A fire catches in the basement of the TV and VCR Repair shop on South Main. The shop is in an old house, originally built for one of the families that worked at the Haynes Company.
The fire department arrives, throwing traffic in and out of the square into disarray. The fire is not contained until after it’s gotten dark and the streets are empty.
The town used to be filled with these houses, all the same size and layout and all occupied by people who worked at the Haynes Company and the spouses and children of people who worked at the Haynes Company. But that was back when it was the Haynes Company and not just the Haynes Building.
The next day, the fire starts again, and the fire department puts it out, again.
All of the remaining Haynes houses are on Main Street. Most have been converted to small, local businesses that are just successful enough to sustain themselves.
The day after that, the fire kicks up again and the fire department comes back out. Then it happens again the day after that, and the day after that, always right around the same time.
Most of the Haynes houses still have the original wiring. Citing a lack of evidence to the contrary, this will later be declared to be the cause of the fire.
The TV and VCR repair building is visible from the firehouse, but the firefighters only go when someone calls it in. So, they stand by the windows, they watch the smoke, and they wait.
They are waiting for the day when no one calls. When the fire can burn itself out, or spread and take everything it wants.
There is a large group of people in town who don’t want the fire to go out. They are using it to argue about whether a proposed Fire Levy should pass.
One side says that if we pass the Fire Levy the fire department would be able to put the fire out for good.
The other side says that if the fire department could just demonstrate that they could put out the fire once and for all, they’d have no qualms voting for the levy.
The polls are open every day, and no one shows up but the volunteer poll workers. The rules for the poll workers say they are not allowed to check their phones while on duty. They can hear them going off, occasionally buzzing against each other in the drop-off box in the coat closet.
They worry that their own houses are on fire and their neighbors and loved ones are trying to get ahold of them.
The poll workers resist the urge to break protocol, coming up instead with a workaround. They think that once the ballots are gone, their job will be done.
They fill out the ballots themselves with no regard for what they’re voting for.
If there were any regard, they would have seen that this was never about the Fire Levy to begin with. It’s not even on the ballot.
But each night, a new box of ballots arrives, and each night the boxes of completed ballots are taken away.
They are taken to South Main where they are placed gingerly in the basement of the charred remains of the TV and VCR Repair shop, where they will smolder, and then burn.
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Nathan Willis is a writer from Ohio. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Split Lip, HAD, matchbook, Swamp Pink, Pithead Chapel, Moon City Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. His stories have been nominated for Best Small Fictions and appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist. He can be found online at nathan-willis.com.