Fiery Business
A Psychospiritual Horror Story
Fiery Business
The sun was lowering past the low buildings on Columbia’s west side, casting long shadows from the University of South Carolina’s football stadium that plunged the streets a few blocks south of Jason into premature gloom, a foretelling of the evening twilight that would soon fall over the rest of the city.
It was late spring, already warm and starting to get sticky so that he almost regretted the lightweight sports coat that he wore over the collared—but untied—shirt and slacks that he always wore to the Saturday in-person class sessions that he attended once a month at the Darla Moore School of Business.
Almost.
He was in the school’s Professional MBA program, and so always came dressed for business. It went with the motif. And anyway, it wasn’t that warm yet, and promised to cool off markedly as night came on, humidity be damned.
He sat in a stiff but not-uncomfortable wrought iron chair in the outdoor section of the pub that he and his fellow MBA cadre-members had taken to visiting after classes let out for the day, along with some of the professors and the program’s coordinator, Stephanie.
It was not exactly a hole-in-the-wall. Of course it wouldn’t be, not for this crowd. But it also wasn’t the kind of loud and boisterous place that the undergrads flocked to on the other side of the State House.
It was a low-key place called The Huntsman, and it brewed its own beer and had a menu that was a step above typical pub fare. Its interior was dominated by a brick-faced bar that stood in front of a window showing the towering stainless-steel vats where the beers were made and aged, and was well-lit by hanging lamps that were crafted so that each of the eight bulbs on each lamp was at the end of a recurve bow. Speakers mounted in the ceiling carried instrumental guitar music that seemed to harken back to open countryside, interspersed with some classic country music tunes in the same vein.
But out here in the patio, the music was barely audible; the sounds of the oncoming night dominated. Chirping night birds and the buzz of insects growing louder as the light waned.
The tables were set out in between standing propane heat-lamps that were turned off now that winter’s chill—nothing compared with the New England cold that Jason had grown up with but difficult for thin southern blood—had all but completely faded. Up in the eaves beneath the short overhang of the roof, fans that would help dispel some of the incoming summer heat stood idle as well.
It was the magical time of year where it was neither entirely too hot nor too cold, just pleasant…if starting to get sticky.
Jason lifted the pint glass that had been sitting on the table in front of him, filled with the brownish-red amber that had become his favorite of The Huntsman’s offerings. Condensation was dewing slightly on the outside of the glass, making it a tad slippery to the touch.
As he lifted the glass to his lips, Karl said, from off to Jason’s right, “Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
He was blond-haired and tall, his German heritage screaming loudly for all to see. And in fact, Karl was from Hamburg, on a tenure track within the Darla Moore school. He had been Jason’s Managerial Economics professor last quarter and was one of the regulars at the PMBA Saturday evening pub crawls.
He was talking with Kate, another member of Jason’s cadre, who sat to Karl’s right. She was down from Greeneville, where she worked in a consulting firm if Jason remembered correctly. She was five or six years older than Jason’s thirty-two, and wore a wedding band on her left ring finger.
Not that he would have tried to hit on her anyway; she wasn’t his type. Too thin, almost skeletal from his point of view, and way too tall. Jason wasn’t short, but he felt like he was talking up a ladder every time he interacted with her.
She was pretty enough though, with her long black hair that she kept in French braids and a face that seemed made for smiling. She had three kids with her husband, who from the one time Jason had met him doted on her and them both. No wonder she smiled a lot.
But she wasn’t smiling now. She raised an incredulous eyebrow at Karl’s statement and her lips compressed into an expression of disapproval.
“What do you mean?” she said, her dark red blouse ruffling as she crossed her arms over her chest, almost defensively. “He’s got a veto-proof majority in both houses. The Affordable Care Act is sure to pass. Healthcare for all.”
Karl nodded, and paused to take a pull from his own drink—his in a twenty-ounce glass and filled with a bright yellow, hazy Heffeweisen. “It will certainly pass,” he said after he swallowed. “But remember what we talked about last quarter. Nothing is free. We have healthcare for all in Germany, remember. It’s good, but there’s always a cost.” He sniffed. “And your system here is…not exactly efficient, or uncorrupted. I don’t see how this new plan can do anything but add to the system’s bloat and overall expense.”
Kate’s nostril’s flared, and for a second Jason expected her to issue a harsh retort. She tended to get fiery about things she cared about and didn’t ever back down from a debate, particularly in the area of politics.
Another reason he wouldn’t have hit on her. She and him would only ever butt heads, even if they agreed on a subject in principle. The specifics would always trip them up, and had a few times in the classes they’d taken together.
But Stephanie, sitting directly across from Jason, interjected. “Cool it, Karl,” she said, rolling her grey-brown eyes and fixing him with a look that mixed good humor with sternness. “We’re not here to be part of the debate society.”
Karl blinked, then looked between the two women and smiled broadly. “You’re right, of course.” He raised his glass. “To your President, and the success of your new healthcare system,” he said. Then, not waiting for the rest of them to respond, he took another drink.
“Hear, hear,” Jason said, and joined him, savoring the flavor of the amber as he swallowed it down.
Kate looked like she was going to speak anyway, but after a second she too rolled her eyes. Then she chuckled and drained the last of the Porter she had been nursing for the last hour. “Anyway,” she said, and stood from the table. “I’d better get on the road. Pete will probably be able to get the kids in bed without mixing up their pajamas, but…” She chuckled again, this time with more humor.
It was a few hours drive from Columbia up to Greeneville. If she left now, she’d maybe get back in time to tuck the last of them in bed. Or at least that’s what she always said.
“Drive safe,” Jason said. “See you next month.”
“I will. Good night, y’all.”
She nodded to Karl and Stephanie, then turned and wove her way past three tables to the wooden gate that led from the patio out to the street. She vanished from view a moment later as she turned right past the pub’s building proper.
“Well,” Jason said, looking back at Stephanie, then Karl. “That just leaves us. Glad I don’t need to get on the road.”
“Ya,” Karl said, nodding approvingly at him. “You’re the smart one, getting a room for the weekend.” He stretched back in his chair and panned his head to the left, looking down the street toward the next block over, where barriers had been erected to stop traffic flow through the side streets for the weekend. “The arts festival is always enjoyable.”
“Benefits of not having a wife and kids,” he said, and finished the rest of his beer.
Karl laughed loudly this time and followed Jason’s lead by chugging the last of his Heffeweisen. Then he stood, pushing his chair back from the table with an audible scraping of iron across stone as he did so.
“Well since you’re here,” Karl said, straightening to his full height, “come along to the festival.” He paused, then added, “You’ll love it.” But he didn’t look at Jason as he said this; he kept his eyes fixed down the street to where he’d been looking before.
Jason turned to follow Karl’s gaze.
Sure enough the cops were on station, directing drivers away from the closed-off intersection. Exactly as he would have expected they wood.
But past the troopers, into the closed-off city blocks…
Jason saw an inviting glow, orange-white in color and warm in its feeling, emanating from the closed-off area.
He was on his feet before he realized he was doing it. “Sounds like a good time,” he said. And meant it.
Karl grinned, then he moved forward, weaving past the same tables Kate had navigated before. He reached the closed gate back to the street beyond and looked back, cocking an eyebrow at Jason.
Jason rolled his eyes and laughed, then he swept out his hand toward the gate, and the welcoming glow down the street. “Lead on, professor.”
Karl smirked, then returned the grin and pressed through the gate. They walked together down to the arts festival.
Karl stopped two blocks down and gestured to his left. Jason followed his gaze and had to do a double-take.
This was a pottery kiln. Or rather, a place that was open to rental from all manner of wannabe artists. Its chief advertising feature was the great stone kiln housed in the center of the one-story building that stood at the rear of the one-lane parking lot that separated it from the road he and Karl had spent the last five or ten minutes walking down.
Jason wasn’t sure because he hadn’t checked his watch.
And why should he? He and Karl had been engrossed in amusing and fun conversation the entire way down the street. Karl had been telling tales about his home in Hamburg, and about one girl in particular whose family he had grown up around, and who had taken it into their heads that Karl should wed their youngest daughter.
Only problem was she weighed about twenty kilos more than even the largest girl Karl was interested in.
And so he’d fled to the United States, and academia.
Jason had to laugh at the absurdity of it. Because who in his right mind would ever think that a retreat into the life of an academic would be anything but poverty disguised as a veil of pretension cast by midwits who could never hope to live, let alone thrive, in the real world of competition?
Of course, he knew better than to say that. But as he watched Karl’s eyes during the telling of his story, Jason came to understand—or rather he gained reinforcement for his understanding—that Karl knew well the falsehood of the career path he had embarked upon.
Knew, and was at peace with it. But how?
Karl wasn’t an idiot. In fact, he was quite smart; certainly smarter than most of the people in Jason’s cadre. How could he not see the abject falseness, the pseudo-intellectual travesty that was his chosen field of endeavor: graduate-level business studies?
Whatever those studies were.
But Jason realized that he did, in fact, see it. He saw all of its baloney for what it was, and he had, if not embraced it, at least gone along with it.
Because better an objection to lunacy with a paid mortgage than one lived on the streets. Because at least someone, somewhere, might pay attention to the former. The latter would be forever dismissed.
And so Karl continued on, parroting things that he had to in order to keep getting paid, like he was a climate scientist or something.
But he had at least a smidgeon of integrity. More than a smidgeon. Jason had seen that last quarter when he was taking Karl’s class, just as he had discovered more of the man’s character in the months since, no matter how Karl had to bury it down deep to not be fired immediately for failure to comply with the school’s preferred narrative.
And he had seen that struggle within his instructor. Seen it, identified with it, and grew to respect Karl all the more for it.
So he followed Karl without question down the street, then turned left with him and followed along. Until he had to stop dead from shock, what he saw there pulling his psyche up short like a jockey against his horse’s reins.
And not because it was something untoward or objectionable. But because it was beautiful, the kind of beauty Jason had never considered before.
The parking lot in front of the pottery kiln that Karl had stopped before was small, just one space deep. The building itself was a single story, with a wide open front door that led invitingly into the artist’s burrow within. But no artists were there tonight, at least none that Jason could see.
Instead, the parking lot was filled by maybe two dozen people dressed in all manner of attire ranging from hippy to casual to business-except-I-removed-my-tie.
Jason would have felt embarrassingly part of the final crowd, except the exhibition in the middle of the parking lot in front of the building captured his gaze entirely and swept every thought from his mind.
She was beautiful. More than that: lovely.
Lithe and fit, with muscles that were obviously powerful beneath her lightly-tanned skin but that also didn’t protrude into unladylike bulk.
Fitness and grace in one luxurious package that he couldn’t stop from watching with awe, even as he found his mouth dropping open in a big stupid expression of that same lack of thought.
Jason had heard of fire dancing before. Seen a short video of it once. But he’d never before beheld it in real life.
The woman gliding—for there was no other word to describe her motion—in front of the kiln house’s building was everything he had heard a fire dancer could be, and more.
The staff she twirled around herself as she danced was aflame on both ends. But it wasn’t like she was dancing with the fire, or reacting to it. It was like the twin flames on either end of her staff were part of her body.
She dipped, spun, twirled, crouched, leapt—and everywhere she went, the fire went with her, like an extension of her body and psyche, leaving a glowing after-image in Jason’s retina that reinforced itself with every move until she seemed awhirl in a purple-pink-yellow glow that he knew was at least halfway just an after-effect of her prop.
But that still left him gaping, stunned, at her prowess. And her lithe sensuality.
“My God,” he breathed, barely above a whisper to his own ears.
Beside him, Karl chuckled. “Thought you’d like this. Daphne is unique.”
He said the name with a familiarity that any other time would have made Jason question how Karl knew her. But right then, he just nodded along, accepting his statement without objection. And indeed in complete agreement.
She was unique. Unique indeed.
Daphne spun, and the twin flames spun with her, and Jason watched, entranced. He lost track of time as he followed her every move, every expression.
It was only after some great span of time—time that he didn’t measure, though a tiny voice in the back of his head said it could not have been a few minutes—that he noticed a change in the dancer.
And not just in her, in the crowd watching her performance in front of the pottery kiln.
Between one spin and the next, Daphne’s eyes went from dark, shaded from true observation by the deepening gloom of evening, to aglow. At first merely a glimmer, but after several spins and twists—how many he didn’t try to count and he would have lost track if he had—a glow, red and primal in its heat and passion. Passion that, every time her gaze swept over him, threatened to set him ablaze, and to hell with the consequences.
Jason’s mind shouted at him to look away. At first, he didn’t understand why. But then he noticed the background all around, paintings and images of things that had never happened—or had they?
Wait—paintings?
He couldn’t look away from Daphne, but all the same the space around her was indeed filled with paintings. Dali and Rembrandt and Picasso and Van Gogh and… He lost track as the images swirled around her, and the colors within them faded, swept away from the canvas by a red light. Light that was emanating from Daphne’s eyes.
Jason found himself entranced by those eyes, by the glow, growing redder by the second even as it increased in magnitude. Her eyes grew larger and larger, and he felt himself drawn closer and closer. He felt a tugging against his body, like he was being sucked off his feet. Sucked into the scarlet vortex that was forming around her, drawing him in.
“What the hell is going on?” asked the rational part of his mind, small and seemingly powerless against the primal tug of the flames—yes now there were flames within her irises, flames to match the ends of the staff that she still spun around her body with the effortless ease of one who had done feats a thousand times more difficult, and wasn’t this thing merely an afterthought no matter how it wowed the mere mortals gathered around, those mortals about to be a meal consumed by the fiery demon—demons?—that lurked with her.
Or were they demons at all?
Jason sensed no conflict within her as she danced nearer, and as he lurched toward her to his own oblivion without hesitation or resistance.
No conflict at all, and so much the better. When his soul flittered down the depths of those glowing eyes—eyes that were locked on his and that he could not tear away from even if he wanted to, no matter the twisting and gyration of her body that should have drawn them apart from him—he would hate to think he had been consumed by something that was not wholly content and singular within itself.
Those eyes grew wider, and he felt himself trembling. Though she continued in her dance, in his eyes, she remained still, watching him with wide eyes and mouth agape, drawing him in. He saw both images—the dancer and the demon opening its maw wide—and could not separate them, did not want to.
Did not want to, but his mind screamed at him to recognize what was in front of him. To fight. Or if nothing else, to flee.
Those pleas battered up against the barrier of those astounding eyes, and the pleasures dancing around behind and around them.
He knew the pleas were real. He felt them being given voice; part of him agreed with them. But as he watched them fly forth and shatter upon the barrier of the spell Daphne had put up around himself and her, Jason felt something give inside.
Initially small, but then magnified even as the red glow within Daphne’s eyes flared in counterpoint to the approaching resistance, he felt the trembling within himself grow stronger, more urgent.
Daphne spun again, and her eyes left his for the briefest of seconds. As the connection split, he felt himself drawn forward and he stumbled a half step ahead…
And then she had completed her spin and her eyes once more locked onto his. The glow within her eyes grew wide enough to consume him, even as alternatives opened to his right.
Jason hadn’t noticed the alternative earlier. And indeed he hadn’t even considered Karl in some amount of time that he couldn’t fathom, let alone measure.
But just then as he turned his head to the right to look, Karl appeared like a being of pure light, light that should have been blinding to look at but instead was just comforting and warm, soothing.
But apparently not for Daphne. As the light surrounding Karl struck her, she screeched and drew back visibly. As she did so, the entrancement Jason had felt from the apparently infinite beauty of her eyes, the entrancement that had swept over him so that he couldn’t do anything, faded and he saw her continuing to retreat from the light in Karl’s eyes; indeed from his entire being.
Yet also, Jason could see Daphne lording it over him, and Karl as well, that he had wanted her at some point. Only not her but the creature who had shined red eyes off them and recoiled at the slightest hint of intellectualism beyond trite references in library books. Such a being couldn’t hope to understand what was going—
Somewhere in Jason’s mind he realized he was raving, and no wonder, he was trembling so. But what did the one have to do with the other—?
His eyes latched back onto Daphne’s, and she smiled with satisfaction as he took a step toward her. And all at once he realized the trembling was gone. Gone completely, and in fact he felt more alive, stronger and more vibrant, than he had in five or six years.
The trepidation he had felt beneath those eyes of hers fled beneath the exultation he felt just then, the strength and well-being that flooded him, and never mind that he wasn’t actually old yet—far from it. But still he felt he revitalization flooding through him, and Jason turned to tell Karl that it was actually ok, he was going to be fine—
Astonishment turned into confusion and then horror when he saw Karl standing there, not looking at him but something over Jason’s left shoulder. And standing next to Karl, looking in the same direction…
Jason felt a silver sliver of fear rushing through him as he looked into his own eyes. Eyes that he had only before seen in mirror reflections, but now he was looking right at them even as they stared past his shoulder toward whatever—whoever—his body and Karl were looking at.
Jason didn’t need to ask who; it was obvious who the object of his attention was. Daphne, the fire dancer. And more in particular, the entity, whatever it was, that danced with her.
As if on cue, a flash of red flame spread through the eyes of Jason’s body, now merely an automaton that he was looking at from outside. The red matched exactly the hue that Daphne had given off before, however briefly…
Jason was turning to look behind him, to find her and deal with her, when he felt another lurching tug from within himself. And suddenly he was being drawn away—far away, from himself and Karl both.
The world closed in around him on all sides as he was pulled, and he could only see a rapidly closing tunnel behind himself. Could only focus in on the body that he so recently used to inhabit now moving of its own accord, without him. A body pointing a warning finger in Karl’s face, and the big German merely nodding acquiescence.
Jason realized he was focusing more and more in on the face of his professor—and maybe a friend? He had thought Karl could have been…but no longer—and that he had lost sight of the rest of the scene as he was being borne away.
It was getting worse now, and the scene was focused completely now on just Karl’s face. And Jason saw real regret there.
Then the tunnel winked out, and he was left to fall in blackness, blackness so absolute he couldn’t even see the hand in front of his face.
He fell, and wondered how long it would take to strike ground, if there even was a ground here where he was; someplace within himself maybe?
But he didn’t strike ground. And he didn’t. And still didn’t.
Some time later—Jason lost track of time, and why shouldn’t he?—he didn’t strike the ground so much as stop.
Jason stopped, and realized he was now lying there, looking up into the sky. A sky that consisted merely of his eyes—or at least the view he would have seen from his eyes if Daphne, or the thing that had taken her over, hadn’t cast him out and sunk into his body in her stead.
Anger flared up within whatever now passed for Jason’s psyche, and he for a while pondered the joys of hunting down the thing, whatever it was, that resided within that girl and ripping it limb from—
But that wouldn’t really help him. Couldn’t, because how could he reach that thing? And even if he did, he would still be in limbo, waiting for a miracle—if one actually existed—to help him out.
But miracles weren’t real, right?
Right. Neither were fire dancer girls with demons inside themselves.
But did it matter?
He looked around, and saw only blackness. Looked forward and saw his double shaking the hand of…someone. Then his double’s eyes flashed red, and everything else faded from view.
His last thought was to wonder if Karl had set him up, or was he also victim of this weirdness?
He probably would never know.
Copyright 2026 by Michael Kingswood. All rights reserved
.This story was originally published in 52 Stories In 2023, Volume Three by Michael Kingswood. If you enjoyed it, please consider supporting Michael’s work by buying the book here.
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