a reminder why he didn’t bother working out. Why work for what you can’t have?

A low-rider bumped by on the street, subs strong enough to shake the windows. Case took a joint from the round man in the recliner and nodded in affirmation of the received text.

“Good shit, Fireman,” he said, tossing his phone on the table and exhaling a cloud towards Chet.

Chet had his doubts that burning down the Despiadado’s little bar and casino would do much to change the tides of this small-scale drug war, but he didn’t really care. Hell, better for business if it didn’t. He looked around the house—the drywall, old carpets, junk everywhere. Probably some shoddy wiring. A lot like his childhood home in Atlanta.

The place would burn nicely.

One of the men at the living room table stood and slapped the dominos off the table. “Fuck this!”

Case offered Chet the joint, but he turned it down. Tobacco, sometimes heroin, but there was too much going on in his head already to twist in a new layer of paranoia.

“He’s all business,” Case said, with a smirk. “Zip, go grab his money.”

A man at the domino table with a scar down his cheek started down the hall.

“Any trouble?” Case asked.

Words were difficult for Chet. They had been since he was a preteen. They felt like atoms in a particle collider, always knocking each other out of reach. He shook his head.

“You think anyone made you?” Case asked.

“No.”

Zip returned with a rubber-banded mass of hundreds. “You better hope,” Case said. “Those cabrones don’t mess around. Goddamn savages. Medieval torture and shit.”

“Old Testament,” Zip affirmed.

“Worse.”

A harsh rhythm beat through Chet’s head. “I said I didn’t get made!”

Silence. A room full of eyes upon him, surface-level consideration of violence. The bulbous man in the recliner stood and drew inches from his face. Chet’s fist balled, but if it came to it, he wasn’t sure he could throw.

“Leave it, Marcus,” Case said. “He didn’t mean nothing by it. Right?”

Chet swallowed his fear and whispered, “Right.”

Case handed him the money, and he tucked it into his pack. He usually liked to check to make sure it was all there, but what was he going to do if it wasn’t? Better to know in private. He had the man’s address.

With a slight nod, he turned. The men parted at the door and he stepped into the night’s embrace, glad to be a shadow once more.

& & &

He didn’t even like instant ramen, but he didn’t like cooking either, especially not on induction burners—it was hard to find gas in the greater LA area. He stared at the broth, thinking of the bar, the smell of melting plastic and charred steel. He couldn’t wait until summer when the hills dried out. The last time had been something. A raging inferno forty feet high, little critters running from the blaze, small shooting stars. Just like Mom. That glorious angel running through the front door. He hadn’t understood as a kid—hell, back then it seemed like a nightmare—but he did now. That was the way to go. Jess and Tony said he was fucked up, but not as fucked up as turning their brother out when he needed them most, when love had abandoned and stripped him bare, when the police were hunting like the dogs they were, when he just needed a place to sleep for a few nights as he figured out his next move.

The anger left his chest tight and his stomach too sick to eat. He emptied the soup into the sink, downed half a bottle of Everclear, and lay down in bed. Within the blank and spinning ceiling, he watched the avenues of time, but more than anything, he imagined how the paint would bubble under heat. His eyes fell shut and, regardless of the parched mouth and throbbing head, he fell blissfully into another world.

A ghost of a man, Chet stood in the living room and watched his younger self crash monster trucks on the carpet while Jess and Tony argued over the remote. Cold whiskey stones clinked within their father’s glass in the other room as he read the paper. Mom’s door was closed, already asleep after a battle with a harsh migraine. He’d seen it all a thousand times. As always, what interested him most was the starting pistol.

Heat lines waved over the carpet. Flaring sparks from mice-gnawed wires. Light embers worked their way through the foundation, which, once they hit the chemically treated carpet, burst into glorious flame. Like a landslide, the fire rolled across the floor and up the walls. His dad jumped up and screamed across the engulfed hallway. With no success, he shouted the children out of their petrified shock and forced them out the front door. The ghost of Chet stood amidst the inferno, watching his grandfather’s home burn without feeling. The master bedroom door opened and his mother met the wall of flame with slack-jawed horror. His father’s voice rang from the backyard as he pounded on the iron-barred windows.

Something tensed within Chet’s stomach, his heart sped. His mother pursed her lips, looked back to the caged windows, and, with a running start and a comforter as a shield, raced through the hall. He stepped aside and watched her go, the tail end of her nightgown already caught and quickly rising. Out through the front door and into the night, a heavenly sun to herself. On the curb, he saw his own stupefied face.

From the heart of the inferno, he realized he was dreaming. There didn’t have to be firefighters if he didn’t want them, and there weren’t. The flames crept across the lawns and over the surrounding houses, embers in the wind, drifting about the neighborhood until the whole place was raging orange. A great wave rolling out from the suburbs and over the entirety of Atlanta. The cinder capital of the world, seen from space, where the swell continued to race the world until it was all pure and bright.

Chet woke in a sweat, caught his breath, and lit a cigarette. He lay back, watching the orange tip, and thought how that was the best dream he’d had in some time.

& & &

This is heaven. Oil-stained rags hung from the workbenches, the high-pitched whining of a spinning saw, sparks flaring from the heart of a rusted Mustang, the smell of lacquer and heavy paint strong in the air.

The shop owner closed the door to his office and sat at his desk, anxiously smoothing his mustache. Chet waited with his arms over his lap. Most don’t have experience in his field. In that regard, he understood the man’s trepidation, but you never make the proposition yourself.

“My friend told me you helped him out last year,” the owner said.

Chet nodded. “How’s he been?”

“Knee-deep in ass and sporting a Brazilian tan.”

“That’s how it goes.” The majority of the time, everyone comes out on top—except the insurance companies.

“If you did… it,” the owner said, “what’s the likelihood it would come back to me?”

Chet looked at the shop through the window. Unlike his work with the Despiadados, nuisance was usually key, but in a place like this—old tools and appliances, stripped wire, outlets barely holding on—it wouldn’t be hard.

“When did you purchase your policy?” Chet asked, clearing the mucus from his throat and lighting a cigarette.

“Three years ago.”

“You’ll be fine.”

A conflicted smile tightened his features. “So how much?”

Chet flicked the ash onto the carpet. “Ten grand.”

“For starting a fire? Seriously?”

He stood. “Then do it yourself.”

“Wait!” Outside of professional expertise, what Chet brought was a buffer between ‘good’ people and what they really were. He remained over his seat until—

“Alright,” the owner sighed. “Ten grand.”

Chet exhaled a cloud of tasteless smoke and sat.

“When can I expect it?” the man asked, a gurgle of indigestion in his hanging stomach.

“When do you want it?”

He massaged the sunken caves that were his eyes and said, “We’re closed this Sunday. Can you do it then?”

The cigarette hissed in the glass of water on the desk. “Saturday night. It gives an air of plausibility. Make sure no one’s here. Your claim is going to get a lot more complicated if someone dies.”

“Alright,” the owner said, a sheen of sweat mounting over his pink face. “Jesus Christ. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Nothing wrong with falling on your ass,” Chet said. “Might as well get something out of it.”

The man’s fist tightened into a trembling white ball. “Yeah…” But he didn’t quite believe it—he would when he was napping in Hawaii six months from now.

“Naturally,” Chet said, “all cash. And I suggest you start taking out smaller amounts now. It looks less conspicuous when they look through your bank records.”

His complexion went pallid.

“Breathe,” Chet said. “After I walk out that door, just pretend you’ve never met me. Tragedy will strike and you’ll misplace ten grand. As long as you don’t mention me, you don’t actually know anything.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding himself into belief.

“Keep an eye out for a blocked number next week,” Chet said, rising to his feet. “I’ll call and let you know where to drop it.”

His head bounced like a bobblehead.

“Congratulations, Ken,” Chet said. “You’re going to be a rich man.”

Chet strolled out of the office, through the car elevators, and into the daylight. The sun bounced harshly off the parking lot’s asphalt and forced him to hide his face. He spat a glob of brown mucus and pulled his Civic out of the lot.

Down Coliseum, his attention pivoted to the tinted Camaro behind. It rumbled forward and pulled to a stop at the light. Chet stared into the black window, seeing nothing, but unable to shake the feeling that someone was staring back. He checked the antennas, the types of rims, the fenders. But nothing unusual.

The light changed and it pulled off to the right. Non-exempt plates, but that didn’t always tell the story. A chopper thudded in the distance. He heated his cigarette lighter and went westward with the wind. Something about those orange rings helped calm his soul.

&& &

Goopy egg noodles floated alongside chunks of chicken that reminded him of cat food. It wasn’t that bad. Cat food, that is.

Chet doused the Campbell’s with Scorpion Sauce until the broth was nuclear red. He drank half and washed the burn with a Coors. Sweat beading on his brow, he lit a cigarette and opened the window. The concrete jungle stretched on to infinity with its flickering street lights and cracked asphalt. What if? What if he had finished high school? What if it’d worked with Danielle? Would he still be in Atlanta, sitting around a table for Thanksgiving? Sweaters and Christmas? Sirens rang around the corner and shot past in pursuit of an SUV. He sighed in relief and breathed in the sweet and unwanted scent of rain.

His phone buzzed atop the table. Like most of his calls, it was an unknown number.

“Yeah?” Chet asked, pinching a cube of chicken out of the soup.

“Is this Chester Benowitz?” the woman asked.

He froze. No one knew his full name.

“Hello?” the woman asked.

“Wrong number—”

“Wait!” she said. “That’s you, Chet.”

A cramp swelled in his throat.

“Jessica?” he whispered.

“Oh my God,” she said, her voice trembling. “It’s really you.”

“How did you get this number?” Chet asked, his vision beginning to throb.

“You didn’t make it easy,” she said with a giddy laugh.

Almost fifteen years and he still didn’t know what to say. “What do you want?” he asked.

The sharp tone caught her off guard. “I want to hear your voice.”

“…”

“We miss you.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Tony and me. We’ve spent a lot of money trying to track you down.”

It felt like the room was shrinking. He checked to make sure the door was locked.

“Why?” he growled.

“Because you’re our brother,” she said with an edge of impatience.

“And?”

“We’re supposed to take care of each other.”

“Really?” he whispered, a sting in his eyes.

“Of course.”

“Always?”

She seemed to sense something. “… Like when you have nowhere to go? When your life is falling apart?”

Her sobs rang softly from the other side. “I wish I could take it back. We were scared. We didn’t understand.”

His jaw clenched hard.

“You killed a man,” she said under her breath.

“I didn’t know anyone was in there!”

“I know. I know… but I mean… why? What’s the point?”

Already at it.

“Bye, Jess.”

“Wait! Chet, I’m sorry. I don’t want to… I just want things to be alright again.”

“They are.”

“Come home.”

“I am home.”

“You can’t have a home without family.”

“How do you know I didn’t make one?”

“Did you?” she asked. “… I’ve heard some things.”

His hand tensed into a trembling claw.

“Why do you do it?” she asked, a soft hurt in her voice.

“What?”

“Is it so you can feel in control? Like if you started it, the fire’s yours?”

The need to pace overcame him. Back and forth across the room, shaking his head.

“Was it drugs?”

This bitch.

“Revenge?”

He was going to find out where she lived.

“You can’t take back what happened,” she said.

Chet leaned against the wall, seething, and said through his teeth, “I don’t want to take anything back.”

“… You were closer to Mom than any of us. I know it hurt more than you let on.”

Pain flared through his hand as it drove into the drywall. “You don’t know shit, Jess! I do what I do because it’s who I am. I started that fire because I felt like it. That building was useless and I wanted to see it burn. It’s as simple as that. It’s not my fault some asshole was sleeping in there.”

“You really believe that?”

“I don’t need to believe. And I don’t need you to either.”

“… Let us help you.”

“Fuck off, Jess. Don’t call again.”

“You’re in LA.”

“…”

“I’m coming out.”

Fear struck him cold. He tried and failed to breathe. “Pray I never see you again.”

Pure silence. A well-landed blow. For a moment, he hung on, unable to end the call, but he forced his thumb down and that was it. Chet grabbed his bowl and hurled it. Porcelain shattered in sharp chunks and soup splattered against the wall. His face burned and spittle foam sprayed from his lips.

“Fuck!”

He paced to the window and watched the downpour. A goddamn mockery, a knife in his side. So he had to keep all this in him now? What would burn in weather like this? There was something, the only something. A tremor rolled down to his fingers.

Shaking in his bed, the flame licked the smooth metal black. Relief in the form of bubbling amber over a hot spoon. A light tingle played from the rubber tie-off and the needle slipped effortlessly into the bulging blue vein. Suddenly, things weren’t so bad. A heavenly warmth like a weighted blanket, cookies, and Mom’s hug after the worst day of your life. His head rolled back, limp and beyond his control, and he rode the euphoria into the dark.

…

A tender voice he hadn’t heard in so long said, “You’re a star, Chet.”

What was that?

Lazy and reeling from a world beyond, arms too heavy to move, Chet’s eyes fluttered to darkness. Hard to place at first through the veil of night, a shadowed outline stood over his bed. There was no immediate response, cognitive or emotional, just perplexity, the sorting of realities.

“Buenos días, hijo de puta,” the shadow said.

Chet made out the nine-millimeter barrel hovering over his head. A harsh chill left him pale, and his gaze turned to the other shadows lined at the foot of the bed. Black jackets, pants, and gloves. They didn’t bother with masks. Instinct took hold and he shot up, but the harsh crack of the pistol’s butt against his skull sent stars through his vision and blood down his brow. The men were quick to move on his gaunt limbs, pinning and tying them with asphyxiating pressure to the sides of the bed. Panic fueled the beat of his heart and forced out high-pitched pleas for innocence, forgiveness, and mercy.

Calloused knuckles tore at the flesh of his face. Harsh cracks from metal bats. Blood flowed and stung his eyes. He pulled at the restraints futilely, wailing in a pitch he didn’t know he had in him. Pain stabbed from the hurried and irregular beat of his heart.

A moment of calm arose; the blows halted, and the men caught their breath. The only sound was his breathless sobs. Then, a familiar glugging. High-octane ambrosia soaked the bed. He drew a patchy and insubstantial breath as he watched the sole break in the darkness, a flickering match head that transmuted one of the faces into the likeness of a smiling devil.

“Disfruta, Bombero.”

For a fleeting moment, the fear escaped him. What could be better? Why hadn’t he thought of it before? All his worries and pain, his imperfections. Burned clean.

He closed his eyes and smiled. With a light huff, the flames breathing in the room’s air, the sheets burst into tongues of power. Quick to engulf his clothes and swallow him whole, Chet’s screams rang hoarse and torturous. An agony he’d never known, the sort of pain that didn’t seem plausible. The wicked crackle of his skin melded with the hiss of the roof catching. The white paint cindered and bubbled like boiling water, but soon there was nothing but fire, then nothing at all.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Mark Manifesto 2025