Dale comes swinging in through the double doors in a cloud of smoke and I tell you,
I’ve had long-burnt chips in the oven that’ve smelled better than that. So I ask him,
“Dale, how’d it go in there?” and he says, “Oh dandy, Chris, just fine. Like a furnace
as always, but just fine.”
I can see his goggles have gone and he’s covered in soot, but his hood’s still on and
he’s all suited up, so it must have been an okay run. I stick the air conditioning on
high. Dale hands me his metal box and takes off his gloves, and I offer him the fat-
nozzle hose and turn on the tap for him.
“You save the girl?” I ask.
He’s got a face full of water and it’s running grey and murky down his chin.
“I said, you save the girl then?” The twitch of a grin on his mouth tells me, yes.
“Good on you Dale,” I say, taking off my shoes. “I heard it was a real tough job, that
the girl was all blocked-in and difficult to get to.”
“Well,” he says, wiping his face and beginning to unzip his thick suit. “It doesn’t
often go well around here, but when it does, it goes real well.”
I nod. He’s not wrong, not in this line of work anyway. I take my suit from its hanger
and begin to unzip it down the front, and when I turn around Dale’s managed to get
his hood off and he’s opening his mouth to say something.
“What?” He asks. I begin to laugh.
“What, what?” He’s looking about him like his back is on fire. I just go on laughing
because with his hair-cap still on, Dale’s head looks almost exactly like an egg.
“Dale,” I say, wiping tears from my eyes. “You’ve singed your eyebrows off.”
His eyes widen, and his mouth too, and after a minute he hurries over to the desk
by the door and starts opening-up the drawers, rummaging around. I’m laughing
so hard by now that I can hardly get my legs into the suit, let alone zip it up, but
somehow I manage. When he finally finds what he’s looking for - a small mirror in
the third drawer down — he just stands there.
SINGED
Flash fiction by Jessica Kashdan-Brown
Illustration by Matthew Brazier