Fantasy Staff

“Set Yourself on Fire” actually started out as a realistic fiction short story. I wrote it in second-person, originally, but I was drawn to the idea of the narrator being an actual ghostly presence in the story, so I decided to do a complete rewrite using first-person direct address instead. I wanted it to look like it was written in second-person, right up until the moment the narrator makes themself known to the reader as an actual character present in the story who is quietly observing everything. I ended up being a lot happier with this version. Since every word of narration is in the voice of a ghost, the story itself becomes haunted.

This story had two distinct points of inspiration. The first was that I wanted to write about a sort of Faustian deal but from a new perspective. It doesn’t make sense to me that a malevolent entity would separate humans from animals; at some point, if you’re so far above the mortal world, wouldn’t humans and animals look the same to you? What would a deal like this look like if it were offered to a wolf, and why would a wolf take it?