Potassium Chlorate and Captain Fantastic

Nein Lives

Jordan Terklatt has a leg cramp that could strangle a moose.

Wooden matchsticks are scattered on an area rug so dirty it looks like someone cut a small rectangle of dirt out of a bigger piece.

There’s a flyer stuck to the front window of the bungalow. Jordan thinks it’s kinda genius for a pizza place to stick a flyer to the window where he’s gotta look at it instead of the mailbox, where he would ignore it.

He rubs his hamstring, wonders why they named it a ham string, remembers when his dad won an Easter Ham from Godwin Truck Plaza.

Jordan rubs the cramp out, places another matchstick between his toes, one in his mouth and spits one matchstick at the other, lighting both matches, then lighting a cigarette with the one between his toes.

He doesn’t remember why he first tried it. Not exactly.

He was grounded for life, he remembers that, for getting busted stealing a pack of Hula Poppers from Dunham’s. Doesn’t remember why he started the match thing.

Tina Fianno said he’d be famous for the match spitting trick if he didn’t have any arms.

Jordan can’t work out in his head how complicated the trick would be if he didn’t have arms, because it always starts with him pulling a match from a box of blue tips with his fingers.

Doesn’t think the fame would be worth not having arms.

The cat wanders into the living room, looks at the matches on the ground.

Tina gave him the cat, thinks it’s his cat, but it can never be his cat because Tina already named the cat Captain Fantastic.

It’s not your cat if you didn’t name it, Jordan believes, and he’s sticking to that, stubborn, spitting matches at other matches and making both matches light seven out of ten tries.

He spits matches even when his cigarette is already lit, even when he’s out of smokes, which is often lately, and the real magic of the trick is that he’s never burned a house down doing it.

Jordan is lining up cigarette butts in order of length. Tina comes over, doesn’t knock, just walks in, and she’s got Liberty Whitman with her.

“Liberty is gonna destroy BlueShare with your sick match stunt, JorJor,” Tina says. “She’s an influencer now.”

Jordan hears influenza and thinks that’s weird. Jordan refuses to use the internet because his mom left his dad for a woman she met playing Sims. He has a phone, but he only uses it to call his cousin Derek, who knows the guys in High on Fire, and to play backgammon against the computer brain.

Liberty starts to explain that she has 21,000 followers and makes 600 a month from her videos. Jordan doesn’t understand how it works but he spits a few matches for her, lights em three times in a row, one time with Liberty’s phone camera almost touching his foot.

She talks about how she’s gonna slow mo it and beast it up with Ganja Dan featuring Yick Gully and it’s gonna squeeze 200k and make fit cash.

Jordan says “well shit, I’m the one who risked burnin’ my toes, I should get some cash,” and Tina says “you ain’t never burned your toes once doing that stupid shit.”

Jordan tells Tina to take her cat back and bring him one that don’t have a name yet. Liberty throws 40 bucks down on the table next to the box of matches mostly to stop the argument and asks Jordan to promise her he’ll get her 20 more followers. Jordan says sure, no problem, though he figures he’d have an easier time winning Braille Monopoly against Buddy Morrison at the Elks Club than he would figuring out how to get followers for anybody for anything.

Tina and Liberty leave, Liberty reminding Jordan to get her at least 20 new followers. Jordan just wants to get a pack of smokes so he doesn’t have to cramp up lighting bent butts with his toe match.

He slips on some bootleg Adidas slides he got at the gas station, then remembers the pizza flyer taped to the window.

Gotta be a new pizza place, and new pizza places usually throw in a two liter of pop.

Tina didn’t take the cat, so Jordan seriously considers renaming the cat Dr.Pepper.

He steps off the porch and reaches for the pizza flyer, which is from the Washtenaw County Building Inspector, saying that the house is Unfit for Habitation and all occupants must vacate within 45 days of this notice.

There’s no offer of a free two liter of pop, and Jordan realizes he has no idea what the date is.

He goes back inside and finds Captain Fantastic, hoping he can teach him to spit a match and burn down the house.

******

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