Flash fiction: "It's just mine"

It’s Friday morning and I’m the only person in church— just like every other morning for the past five years. I’m the only person in town. I have a lot to pray about.

This town, my town, is under a curse of sorts. When I was a child here, and my father would come home blackened with coal dust from the mine, he’d say, “Centralia is beautiful, son.” I believed him-- it was the only town I’d ever known, after all. As he washed the coal dust away, he’d say it again. “Your town, she’s dirty beneath. Above, she’s beautiful.”

When I was twenty-five, someone threw half a ton of garbage down a hill off the side of a side road just out of town. And nobody wanted to bring it back up. So the town council made a decision. My father always called them “those fools on the council”. They decided to burn it.

Of course the burning garbage fell through a crack and into a mine. Of course the coal seam caught fire. My father was nearly killed down there. That was twenty-five years ago.

And it’s still burning. The ground is warm to the touch. Everywhere there are small cracks with smoke curling out of them, and the small cracks become big cracks. At night you can see the glow. Every so often, a house falls in.

So everyone else has left town. The government gave everyone money to buy houses somewhere else. I won’t take their cash: this is my town.

And now… well, I guess it’s just mine.