VISUAL PROMPT
by Adellanuki @ deviantart
![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/prompt-6db57.appspot.com/o/Prompt%20Images%2F21-12-2022.jpg?alt=media&token=950c12e7-a46b-4852-9eed-92691fc33cf6)
Write a story or poem that could be titled 'My City on Fire'.
My City On Fire - A Short Story
Flames. Everywhere. Consuming everything with a boundless greed. I hear the shrieks and screams of my neighbors, fleeing as their houses crumble at the relentless will of the fire.
I myself only stand, watching. What else to do but watch as the very place I call home goes up into a raging inferno.
I hear a sharp snap, followed by the eerily merry crackle of wooden support beams burning. Climbing higher still into my tree of refuge, I cast my gaze upon the rest of my city.
Smoke settles like a thick blanket, though one unwanted and unwelcome. The smoke grabs like a needy child, choking and smothering those too ill or old or slow.
I exhale out the side of my mouth. How pretty it is. The bright flickering colors, always depicted as red and orange and yellow, but really an impossible mix of colors unknown.
My stare focuses and sharpens, tracking a young woman who is running, holding up her long skirts. She scurries about, around burning pieces of building and the injured folk who lay moaning on the ground.
With a belly-warming burst of satisfaction, I watch her trip over a crack in the sidewalk and go tumbling to the earth. I outright grin as she lays on the terra-firma, helpless as those whose cries for help she ignored not moments before. Now, she joins them in their harmonious pleading for assistance from those who only fear for they, themselves and he.
It is then I decide that, despite the enjoyment of this breathtaking show, the plot needs to move along.
Which is why I proceed to dump another two bottles of kerosene haphazardly across the landscape before me. Using my strong arms, I hurl the bottles when they’re still a quarter of the way full, ensuring wider spread fuel.
My beautiful fire devours the city rapidly, burning brighter and stronger as it comes upon the fresh kerosene.
Screams and cries mingle with smoke and sparks and I know then that The Great Arson Of Amadon would be etched into the history books, my great deeds not to be forgotten by generations to come.
Amadon, the beautiful city made more beautiful in flames, on fire. My city, on fire.