Two Excellent People Burning ~ fiction by Travis Flatt

You, the consummate gentleman, bring me a paper plate of Little Caesars pepperoni and mushroom, my favorite. It gets me moist when you remember this intimate factoid.

I ask, since it’s only us, should we light some candles?

You squirm, shake your head, say, “It’s pizza.”

Whatever. All I found in the Youth Group’s pantry were little kids’ birthday candles.

You don’t have to sit over in Youth Minister Danny’s chair, the “Farty Chair,” the distinctively middle-aged ass chair. You could come sit with me on the couch.

“Sit here,” I say, but you perch, watching the door.

“Maybe someone will show?” you say. I know you mean Kat Wilhite. As if Lady Katherine the Chaste wasn’t the first one God slurped up this afternoon.

I’m the only one who calls her that. She calls me “Sadie Spaz,” so she can suck it.

Someone told her we kissed at Camp Hope, you and me, but I’m not sure who. One of the jealous skanks in your fan club.

I pat the cushion, recline, and try to look alluring.

You check your phone. Service went down when the rapture rose this afternoon.

Your hair. “How do you get it to stand up like that but stay so shiny?” I think. Your eyes, my God, it’s like I can read the reflection of your useless phone in the mirror gray of your eyes. I cross and uncross my legs.

After shuffling to recapture your gaze, I lick my teeth, snag my tongue on my braces, flinch, and shoot you a wink. I’m not wearing panties; I trashed them in the women’s room. You refuse to look up my skirt. From my purse, I take the sack of weed I found in my step dad’s sock drawer, then toss it on the coffee table. I’ve also got two cans of beer from our refrigerator. There were four. I choked down two and drove here slow and light-headed.

My step dad lit out for Atlantic City after the rapture, saying, and I quote: “If I’m gonna burn, they can try and burn me wet.” Whatever that means.

He was sulking that Mom got raptured but doesn’t even go to church.

When I throw the weed, you hop up and back away from the table, tripping over the platform stage where the youth group sets up the ska band equipment, clattering a saxophone to the wood. You point at the weed, say, “Why?”

“This is a party, right?”

You move behind the drum set like a barricade, look around like you’re searching for a weapon. “We should pray. This is all a mistake.”

I stand and straighten my skirt, move toward the stage, lightly wang my shin on the coffee table, mutter, “Ah, dang it,” then say, “So, God doesn’t want us. Oh well.”

You clench that jaw. Those miraculous eyes glisten. “He does too.” Your voice cracks. You repeat, steadier. “He wants us.” You mean he wants you.

Some of us rejects think the rapture will happen in waves, like Pastor Roland, who clung to his ascending wife until she rose so high he lost his grip on her ankles, fell, and snapped his legs. Ranting that God forgot him, he was driven to the hospital by Youth Minister Danny, who brought back all this pizza for January Jubilee in case anyone showed up. Youth Minister Danny’s sitting in his van, blaring heavy metal. He told us to leave him alone and do “I don’t care, whatever.”

I pick up the sax and give what I intend as a sexy little suck on the mouthpiece, but it honks in my hands, startling me, and I drop it crashing to the stage.

In the endless ring of the sax brass clang, I select a red Fender guitar from a stand, strum a chord. “Let’s play a worship song?”

You bop a beat on the snare, throw down the sticks, and walk for the hallway door. “Forget this.”

Rushing after, I giggle and say, “We don’t have to hide anymore.”

On Halloween, you felt up my boobs in the custodian closet. This train seemed headed somewhere.

“No, I’m going upstairs,” you shout, meaning the sanctuary.

I catch up and grab your broad shoulders, hop on your back, crying, “Wait,” then whisper, “I thought you liked me.”

“You smell like beer,” you say, shrugging me off. “And—” you shove me away, the first fury I’ve ever seen cross your face; you’re all the more gorgeous for it, “—we’re going to burn. In hell, Sadie. In hell.”

I spring up and wrap my arms around your neck. You’ve grown since fall. I’m on tiptoes.

I gaze at your lips, your skin, into your eyes.

I doe my eyes big and bite my lip, a look I’ve practiced in the mirror.

You stand petrified.

“In hell,” you whisper.

My fingers ski down the slope of your back muscles, hook your belt loops, and pull you close. One hand wiggles further to burrow into a pocket, discovering that your body’s braver than your brain. Or your soul or whatever.

You lift me. You push my back against the wall, saying, “We should thank Him first. For each other.”

I shush you with a kiss, sigh into your neck, and say, “I think we’ll make two excellent people burning.”

Travis Flatt (he/him) is a teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear in Fractured Lit, New Flash Fiction Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gone Lawn, Had, JMWW, and other places. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs.