Fired

• Ellen Martin, Grade 11, St Mary's College
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition

The fire of passion really does burn.
I was lying on the floor, watching two moths butt heads mid-air in a battle to be closest to the light dangling from the ceiling. Twisting my mouth in puzzlement, I wondered if I’d ever looked into why bugs seemed so fascinated in the gleam of light. If they landed on the glass, surely their feet would be burned to little buggy crisps. I noted that they did tend to avoid landing, which would solve that problem.
But then, what was the point in the endless fluttery dance? Were the bugs just happy to bask in the glow of the light? To me, something like that seemed pretty much senseless. I gave it a few minutes thought.
Maybe it was actually the opposite. Maybe the moths were a lot smarter than I gave them credit for – they were able to appreciate the radiant beauty without getting close enough to get burned.
I wondered if I’d ever found myself in the same kind of situation as those moths. Had I ever been flitting around an object so tempting, craving something that would do nothing but hurt me? Like the legend of Icarus, had I ever thrown himself into joyful stupidity only to come crashing down when I came too close to the source?
Maybe not. But I knew someone who had.
Him, who had been so intent on hurling himself into any fascinating enigma that came his way. He loved beauty. That had been his downfall.
It was him that had been the instigator of this whole living room floor moth philosophy saga. Him and his folio, meant only for strictly work purposes but so blatantly misused, the covers scrawled across like they were some child’s art project. I hadn’t realised it was still taking up space in my hallway cabinet, buried beneath trinkets from times that didn’t matter and from letters from people who did.
In my search for a long-lost pair of sunglasses, I’d stumbled across the folder and tentatively splurged its contents. It was nonsense, doodles of plants and lines from movies all pencilled atop work documents. Once upon a time I’d have scolded him for his disrespect, but by now I’d come to regard them as art.
After all, it was his passion that had spawned his beautiful appreciation for anything and everything. Because that’s what the scribbles depicted – the world for what it really was, scrawled over endless lines of statistics and money matters and rules, all the wrong things that people mistook for important.
Passion had definitely been his undoing, I reflected, and reached for the bug spray.
“Wait, wait, wait! Stop! Don’t kill the bugs!”
I rolled my eyes as he burst forth from the back room.
“You can’t kill the bugs,” he demanded, pouting. He touched his chin. “I haven’t sketched them yet.”
I sighed and snapped back, “Sketch bugs after you get your job back, idiot!”