Pixilated Summer
an excerpt

Gregory ventured into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and started fumbling around in it for leftovers. If I didn’t know Gregory as well as I did I would have told him that he was going to ruin his appetite. Gregory’s appetite is impossible to ruin. He has a cavernous pit for a stomach.
I went into the kitchen and asked Gregory, “How do you make garlic bread?”
Gregory stared at me, his mouth full of strawberry yogurt and granola. He managed to gulp and then tell me, “You broil it and put garlic and oil on the top. Simple.”
“Ok,” I said, “I’ll broil it.” I put it on a metal tray I found under the stove and popped it in. Then I turned the oven onto broil, on high, and waited. The oven kept turning off. I probably kept accidentally doing that whenever I set the timer on the stove for the bread.
Soon I smelled something like burnt toast. I figured that some crumbs had fallen down. I opened the oven to see how the bread was coming along. What I saw next I had trouble believing.
The bread was on fire.
Not a smoldering fire, but an open-flames kind of fire. I shut the oven and turned it off. Then I stared at it. Had I really seen what I thought I saw?
Gregory stopped eating. “What?” he said.
“The bread is on fire,” I said slowly.