A GUNPOWDER PLOT

He earned a B in Ballistics and blew up the school, report cards descending through the smoke like scorched ticker tape as he strolled from the campus in thrall to his newfound vocation. In a small town without Semtex he became addicted to tinder, and was soon the neighbourhood’s pre-eminent arsonist: he could raze a damp ramshackle and nonchalantly detonate a dud, though firework factories remained his favourite display. With a future in flames he began dressing only in touchpaper blue, chain-smoking lustily as he recalibrated the night sky, puncturing the high, star-spun, blackness with dancing shards of brass and hammered bronze. Eventually exhausting his old haunts, he took to hitchhiking cross-country with a case full of kindling and an incendiary eye, intent upon torching every staid estate and slumbering conurbation in the land. Year after year, region by region, he blazed, forcing the redrawing of maps through his signature ignitions, his ruinous artistry ensuring notoriety within the twin mythologies of fire fighters and civil planners. Having left his indelible fingerprints upon the landscape, he’s less combustible these days: he eschews candles and declines barbecue invites, preferring to spend his time peacefully tending embers at the local crematorium.