Story-A-Day #349: Happening

HAPPENING

Do you remember this place?  It doesn't look like much now, but it used to be quite the happening location.  People would come from miles around to hang out at this very place.  they would have a meal or maybe a few drinks.  rthey would dance and celebrate and ebrace the small moments in life.

People were happy here and then it all burnt to the ground.  All those dreams, all that promise, all that happiness, engulfed in huge pillars of smoke that greyed out the sunny October skies.  It was a tragedy for sure.

The official report claims that it was a simple kitchen fire, but most people know better.  Most people know that there is more to th story than that.

It happened in the late eighties, a time when the subculture was slowly becoming the mainstream.  There were whispers in town that the real cause of the fire might have been a little more sinister.  You remember those rumblings?  They were everywhere because people were trying to assign context to the tragic loss of a happy place and the 8 lives that were contained within it.

The biggest murmurs attributed the blaze to a satanic cult.  Why not?  Those pesky satanists were all over the news at the time.  Hell, they even made it onto Geraldo.

You were young the, but you remember the exhileration and excitement that came with thinking there might be devil worshipers in your own backyard.  Of course now, 20 years later, you are able to accept that the very thought of that being the actual cause is nothing more than rediculous media fueled conjecture.

You know that a black robed cult was not responsible.

As you stand beneath the rickety arch, the monument to that place, you remember that day.  You remember striking the match that lit the barrel of rendered fats and fryer oil.  You remember stepping back into the trees and watching the flames explode theough the old wooden structure.  You remember the screams, and the agony, and the complete terror on the faces of the few who did make it out safely.

You remember that moment and you smile.  Not for Beelzebub, or Satan, or Lucifer, but for yourself.

Except that you weren't really there at the time were you?  You were probably snuggled up in bed playing with your My Little Ponies at the time.  You just like to think that is how it happened because it puts you in a moment that would define who you have become.

You know that you are not a good person and putting yourself into this vignette gives you a reason for the dark black knot that lingers in your core.  Putting yourself in that moment helps define your wayward missteps over the past decade.  It helps define the monster you feel within.

By affixing yourself to that tragic moment in time, you hope to alleve the sensation that it will all be happening again.  And it will, and it is...