Dark Advent by Brian Hodge

darkness of his garage, eased across the back yard of the old woman who lived between him and the kids. She’d been a widow for as long as he’d known her, and he thought she must go to bed around dusk. He rarely saw a light burning over there.
    Travis reached their back door. Luck was with him; they too were sleeping with the house opened up, although the screen door was locked. No matter. He took his pocketknife and made a slit along the edge of the screen, just large enough to fit his hand through to unlock the door. He crept in, moving past the landing and the stairway that led down into a pitch-black basement exhaling cool musty air. He slipped quietly into the kitchen.
    Travis paused for several moments, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness within, waiting until the moonlight was adequate for him to make his way through the unfamiliar house.
    The kitchen…its floor felt grimy even through his shoes. Empty cans and bottles lined the countertop and table. A stack of pizza boxes sat on the floor beside an overflowing trashcan, and as he moved past the refrigerator, he caught a sickening whiff of something spoiled.
    He rounded a corner, peered into a room whose window looked out on the widow’s house. Travis made out a single form on a bed, then wrinkled his nose. The room smelled of sheets that had needed changing back in the spring.
    He found another asleep on the couch in the living room. And he grinned. Asleep on the couch, so much the better. A light glowed in the corner—the power on the stereo was still on, the turntable revolving endlessly without an album.
    Travis set down the items he’d brought with him, then moved quickly and silently throughout the first floor, easing down the windows. He wanted no ventilation, no breezes to ruin anything.
    Travis returned to the living room, stood before the sleeping boy. He took the bottle from the liquor store, broke its seal, unscrewed the cap…Everclear, 190 proof and very very flammable. He poured it onto the couch, soaking it into the fabric and cushions beneath the kid’s head, then as an afterthought, poured a generous amount onto his mouth and chest. And waited.
    The kid’s eyes fluttered open as he sputtered Everclear. He saw Travis, and there came a brief and terrible moment of recognition of both identity and purpose, and his eyes grew wide.
    For Travis, it was surely the most supreme moment in his life…in all ways a turning point. His thickly muscled arm flashed, and his fist put the kid back into unconsciousness once more.
    Travis set the bottle on its side on the floor by the couch, where it soaked into the rug. He searched the long, scarred coffee table until he found an ashtray, which he rested beside the bottle.
    Same old story, poor kids. Smoking and drinking and sleeping just don’t mix. Sucha waste of young lives.
    He dug into his pocket for the matches, lit one, its flare smarting at his eyes. He stood as far back as he could and still have an accurate shot…and tossed the match.
    The burst of flame was immediate and scorching hot. The kid stirred once, weakly, then fell still as flames consumed both him and the couch. Within twenty seconds after the match had hit, the entire couch was one solid mass of fire.
    No place to hang around, this room. Travis moved back through the kitchen, the rear landing, outside. He knelt in the shadows with his two-by-four, waiting. Just in case.
    In the living room, the ceiling temperature had reached 1200 degrees in just under four minutes. The couch was a charred, shapeless mass, and within its ruins laid a body that only dental records could identify. By this time the other furniture was blazing as well, along with the curtains and paneling behind the couch. The Everclear bottle blew apart, spewing liquid fire. Polyester and other synthetics in the furniture’s fabric and the paneling spewed out a steady flow of toxic fumes into the superheated air: cyanide, carbon monoxide, various hydrogen