Last night I was in a very weird bookstore.

Last night I was in a very weird bookstore. It was sort of a ren fair kind of setting, but I knew it was one of the old Printers Incs. This one was once the beloved home of the postal workers after hours. There was a long dark wood bar where they could get a pint of lager after work and walls and walls of books. Books stacked on floors and under tables a glorious dusty half lit mess. The people who worked there were all the best eccentric types, young and old, not following fashion but some inner urging they set up stalls inside the bookstore and offer their wares.

Cynthia had a fire under her table, for cooking. She had on a t shirt and she had long hair. She was getting something from under the table and her shirt tail dragged in the flame. The flame was blue and innocent looking. It looked soft and pale, transparent licking gently up her back and falling away then returning and lingering and she didn't notice. So I called to her, look out, Get on the ground and roll. She didn't understand, not feeling the flame. I tried to reach her by reaching across the flame and it licked up onto my hand. It caught there like some sticky substance that you can't wipe off. No heat or pain, but fear. I wipe my hand in the dirt under the table and get most of the flame off, then grab a pan of dirty soapy water and throw it over her .

I get the fire out and although it all seemed so fast and so harmless it was not. Her hair was all gone, her clothes burned away and her skin on back and arms red, hairless and weeping. She was shivering and staring in shock on the ground. I called to the crowd around us to call 9-1-1 and
prayed an ambulance would actually come to this strange bad place.

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