text: The fire was so sick of Evan’s shit. Like that face. *Augh*. The smug one? That narrow-eyed half-grin with the yoinked eyebrows? To him that’s “suave”. Nobody’s yet told him what he’s got going on is actually closer to “deranged”, though, so he just keeps on rocking that look. Working it, wondering why he goes home alone, that’s Evan. God, the fire hates him *so much*. There’s another face he pulls, this puppy-dog-eyed piece of absolute horseshit, that he, for whatever reason, seems to believe needs a certain toothiness to be effective. It is agonizing. *Evan* is agonizing. Maybe, the fire thinks, maybe it could burn him just a little; singe him, just once. You know: real quick like. Oh, that would be great. *Sigh*. It wonders, the fire does, if maybe it’s proximity; that perhaps Evan isn’t so bad, that had the fire been assigned to someone else it wouldn’t be full of disdain every time it sparks into being. That, because it had been there for every barbeque, every toaster-mishap, every campfire and lit cigarette and flaming shot of Evan’s entire life, the fire had good reason to be annoyed. Like, what did they expect? You can’t match an element with a human and assume everything will work itself out. It was *fire* for chrissake--how do you gift fire to a shithead like Evan? Come on. The fire imagines wind has it made. Floating about, doing its thing--even if it was attached to a human all it’s got to do is swoop in and knock a hat off or something, maybe muss up some hair or inside-out an umbrella? None of this toasting-marshmallows-and-watching-Evan-trying-to-be-clever garbage. Water, though; water’s gotta be tough. Showers, hand-washing, hell: rain? All right, sure. But then you have people sitting in you for hours, cooking you, drinking you . . . and let’s not for one second forget that water paired off with a human will have to deal with the inevitable and continual horror that is the toilet. If that isn’t a full-on *yikes* situation right there, such a thing doesn’t exist. That thought brings calm to the fire, and it rides the feeling as long as possible; rides it like it figures wind rides the skies, right up until Evan lights a smoke and tries to convince a woman at the bus stop that he’s a secret agent. Or in that brief interval after he’s set a pan of pork-rinds on fire but before he’s put it out where it has to listen to Evan sing old R&B hits with a screwdriver-in-the-eardrum falsetto. Or when he lights that candle that’s supposed to smell like fresh bread but instead smells like a hobo’s feet, staring into the it while reciting *The Lion Sleeps Tonight* while quietly weeping. The fire will watch that face, will see the genuine emotion, the hurt, dug into the growing array of lines that surround his features, and in that moment the fire will stare back and think: “Man, Evan is the *worst*”.