Fireside by Sam Smith

I didn’t live there anymore, so I burnt it down.

We moved in four years ago. Mum was the first to hate the house. She didn’t want to move. She said it was wrong to leave the place where I was growing up. I told her that it didn’t matter, but she was still worried.

It took five minutes driving on a muddy track through thick trees to reach the house from the road. There were no other houses along the track. Even the postman wouldn’t come to the house because it was too far out of the way. Dad doesn’t like to talk very much, so I think he wanted to be far away from everyone else.

The house was old and small. I said it was pretty, trying to convince Mum that it would be fine. She didn’t say anything. Neither did Dad. We got out of the car and carried all of our boxes and piled them in the kitchen. Every surface was made of a light wood, with lots of lines all over it.

For three years we lived in the house quietly. The loudest noise coming from the house was the creaking when it was very windy. Otherwise, it was silent. We disturbed nothing around us. It was like we weren’t there.

Dad went outside to smoke a cigarette. He sat on the windowsill in front of the house like he always did. When he came back inside, he brought a box into the room where Mum and I were sitting. He found it on the step leading up to the front door.

The box was never opened. It was as big as a shoe box, but made of dark, heavy wood. Dad put it in the corner of the kitchen, under the table.

The night that Dad found it, I crawled under the kitchen table to open the box, but it wasn’t there. When I looked in the morning, it was back. Dad sat at the table, one foot resting on the box.

Mum wanted to open the box, but Dad didn’t. He told her that it was not meant to be opened, it was meant to hold us together. I wasn’t sure what he meant and asked him about the box. He told me not to think about it. Every morning he would put the box under the table and every night he would take it somewhere.

Last night, I found another box. I heard a noise outside and opened the front door. The box was on the step, where Dad said he found the last one. I picked it up and took it up to my room. I opened it. There was a note inside. It read ‘There is no other box’. I didn’t believe the note. I hid the box under my bed.

When I went downstairs the next morning, Dad was sat at the kitchen table, his foot on the box. He turned and asked me who I was. Mum came downstairs and asked who I was. When I told them, they disagreed. Dad asked me to leave.

As I walked out of the house, there was another box on the step. I opened it. Inside was a match. I stood from behind a tree and watched as the house fell to the ground. Hot air rushed past me.

I didn’t live there anymore, so I burnt it down.