The Summer that Melted Everything

by Tiffany McDaniel

THE HEAT CAME with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not. It should’ve been expected, though. Heat is, after all, the devil’s name, and when’s the last time you left home without yours? It was a heat that didn’t just melt tangible things like ice, chocolate, Popsicles. It melted all the intangibles too. Fear, faith, anger, and those long-trusted templates of common sense. It melted lives as well,

The woman in bags who wore costume heavy makeup because her face was afraid to go into the world alone, lest she be seen. Lest she have to see herself.

When I looked up, I saw Dad on Otis’ back. Dad wasn’t a fighter. He tried, but it was like watching a spider struggling to take down a bear. Long legs and arms coming around, but doing nothing more than irritating the beast beneath him.

That heat brought out the throbs in hearts, the fevers, the things that couldn’t be let go of. It was a perfect extractor of pain and frustration, of anger and loss. It brought everything to the surface and sweated it out.

and they needed their devil to have a color so they could find him again.

But the thing about light is it all looks the same when you’re in the dark, so you can’t tell if what powers that light is good or if it is bad, because the light blinds you to the source of its power. All you know is that it saves you from the darkness. That’s all his followers knew.