A Lighter That Doesn’t Work & Birds That Fall From The Sky: A Vintage Petrol Lighter Story

(A Lighter That Doesn’t Work & Birds That Fall From The Sky: A Vintage Petrol Lighter Story Volume 19 is a work of fiction presented by DependableFlame.com)

A Frightening Scene

Elston James was more than confused and a little startled. He’d gone to bed the night before just as always, only to walk out this morning and find his lawn, driveway and the entire street littered with dead avian carcasses. It was literally a scene out of a 1950s horror movie!

He pulled a joint out of the black plastic tube in his front pant’s pocket and placed it dead center in his lips while sliding the Vintage Look Zippo out of the same pocket. He struck the wheel of the petrol lighter which ignited to flame instantly though he nearly gave himself whiplash trying to chase the flame around with the end of the marijuana cigarette as the flame danced in the Oklahoma wind.

Flustered and pissed off, he shook his head aggressively and grumbled something under his breath as he slammed the lighter back into his zippered pocket and surveyed the scene around him once again. He recognized the vast majority of the birds as Purple Martins but they were by no means the only victims of the night as he spotted the odd Starling, Sparrow and even Finch.

As Elston ducked back into the house to get relief from the wind, he examined the joint he’d tried to light moments earlier and realized while he had barely singed the tip which he intended to light, his errant flame had scorched a wide swath of the paper cone and created a hole halfway up the joint which would now impede a proper draw even if he could light it. He quickly stuffed the end of a chillum with a healthy amount of ground up weed from the tray at his bedside table and snatched the Etched Leaf Zippo off the coffee table in the living room on his way back out the door.

Lighting It Right

Neighbors were gathering all along and down the street as Elston slammed the screen door behind him. He spotted Big Jim in the yard catty-corner from his own, standing there in his faded denim overalls and using the toe of his house slippers to probe the birds for signs of life as he made his way around the yard.

Just then, a child screamed from down the street which distracted Elston momentarily and when he brought his gaze back to Big Jim he had a bird in one hand and was picking at its blue-black feathers with the other. Elston shook his head in disbelief and began to make his way across the street to find out exactly what in the world Big Jim was thinking. Had he never heard of the bird flu?

“…parasites, lice, disease, plague, judgment, torment…” Elston could just make out the words that Big Jim was muttering as he approached and he wasn’t not worried about the tone in which they were spoken. Big Jim’s current appearance belied what Elston already knew to be true, Jim was an intelligent man who had helped Elston reason through a mechanical problem on more than one occasion but his behavior now seemed more like a crazy person and fear began to settle in between Elston’s ears.

“Hey, Jim! I wouldn’t be handling those birds like that, man. I can’t imagine for the life of me what could have caused all of this but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was disease. Please put that bird down!” His nerves were getting to him so Elston pulled the chillum from his shirt pocket, cupped his hands around the Zippo as he hit the wheel to light it and inhaled deeply before turning the pipe around and exhaling into the lit marijuana ember, stoking it even further.

This lighter had Zippo’s Refillable Yellow Flame Butane insert installed in it which worked much better in the wind, so lighting the chillum didn’t bring about the same frustration Elston had experienced earlier with the joint. Big Jim, however, was suffering from more than frustration as when Elston’s attention reverted back to him, he was frothing and foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog!

Careening Into Chaos

Big Jim stared straight at him with a menacing snarl that stopped Elston in his tracks. Before he could even take another hit off the chillum, Jim started quickly across the yard toward Elston and with his third stride, slipped on a bird carcass and fell headfirst to the concrete, splitting his head wide open, blood streaming down the driveway into the street which Elston suddenly became aware had devolved into chaos.

The screaming child was now closer though Elston had still yet to lay eyes on him and several neighborhood dogs were whimpering and barking and all showing their teeth as some of their owners made feeble attempts to enter and break up the scrum they were embroiled in. From overhead, a hawk came swooping in with a terrible scream and began to feast on the contents Big Jim’s spilled head.

Elston turned to head back across the street to the safety of his house when he realized that it was engulfed in flames and he could smell the stench of burning feathers as the carcasses that littered the roof were lapped up by the fire. His concern for the intensifying situation was momentarily assuaged when a fire truck appeared from around the corner and made its way down the street, only to drive straight into his house and explode!

The explosion startled Elston straight up in bed and he struggled through the heaviness of his eyes to contemplate the surrounding chaos. Birds chirped, mowers and leaf wranglers droned on and a homeless man pushed a grocery cart loaded down with his belongings right down the middle of the street like any old normal sunny morning.

Elston expelled a big sigh of relief as he reached to the bedside table, finding the live resin vape pen and taking in and exhaling a huge hit of the oil. He let his head fall freely back on the pillow and drifted back to a more restful sleep before the chaos could re-enter his mind.

(Please leave any comments, questions or suggestions in the comments section of this or any other page at DependableFlame.com. This is a work of fiction and any similarity of the characters or situations herein to those that have happened in real life should be seen as coincidental.)