Gasoline

Fire; I loved it, craved it, fed off the thrill the heat gave me. The release, the light. Burning flesh had never smelt so good.

The whole town was on edge, no one trusted anyone, friends were morphing into enemies with every scream that echoed throughout the wooden walls. I guess I never had that problem, friendship was something I'd never wanted, nor will I ever need. It was all because of these disappearances, 'suicides', everyone wanted someone to blame, for someone must have tormented the smoke. Who else could have done it? Who else in the whole town, would have the ability to make the mist weep? They had to blame me, in fact I loved the accusation.

I had just arrived in Wiccan, a small town off the coast line, the home of the asylum. The asylum I do not belong in. When I had first entered the city, the Wiccan beaches were littered with drift wood. Drift wood painted the whole landscape; it was moulded into the very lives of all the youth. A Pyromaniacs heaven. Magical colours, twirls of blazing swords planted themselves into the night, I created master piece after master piece. Art works. But no one in the town saw the beauty I did. Danger was all they saw, the burns not the finger painting. The choking, not the sound of a breath being taken away. Everyone saw the smoke, the ash, but no one saw the faces.

My obsession with fire brought with it, a certain prejudice, for my appearance almost smothered my personality. Deep cuts marred my translucent aged skin, swollen sores littered my fragile frame, bones desperately clawed at the cage they were confined in. Thick black rings of mist framed my bloodshot irises; fragments of my chapped blackened lips were flaking away with every fire I lit. My weak pathetic limbs could barely grasp on to what was reality, never mind that my legs could not with hold the weight that judgement day brought along with it. My hair was none existent, due to laughter of my school friends, why of course who wouldn't find pouring gasoline over my trembling body while tormenting me with a lighter, hilarious? Oh course it was funny, my whole life was a joke. Ha-ha lets laugh! Laugh at how pathetic I was. My art work my only solace, was being poisoned with ghastly distorted faces, my beautiful smoke was being injected with death. Forced to torture all those children, held against its will to pressure the elderly into suicide. It wasn't my darlings fault, it was all him and his poison. I had nothing but my art; I had to defend her purity. For she was innocent, I was innocent. He was a monster!

For me to achieve what I wanted, I had to escape from hiding. No more would I be the face of the shadows lingering within the blaze. School was my first obstacle. I hadn't been in months, not since the rumours started. The main problem my mother had with that school was the physical and mental abuse the students put me through; she thought my pyromania was a plea for help, self harm. But it was simply an addiction; it was like my own personal brand of heroine.

I arrived at school in the fall, what hit me was nothing like I had expected. My initial thoughts were that I would be put through the typical high school torture, be the but of everyone's joke. What I was faced with was not far from this, but for me the ignorance was worse than the arrogance. Everyone avoided me like a medic, when eyes were captured with my own thick strands of fear escaped from their soul. They were terrified of my presence. I didn't understand, were these really the same people who set alight my thriving body? Fear seems to be able to not mend but to mask even the most disturbed of minds. I was still alone though. I'd eat my dinner in toilets to avoid the accusing stares and disapproving looks of all students and staff alike. In lessons I'd sit at the back, nearest the window, best escape root in case there was a fire I'd heard. At breaks I'd search out this girl Bella, by no means were we friends but she wasn't accepted either, her company almost was like a mask, she seemed to hide everything else, when I was with her I transformed. I was no longer the messed up kid with a lighter, I was just me. But in reality that's all I was, a messed kid with a lighter.

I couldn't afford to be friends with her though; Bella would just end up getting needlessly hurt. This orphaned girl had enough problems; my precious' demon didn't need to become one of them. My aim was not to hurt Bella I never meant to make her cry when she did, she demanded answers all the time, to questions I just couldn't answer. When I say couldn't answer I mean I didn't want to. My life, my problem, my prize.

After a few months of being in school, everything just seemed to become one big question mark. I kept seeing things, no we kept seeing things, me and Bella. No one else could though; the faces said it was our little secret. Bella thought they were amazing, they listened to her, answered the questions I wouldn't. Bella was beginning to trust these silhouettes. But I saw through them, I saw their trickery, the games they were mastering in. They played Bella; I tried to reason with her many a time. A constant scream could be heard echoing from my mouth, desperately trying to persuade her to see that these beings were the reason she was an orphan. But she didn't see why she should care, hating on these 'innocent' creatures wouldn't bring back her loved ones. Hope was always something that gullible girl lacked in.

Graduation soon came around, bringing with it an unfulfilling end. For since I had set out to prove my innocence, there had been six deaths to curse the town of Wiccan.

First was a girl, eight years old, always wore pigtails in her golden hair. She was from the brook, always wearing a smile. But that was the lie; her smile was simply painted on. The paint they used simply masked the bruises that marred her frail features. Her death surprisingly wasn't caused by the hands of her abusers, but more by the threads that tied together to create a course rope. Her name was Lilly. Her date of death was the sixtieth wedding anniversary of her grandparents. And the rope that denied her the right of breath was not made of nylon or cotton, but hair. Thick black strands of human hair.

Precisely twenty three days later Jasper Whitlock was found dead in the lake. It seemed water had entered his lungs at an alarming rate. Meaning the water gifted him with the inability to take ones breath. It seems this gothic Jasper, who was only thirteen, had drowned. Mysteriously in result of his own longings. This confused my already muddled mind, as assumingly drowning would be a peaceful death, a long but soothing end. And for me personally if you were attempting to punish yourself, not kill, you would choose a more painful form of torture. I questioned the post mortems, told them my thoughts. They did tests, millions of them, blood flooded the floors, and needles were constantly slicing the skin open of the dead. In conclusion, this boy had died before his skin hit the waters murky rim. Thick grey hands had wrapped round his young neck, the diseased digits had brought his demise. These ligaments belonged to the well known criminal... Carbon Dioxide.

The third death, didn't surprise me, but contrastingly caused the depression of half the British Isles. It didn't surprise me as if I was a murderer, I would too do the same as what he did. Take out the leader and the slaves will fall. Queen Didyme had been taken out. I didn't ponder on her death though, why would I? If it was the opposing way and I was the one whose wrists had been the passage that let me bleed to death, no one, especially not the Queen would care. They especially would not try to understand. Unfortunately my consciousness constantly reminded me that there was no justified reason for Didyme Anderson to kill herself at the age of forty nine. She had three healthy young children and a husband who would of bought her the most precious of gems without a second thought, and gave her the love and adoration only a saint deserves. This woman had been framed, made to look as if the blood streaming from her wrists was caused by the rusted razor that was settled into her right palm.

DING DING DING, number four rolled up. The clowns seemed to simply make young Alice Brandon laugh to death. No one forced her into the circus tent.

Number five brought with it a controversial issue, as some say this home coming queen should of simply wore more clothes. In fact some say she purposefully wore, or didn't wear, the clothes she did, she wanted to be raped. Me, I disagree with this whole heartedly, for nothing can justify the vile act of rape, and no one can with hold the title of rapist, without wanting it.

Five suicides. Five framed suicides. Six murders.

The death of number six was the only one that sparked any empathy from within me. No this death forced me to feel the very human emotion of heartache. For on the nineteenth of November, a girl, the only girl that ever mattered to me, was taken away from the punishment she called life.

The prom had just begun when Bella and I snuck out back into the forest that caged the school. Socialising had obviously never been our thing, as it's hard to socialise with a being that feels: fear, confusion and hatred, at the sound of your very name. Within the protection of the tree's shadows and branches, Bella and I created our own prom night. The wildlife our stereo, lilies our decorations, the moon our disco ball, and my fire was our radiator. Food was something we simply didn't need to enjoy ourselves. We had our minds and being as wondrous as hers was, endless tales were to be told.

Everything seemed to be falling in place, me and Bella had skipped the friendship face and morphed into awkward lovers, my obsession with fire seemed to be relaxing, our prom night was simply perfect. But then he arrived.

I'd like to be able to say it was all Bella's fault, that I was an innocent bystander, but that would be so far from the truth. It was my pyromania that summoned him, my smoke that he lived in. I now see there's no point in trying to fool myself into believing I was innocent, because I will never be innocent in anything, I just attracted danger, death, heartache, and everything that comes along with it.

Maybe I just didn't try hard enough to show Bella, that no one, not even me, could she trust.

We had just finished our last and only bottle of alcohol we had managed to grab. It was an old bottle of Jack Daniels form the staff room. We weren't intoxicated, just happy, and it suited us. We had become more adventurous and curious while consuming the demon drink, the forest now intrigued us and further into its depths did we venture. Our first mistake.

We were swinging off the branches, imitating Bella's favourite movie Tarzan, somehow I had let her convince me into being Jane and her Tarzan. We were free. Bella, well I'd never seen her so happy and full of life, I really didn't want to see that go. Her happiness meant more to me than anything in that moment. Bella soon morphed into a soppy drunkard and she once called again upon her beloved friends for in her words no one not even the evil man deserved to be alone on prom night. A kind hearted soul she was.

I don't know why but in that moment I didn't care that this man was murderer, a rapist, and now it seems stupid really, how I actually thought we could trust him. It's rather hilarious. This was our second mistake.

That was the first time I had been able to look closely at his appearance; he was not what I had firstly imagined. He was almost translucent; within the forest you could see silhouettes of the landscape through his broken chest. His hair was around knee length, midnight black and thinner than any anorexia sufferer. His speech was slurred but also demanded a certain level of respect, his eyes were like marble, dead to the earth around it, but they still withheld: hatred, longing, regret, jealousy and pain. I still to this day question how something so lifeless could express such deep human emotion.

He soon left us to our peace, said he had places to be. I didn't believe the party he had an invite to was my loves murder scene. And I never would have guessed I was the one who had written the invitation.

It was around two in the morning when the strange happenings begun. It started out innocent; it seemed our minds were playing tricks on our not so innocent eyes. We felt as if a lingering presence had attached itself to our sides, we nervously blamed the drink, but both of us could feel the heavy weight and soundless breathes of the limpet that clung to our teenage bodies.

The next stage of the game was the hallucinations Bella went through. She kept screaming, demanding that she could see her parents. She turned the air blue with her language. She was rocking, curled in on herself; tears watered the wildlife beneath her. She recklessly threw herself into main roads; desperate to touch the long lost figures of the spirits she once called mummy and daddy. Cars skimmed her fragile frame as she allowed the madness to take over, she let herself thrive under the sadism of another, just as I had done all those years ago. Many cars containing fellow students drove past Bella but not one stopped, they barely missed crushing her into the nothing she wished to become. They just laughed, jeered, the fear they felt against me was suddenly forgotten when I needed them to feel it. Everything was tormenting her in that moment: him, them, her past. This poor girl just wanted die, but what she didn't understand was that I would do anything to save her from succumbing to the pain that continued to torture her.

Now came the fire, images of bonfire after campfire after house fire arose, mocking me. The images of these beautiful blazes may have been pretend but the heat; the heat was far from it. The sick thing was, these were my fires, my past creations. It was my fault that this soldering heat was chasing Bella, threatening to melt her life away. As I said before, I in this situation was far from the innocent one. Bella by this point was barely there, I was her only grasp on reality. She clung to my filthy suit as we ran away from this demon. I fought off bomb after grenade, for over the years I had grown immune to the degrees. I desperately clawed at the limitations of religion, praying to whoever was out there to just save the precious being that lay within my arms. But not even the most holy of men seem to be able to sympathise with my soul.

The final stage of the lead up soon came, and it was the most nerve racking one. For Bella and I had been separated, dragged to opposites ends of the forest, we were now alone. I didn't care about my loneliness for I've forever lived within it. But Bella, I worried for. It tore apart my very being just to think what he could have been doing to her. Or the fact death could of captured her and I wasn't there too wave good bye. No I was going to kill this man, or whatever he dared to call himself, because by this moment I had given up. And trust me a man with no limitations or worries or even emotions is a very dangerous being to deal with. He had the right to fear me; everyone in this moment should have feared me.

The grand finale was theoretical. I had finally found this demon unprotected and prime ready for the kill. Sleeping. I had already gathered the gasoline from the school shed and of course I always had a lighter on me. I sadistically poured the chemical over his peaceful figure, and I was ecstatic doing so. Nervously I was second guessing myself, but before I found reason not to, I lit the end of the acidic trail I had formed. The fire slowly crept toward his body, reaching his pale feet. The heat had now arose him form slumber and ever so slowly he turned around, cradling something in his arms. My whole life crashed in that moment, I died right there. In his arms lay my angel. Blood stained, tear stained and slowly dying she whispered her thanks for death. I was murdering my most hated and most loved at the same time, and she was thanking me. I just dropped and hope the fire would soon capture me too. But no it never did, and I'd never despised the flames as much as I had when my loves features slowly melted away with in its orange deadly mass.

That was fifteen years ago, and I still sit here to this day replaying my teenage years in my spare time. If I could do anything I would thank the demon for letting me have that perfect prom night with my love. Its probably one of the only memories I enjoy reminiscing. My life hasn't gone in any direction; I've just stayed still unable to move on from that November. I lay in Wiccan asylum for the mentally challenged with a label round my wrist saying: Caius Volturi , aged thirty one, pyromaniac.

AN

Thank you for reading hope you liked it, any reviews would be appreciated,

Mad hatrett x