Page 1 of Burn
Prologue
Fire. I’ve always had an obsession, ever since I was a little boy growing up in the slums of Philadelphia. The fire trucks were always careening down the narrow streets, heading to something burning or someone dying. You could consider it constant chaos just outside the old windows with their peeling lead paint and cracked glass.
I would sit on the edge of my bed, listening to the sirens wailing and watching the flashing lights flickering on my shabby walls. Images of what I imagined was happening would fill my head and make kaleidoscopes of colors behind my eyelids when I would close them and push on them with my thumbs. Scenes of destruction, people crying, and bodies burning would plague me in the solitude of my prison, quarantined off from the rest of the world by the abusive, alcoholic, heroin shooting cunt of a mother that never wanted me in the first place.
The noises from the world beyond our shitty apartment were my only company, and I dreamed every night of the day that I would be able to experience them for myself. I wanted to hear the sounds of life, breathe the smog filled air, smell the bakeries and cheesesteak delis, and feel the sidewalks under my feet. I just never knew it would happen before I was a grown man. I never in all my daydreams imagined that the fire I was so enthralled with would be my salvation, and turn me into what I am today.
It was a quiet night, and I was ten years old. The sounds of mom’s latest fuck boy drilling her into the bed on the other side of the wall from my room were silent. It was so peaceful that I could hear the rats behind the plaster, scurrying around, looking for food, starving as I was.
The only thing I could smell was the acidic odor of her black tar burning in the old metal spoon she kept in her bra like a fucking treasure. Why she heated it before shoving it in her veins was weird and beyond me, but whatever. She was fucking weird, at least she became that way after the drugs fried her last living brain cell.
As I drifted off to sleep, my stomach grumbling from days without anything in it except my own spit, the serenity of the night was broken. The scent in my nostrils of sizzling heroin turned deeper, hotter, and thicker. It was smoke. Black smoke wafted in under my closed door, then sucked itself back out, like a snake’s tongue flicking in and out of its mouth, tasting the air.
My old bed creaked as I climbed off it, my little bare feet feeling the unusual warmth of the wooden floor under them as I slowly walked to the door and reached out for the knob. It was hot to the touch, and it burned my hand, yet I still tried to turn it, finding it locked, as always.
All those fantasies of people burning alive, and that’s how I’m going to die.
“Well, come on and take me!” I screamed at the smoke as it puffed in and out at my toes, heating the knob more, creaking against the door.
The screeching of the sirens pulling up outside were nothing compared to the sounds of the fire trying to bust down my door. It hissed and screamed as the wood turned black and bowed inwards. I backed away from it on instinct, but it did nothing to protect me when the barrier broke away and the flames flew in.
“No!” The one pained and panicked word from me was all I got out before the large man in a yellow suit with a mask on his face burst into the room and grabbed me.
With a shattering of the lead glass, he busted out the window behind me with an axe and threw us from the empty hole in the wall to the hard sidewalk below as he shouted to me. “I’ve got you little man.”
The fire licked me that night, it tasted me, and in the process, it passed its evil to me. I haven’t been the same since.
Chapter
One
“God no! Please God no!” The stupid cunt screams out as I step closer to her, with the blue flame of my torch lighter flickering in the evening breeze.
The light from the street lamp above casts shadows on her, making the dark circles under her eyes appear larger and more pronounced, and it does nothing to hide the fucking massive amounts of black lines running up her cigarette burned forearms.
Fucking filthy drug whore. Useless to society. Piece of shit.
Her blonde hair is greasy and filthy, and she reeks like rotten sex, and an even more rotten pussy. I can only imagine the amount of diseases riddling her fucking whore body under her ragged clothes, and it makes my lip curl up in disgust.
The flames flicker in her blown pupils as I grab her with my leather gloved hand and pull her to me, staring at her through the mirrored visor of my motorcycle helmet. She can see her reflection in it, and it’ll be the last thing she sees before the fire licks her to death.
Her breath fogs up the plexiglass as she pants in fear, and it obscures the sight of her just long enough to give me the clarity I need. I hate it when they beg me to spare them with the terror in their eyes. They don’t get the right to be afraid, not after how they’ve lived their lives. I’m a blessing for them, taking them from the pain and suffering they’ve caused themselves. No one did that for my mom and look at what that created…me.
I watch her muddled blue eyes disappear and reappear through the haze, and I imagine that at one point, before she became the empty shell she is they may have been as bright and vibrant as mine. When my life changed, the cloudiness of my irises lifted, and they became so vibrant that they match the flames I use to clean this earth of the filth.
Her dirty hands and blackened nails claw at me as she fights to get away, but it’s futile, she’ll never scratch or injure me though my leather riding suit. I would never put myself at risk of exposing myself to the sicknesses these animals carry, and I keep myself covered head to toe, not only for the anonymity but also the physical protection. It’s kind of sad though that I won’t feel all the heat of the fire.
“You did this to yourself. If you had been a better person, had done something to advance this world instead of wasting your life on drugs and sex, you wouldn’t be in this situation.” I say as she struggles and writhes in my grasp.
“I’m sorry.” She cries out, just as the first flame licks at her waxy hair. “Please don’t do this. I’m a mother.”
“All the more reason. Your child deserves better.” I hiss at her, shaking her as the fire spreads.
Normally hair kind of simmers slowly, curling up and smoking a lot, not actually going ablaze without some form of accelerant, but the amount of grease in hers makes it almost as flammable as if I had doused her in gasoline. She goes up quickly, the fire taking her locks in a flash, twisting up her face in anguish and fear.
Her screams echo around the alleyway, bouncing from the brick-and-mortar buildings loud enough you’d think they could peel the graffiti from the walls. It’s music to my ears, the way the fire engulfs her, crackling and popping, hissing and screeching, matching her cries.
I really thought she would put up more of a fight when the pain started, but she doesn’t, it’s like the vocalizations are all she has in her. The squirming stops, and she drops to her knees before me, her hands out like she’s praying. Maybe she is, maybe in her final moments she’s asking whatever entity is above us in the smokey heavens for forgiveness. Not like he’ll listen, he never does.
