June 3, 1984
Flames crackled as another creased photograph fluttered through the stagnant air and down into the fire, snapshots of faces forever lost in time abruptly devoured by dancing strips of irresistibly entrancing plasma. Forever famished, this fire would finally feast today, rapidly fueled by combustible memories as it grew from a fetus of a flame into a mature inferno, whispering in a destructive language only Shirley and her unfortunate son could hear. Every single picture ensnared by those seductive strips of seemingly harmless light was instantly bitten apart by fanged flames, faded faces disappearing nearly as quickly as they'd been captured by that confounded camera. Bride-to-be Judy in an ugly homemade dress vanished into the hungry fire, erasing that day when the brunette had stood at an empty altar while ardently hoping that faceless man had truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and was just running late, only to keep her waiting all alone for hours on end with only Shirley and a wilted bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers for company; those empty pews had stared back with a silent intensity, reminding both young women forever bearing their maiden names of how many people were missing from their lives and how they were both worth no more than the warmth of their purchasable bodies. Whipping bursts of flame eagerly chewed on a pair of bored toddlers photographed at a tedious funeral hardly a week after their mothers had washed up in a neighboring town, Shirley and Judy having been way too young to understand the impact of death but extremely aware of how much it hurt knowing that their mothers had gone to great lengths just to avoid them; for the rest of their lives, those toddlers would grow up wondering why they hadn't been good enough for their mothers to at least give a proper goodbye and begging stone-deaf graves to know what they had done to deserve being forced to stay in the houses of mean strangers who hurt them in ways that were never shown in cinemas. Starving wisps of light ate into the faces of two regretted babies pictured laying side by side, the boys supposedly too ugly to stand a chance for adoption but too insignificant to even bother properly naming since they already at least had last names, though one of Judy's uncles had called the larger baby "an ugly little butthead" which had made the infant giggle and accidentally solidified a permanent nickname; though they didn't believe that they had ever been loved by their own mothers and had learned the hard way that not even children could make men want to stay with them, both Shirley and Judy had covertly hoped that at least they would be able to love these boys if they bought a house to keep the children in and somehow managed to finally get themselves clean, but the latter obviously never came to be and those children never did get to be loved, just like the previous generations had never been. Painfully bright strips of flame licked away the rumpled faces of two immature men whose names two dumb hick women had forgotten but had put their trust in a few years ago, the two men that Shirley and Judy had dared to dream of building lives with rather than just passing by without a second glance like they did to so many of the people who only saw flesh and who they had learned to never trust; naturally, the deepest response the women had gotten out of the two men had been a "cool" and laughter when revealing they were with child, as if they truly meant so little that not even children could prevent anybody from abandoning them just like everybody always did. Searing heat sliced through a crappy house Judy and Shirley had pooled money for together along with a few bribes, the house where they hoped they could return to one day when they were finally clean and sober enough to properly raise children who would have to raise themselves for the time being, foster care far too cruel an option to consider; obviously, neither mother had ever been able to break free of the alcohol and drugs they had tethered themselves to by their early teens, instead finding some semblance of control and a horrifyingly addicting sense of power they had never had before by slipping into that dreadful house at odd intervals between stints at rundown motels and waking to find their children injured in unimaginable ways, the women's exact actions lost to memory warped by intoxication but undeniably their own doing. Wholly consumed by flame and spat out as ash, picture by picture, years of memories that would never actually be forgotten physically dwindled away as Shirley fueled a fire that had been waiting far too long to be fed. Just because she would always remember everything didn't mean that she needed to have those stupid pictures staring back at her every single time she glanced at where they had hung on the kitchen wall adjacent to the stove before she'd torn them down with reckless abandon and doused a few unused newspapers she'd never even subscribed to in lighter fluid. Emptiness still sat far too heavily in her bosom, but at least those stupid pieces of bygone people who had changed or died that she shouldn't have cared about, especially herself, would no longer stare back at her and mock the voices that had already taken over her head years ago. Life was a game and death was the prize. Ever the contrarians, Shirley and Judy had always feigned immortality and refused to play along. Those stupid pictures could go die in a fire.
"Fire," Shirley whispered through cracked lips as sweat trickled down her brow and stung her eyes, dull irises long reduced to a shade of gray now reflecting the blazing light before her. "Fire." Stupid pictures. Shirley had always hated pictures. She had always hated pictures ever since she had been given her first and only camera. Sweat dripping down her nose and greasy curls plastered to her damp forehead, she tossed in the last photographs she had ever taken as she repeated that beautiful word over and over, watching those wretched pieces of paper instantaneously curl up and blacken just before the jaws of fire bit down. "Fire." She hated those pictures. She hated those snapshots in time. She hated having her own face staring back at her, a ghost of a person whose old dreams never came true. She hated keeping tangible memories of people who never failed to change under the pressing burden of time. She hated preserving the faces of children that she and Judy could have loved, could have, but never would. She hated seeing silent reminders of the two dead women who were supposed to have been mothers but had abandoned her and Judy at a strange house without warning instead. Whoever had even invented the camera in the first place could gladly go to Hell, for all she cared. Now that every single picture she had ever taken had decayed into ash just like incomplete birth certificates- in the decrepit community hospital Shirley and Judy had both wound up at when the sons they weren't even sure they were going to keep had finally decided to exit the womb much to the world's chagrin, all unnamed babies born there were procedurally listed as "Infant" along with their mothers' last names for the sake of Texan documentation- and expired if not outright invalid licenses had, Shirley begrudgingly tore her eyes away from her one true friend, the fire, and redirected her attention to the cheap yet miraculously functional camera at her feet while her son chittered away from some nearby spot in the barren backyard; Judy had to cover for a shift at the local market for at least another hour and Butt-Head was spending the day with one of his grand-aunts, leaving Shirley to deal with Beavis all on her own since the little human version of the Tasmanian Devil had earned a complimentary "day off" from that childrens' church camp for, well, remarkable behavior. Looking down at the cracked, dry ground, cheap plastic and metal glinted dully in the sun, the camera patiently waiting for what would come next. Without a second thought, she hastily grabbed it and tossed it into the fire, laughing a little too hard as the device popped and hissed, plastic melting as the stupid camera burned to death like a history book's village outcast bound to a stake. Her cousins and Judy's siblings could take all the pictures they wanted, but she had forbidden them from bringing any pictures into the house, not that anybody ever actually visited; since Cheryl and Josephine had brought insurmountable shame to their bloodlines by committing suicide and had subsequently destroyed any chance of their daughters having a meaningful bond with their blood family, the main contact Shirley and Judy had with their remaining biological relatives primarily consisted of minimally terse conversations resulting in leaving Beavis or Butt-Head at a relative's house for indeterminate periods of time at odd intervals, along with the very rare trip to an unmentionable institution where two shattered veterans rotted away under the apathetic care of bored female orderlies who the boys mistook to be grandmothers despite an obvious age gap between employee and ward. Until she and Judy would finally leave this town for good with absolutely no intention of bringing along the children they had failed to love, there would be no more photographs allowed in this reprehensible household. No more photographs. No more pictures. No more memories. No more ghosts. Nothing would be left behind but ash and flames. Nothing but ash and flames.
"Grapes!" Beavis eagerly exclaimed as he crouched down and shoved a crumbling clump of dried clay soil into his mouth before promptly spitting it out; the ground did not, in fact, taste very good, despite how often he saw birds peck at it in the mornings. Still, it was hard to pass up an opportunity for saying "grapes" just like he had learned to do ever since he had started going to that church camp thingy during the day so his mother could tend to boring "grown up stuff" during the day. Those grumpy old ladies at the children's church camp said that everybody needed to say "grapes" every single time before eating, and although Beavis had never been very keen on following instructions or remembering such insignificant pleasantries, it was just such a silly and fun thing to say that he couldn't resist retaining such valuable information for his own personal use; for some reason, everybody at that retreat thingy always gave him weird looks whenever he said "grapes" before meals despite them having insisted he do just that, but maybe they were just surprised that he knew how to follow their rules since he rarely did that. Rubbing the bridge of her nose as he drifted closer to her, Shirley roughly shoved him away, not wanting to listen to any of the nonsense he had picked up from those churchgoers no matter how far off he actually was from religious rhetoric. She didn't necessarily have anything against churchgoers in general aside from their prying questions about her son's suspicious bruises, but the worst foster parents whose rough hands she had ever been subject to had ironically been adamant churchgoers who clearly hadn't followed a single word of what they parroted and preached; after enduring years of unapologetic blows from blunt objects and nasty fingers in all of the wrong places, she had tried to distance herself from pretty much any religious community, though she had ended up having to send her nightmare of a son to a summer camp hosted by a church since the toddling disaster of a kid had somehow managed to get himself kicked out of all of the other local camps the previous summer. Kicking a beige rock in no particular direction, Shirley watched the fire intently as she tuned out the boy's extremely misguided ramblings about his religious interpretations, listening to those secret whispers of a language only she and her idiot son could understand, those dark voices that were indecipherable to outsiders slowly filling up her head with an unforgivably stark clarity that was destined to entirely drown her mind not far long in the future despite the aid of cheap alcohol and occasional narcotics. Drinking and whatnot did help Shirley as well as it helped Judy, which was something that was better than nothing, but inebriation was frustratingly temporary and lasted nowhere near long enough for either of them; waking up dead sober under the expectation to live another day happened far too often for their liking and it never failed to crush their hearts in a way that nearly felt as if they'd been struck in the chest by the most ruthless of bullets. All they could do was drown themselves in a substance-induced stupor because it was the only way either bygone daughter cheaply preserved in the buyable bodies of women socially deemed worthless could bear to live, even at the expense of their decidedly unwanted sons' wellbeing; escaping reality had become a much more dire priority over nurturing the two new lives the women had only conceived in fruitless hopes of being seen by the men around them as more than just a pair of warm bodies, Judy seeking to forget how she could only be tolerated at best and never loved, not even by her own deadbeat mother who had ditched her at a cheerless house with the neighbor's kid Shirley like they were unwanted sacks of garbage, and Shirley herself yearning to drown out the cacophony of grotesque delusions that lived in her head and somehow always seemed to come true, the mental monsters that had terrorized her ever since she was a little kid showing no signs of letting up anytime soon and more than likely to only worsen the longer her heart continued to beat. Shirt clinging to her sweaty back and cranium throbbing with overheated blood, Shirley stood cotton-mouthed beneath the unrelenting sun as she stared into the blazing fire that had destroyed every single photograph she had ever taken with that wretched camera that had once been held by a woman who hadn't even hesitated to ditch her daughter with the crappiest caretakers possible. Fire was the only true constant in her life that she could actually rely on. Judy had always been nearby if not directly with her even if they occasionally got split into different foster homes as kids, but Judy wasn't reliable in the slightest; in fact, neither woman had ever been dependable enough to keep each other sober and sane, and they definitely weren't dependable enough to keep their own sons actually healthy. People were just inherently unreliable, that's what Judy and Shirley had learned, at least in essence, by the time they had gone to their very first day of kindergarten while wearing shoddy backpacks and fresh bruises. People were inherently unreliable, so surely fire had to be the exact opposite. After all, fire was one of the few things that could still bring Shirley comfort so many years later. Unlike people, fire didn't hit, yell, or touch without her permission. Unlike people, fire spoke to her gently in a voice nobody else her age could ever understand, reassuring her about private matters she would take to the grave and telling her what she needed to do when she was at a loss. Unlike people, fire had guided her through her tumultuous life even when she had spent three months on the streets without so much as a pair of socks to her name, Judy apparently having drawn the line at bringing stolen cocaine into the house one time as if the hypocrite didn't smuggle bootleg liquor into the house every single weekend since neither woman had carried valid identification that year. Unlike people, fire brought her a special sort of companionship that would forever burn somewhere in her brain and never fizzle out, keeping the not-so-nice friends in her head a little too warm and comfortable to leave. Of course, that was one downside, but those gorgeous flames were just too beautiful to ignore. Burning her life into ash was nearly an addiction, really. Every single time she needed something gone or just itched for something to do, fire had always been the answer. Always. Even now, standing beneath a sun that could and could completely thaw out deep-frozen bone-in chicken within minutes, Shirley was captivated by the blazing storm willingly borne of her own sweaty hands and a battered box of matches while her intolerable failure of a child flitted about the dead yard between bouts of spectating by her side.
"Grapes!" Beavis happily repeated between giggles for the umpteenth time that day, trying to catch a fat fly lazily hovering nearby in his mouth and failing miserably. He had just seen a gecko eat a fly, so he really wanted to find out if flies actually taste good or if geckos are just too hungry to care about what they eat, but it turned out that flies move super duper fast. Flies suck! They probably didn't even taste that good anyway. Flies were probably like gross vegetables for poor geckos who had nothing better to eat since there weren't any gecko grocery stores with special food just for geckos that still tasted good, like maybe gecko cookies, gecko candy, or even gecko soda. How would geckos drink soda anyway? That would be really cool to find out. Beavis made a mental note to himself to share his chicken nuggets and maybe a can of soda with the local gecko population later and proceeded to instantly forget his thoughtful plan as he tripped over one of those chunky rocks sticking out of dirt as dry as an opossum's skeleton that had picked clean by vultures, landing hard on his knees but restraining himself from letting out any vocal noises since crying or whining was equivalent to a death sentence when his mother or one of her boyfriends were around. Staggering back onto his feet with scraped knees coated in dirt that stung uncomfortably as he forced himself not to cry or whine, Beavis wandered over to one of the massive anthills and contemplated whether he should stomp on it since Butt-Head wasn't around to smack him for having fun. Stretching his jaws wide open as he felt a yawn coming on, Beavis crouched down and ended up huffing air at a nearby anthill as forcefully as he could manage instead, pretending he was a fire-breathing dragon destroying everything in his way. It would be so cool if he did turn into a dragon one day and could fly around, burning down the whole town. There would be fire everywhere, and people would be running around screaming, and he would get to fly, and he could knock buildings over, and maybe he could make the whole world explode! Wandering around and fantasizing about life as a dragon while his mother's fire gradually died down in the center of the yard, he turned his head slightly as he heard the back door squeak open before promptly getting distracted by a discarded cardboard box that would make a really neat hat. Extending a tiny hand as he reached down, Beavis jerked upright as Butt-Head pulled him back by the shirt collar. Naturally, Ms. Beavis and her son had lost track of time to the mesmerizing lure of fire, as evident by Shirley's surprised expression when she turned her head to see that Ms. Head had apparently gotten off of work quite a while ago and had already picked up Butt-Head from one of his grand-aunt's houses. According to the little mister, he'd spent the day with Aunt Mallory, who actually was a biological relative since some of his "aunts" were just an occasional friend Judy picked up here and there, though the little boy was too young and dense to understand or care about the technicalities of family trees that not even Judy herself fully understood at times; an aunt was an aunt, and all aunts kind of sucked since every single aunt he had ever had only liked watching purportedly boring stuff on TV, as per his highly esteemed opinion. While Butt-Head scuffled with a very sweaty and sunburnt Beavis because the former had been cooped up with dumb old Aunt Mallory all day long and needed to do at least one fun thing before he went completely insane from boredom, Judy kicked aside the dingy box and examined the aftermath of Shirley's latest bonfire. Judy didn't exactly understand fire the same way Shirley did, but she never protested the latter's choices, not even when she had returned from work and had seen the obscenely naked kitchen wall. They had only been pictures, after all. No big deal. Suck it up and take a drink, that was what she had always done and that was what she would always do. Besides, it was probably better that way. The less pieces they left of themselves behind, the better. Though the kids were still pretty young, Judy had already begun contemplating leaving, and she could only imagine that the boys wouldn't like having reminders of their mothers around. Not after the sorts of things they had done to their sons in drug-addled stupors and drunken dazes. As addicting as it could be to finally have power even if it was over someone so small and helpless, waking up sober only to find toddlers bruised and bloodied would never be as exhilarating as that momentary haze of violence. Never. Even if the boys had never been given proper first names, they were still children, and children felt pain. Judy and Shirley both knew very well that children could feel pain, and that was why it hurt so unbearably much to know that they were the ones responsible for their sons' pain. These women hadn't silently endured years of unspeakable suffering under all of the wrong caretakers just to turn around and become the monsters they had always feared. That would be a fate worse than death, yet it seemed that they had already begun digging their early graves. Never having done a single thing right in their entire lives, Shirley and Judy never failed to surprise themselves at how much worse they could get. Sometimes, they didn't even know why they even tried to make an effort for their kids when every single attempt resulted in hot tears and brutal violence. Maybe Judy and Shirley just didn't want to up and leave just like their own mothers had done to them, though Judy had finally begun to understand why they had done just that; of course, that did nothing to ease the pain that would never go away until the day she died, but at least there was some sort of reason why she had been left behind though she knew that she would never know the entire truth, not when those women had been silenced beneath dirt and stone. Still, she and Shirley were already becoming just as bad as those foster parents, if not worse, so what harm could it do if they wound up just like their mothers? The more she thought about it, the more enticing Judy found the notion of leaving. She wouldn't dare doom the children to a foster system that would inevitably tear them apart until they wouldn't be able to laugh for at least a decade, but she certainly couldn't stay, either. At this rate, leaving the kiddos to fend for themselves really would be for the best. Neither Shirley nor Judy had gotten better with any of their addictions, and the toll it was taking on their children would never be worth it. In the big picture, these women would have to leave their fragile semblance of what could have been a family behind if they wanted to do what was best for the boys' sake if not for their own. Hope was the fleeting dance of an iridescent hummingbird glittering in the sun, and the longer time dragged on, the more of a dream that sparkling dance became. Not even half a decade into motherhood, Judy could already tell that it was too late for these kids to be decently loved.
Oh, she could always tell.