The short story I read last week is now up on Bang Out’s site, so now you can read it too. It is called “Five People Describe Burning Up,” in keeping with the heat theme. Excerpt:
1. Debbie: I’m coming home from school when suddenly my best friend Trudy says, “Your feet are lighting up when you walk.” I look down and see that flashes of blue are coming out the back of my shoes whenever I move. “Cool,” I say and start skipping so that the blue lights follow me to my house, and Trudy is laughing and saying, “That’s so weird” over and over again. I feel like Tom Hanks in the movie “Big,” when he lights up the giant piano with his feet, and I’m pretending to play “Heart and Soul” in the driveway when my mom comes out and starts screaming. “Debbie,” she says, “Take off your shoes.” But I’m laughing, because the blue lights are coming out of the side of my feet now, and I feel like I’m wearing jet packs. My mom shakes me and says, “Don’t you know fire when you see it?” and I take off my shoes, which are hot around the edges. The fire is still coming out of my feet, snapping like the ends of a lighting strike, and I’m not smiling anymore. Mom tells Trudy to run a bath, and I think about how they have been teaching us in school that if the sun exploded, it would take 9 minutes for us to know about it because it’s so far away. It would take 20 minutes for the fireballs to reach us.
Read the rest here.