A/N: Hey, y'all! I'm back with bells on. *dances and jingles about* I promise this o/s isn't scary this time. This one is much less serious. Although not outright funny, it makes me titter. Just a little. You see, Bella's a bit...touched, shall we say. A 'the engine's runnin', but no one's behind the wheel' kinda deal. Plus, there's fire. I mean, how the hell can you go wrong when fire's involved? (Don't answer that.) Anyhoo, I'm dedicating this little piece of psychosis to my lady friend badjujube. She encouraged [read: bullied] this particular manifestation of pyro!Bella through Twitter. And yes, you read right. "Particular." As in there are other versions of pyro!Bella to come. *nods* S'gonna be a goodie. Anyhoo, you have her to thank for this. :) Also, you should check out her current WIP's: Drinking Problems and The Agreement. One is about rehab for vampires and the other has creepy!Aro. Again, how the hell can you go wrong?
Not beta'd so any mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. Stephenie Meyer owns all characters from the Twilight Universe. I merely turn them into pyromaniacs.
A Pyro's Revenge
"Sometimes revenge is a choice you gotta make."
-"Mama's Broken Heart" by Miranda Lambert
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.
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I didn't mean for it to happen.
Okay, that's a lie. I did mean for it to happen, and I can't find it in me to care at all. Nope. Zero fucks given here. He really should have known better. They tell you it's always the quiet ones you have to worry about. Edward should have known that lurking beneath my soft-spoken, nice girl persona was a crazy bitch just itching to get loose. And what better way for Bella 2.0 to come bursting onto the scene than the world's shittiest break up ever. I mean, the woods behind Charlie's house? Really?
Okay, so maybe not the shittiest break up ever. It could have been by text message...which it probably would have been if I had a frigging cell phone. But I digress.
They all should have known something like this would happen. I was an obsessed school girl dealing with her first major break up from a high-handed douche. What, did everyone think I was going to cry, mope, and go catatonic for four months? Not fucking likely. So once Assward hightailed it out of the woods after delivering his stellar 'It's not me, it's you' message, I calmly and rationally made my way to Charlie's garden shed to start rummaging around for the supplies I would need. A ball-peen hammer, hand saw, blowtorch, and three jugs of gasoline may seem a bit dramatic to you, but hey, I could've taken the other two jugs of fuel and a chainsaw that were there too. Now that would have been dramatic.
I carefully packed the goods into the bed of my truck and ambled my way over to the Cullens' house. Completely unsurprisingly, there wasn't a soul around to be had. The whole lot of them had up and moved without so much as a whisper goodbye. I let myself cry a few tears at the loss of a family who had meant the world to me, but it wasn't long before I was just as angry at them as I was Edward. Jumping down from the driver's seat and slamming the door shut, I wasted no time unloading my cargo of destruction. I thought about setting their house ablaze, but felt that was a bit cliché. Plus I'd have needed those other two jugs of gas to accomplish that feat. No, I felt taking out their detached garage with whatever vehicles they'd left behind would be more than good enough.
It was with a sassy step that I made my way over to the small door that opened into that garage, ball-peen hammer in tow. I stood sizing up the door for a moment before looking to the sky and saying, "I hope you're seeing all of this, Alice. And I hope you're showing every bit of it to that asshole brother of yours." Without another thought, I raised the heavy hammer and swung at the aluminum door. Between the sound the two made at connection and the recoil from impact, I about went down on my ass. Snorting a laugh that turned into a fit of giggles, I decided beating the door knob into oblivion might gain me entrance faster.
After taking a step back from the door, I hunched over into some semblance of a batter's pose and stared down the doorknob with the fiercest of looks. With a deep breath and a slight butt wiggle, I took another swing with the hammer. The metallic ding signaling connection made me giggle again, only to be disappointed upon the realization that all I'd managed was a slight dent in the thrice-damned doorknob.
"Would that be considered a foul ball?" I asked out loud to myself.
With an internal snicker, I bent again into my bastardized batter's pose and took another shot at the knob. A clear and obvious impact was made this time around. My arms were starting to ache from the weight of the hammer, but seeing the shiny knob looking a little worse for wear and hanging off-kilter filled me with glee. One more good swing, Bella-girl. One more swing and the door is ours. With that thought, I put all my might behind the hammer to make sure it packed a wallop. When the doorknob went flying off into some bushes on the other side of the yard, I burst into peals of laughter that may or may not have sounded distinctly like cackling.
Using the hammer end of my pretend ball bat to push the semi-ruined door open, I stepped inside the familiar garage and flipped on all the lights. "Pretty maids all in a row," I muttered lowly. In each of their respective bays sat the poor, unsuspecting cars the Cullens saw fit to leave behind: Edward's Aston Martin, Rosalie's BMW, and Emmett's Jeep. As I hit the buttons to open the big doors to each bay, I cackled again and said, "If I'm going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly."
As if possessed by a manic demon, I moved quickly and quietly after that. Snatching up my trusty hammer, I systematically busted out the windows in each vehicle and took solace in the sound of shattering glass. One by one, I began sloshing gasoline all over the insides of the precious cars and around the inside of the structure housing them. When there wasn't much left in my final container of gas, I spied a huge roll of shop towels sitting on a work bench and decided to use it as my fuse. I carefully started unrolling them from about twenty feet away from Edward's pretty little Vanquish and moved in toward it, leaving a trail behind me. Once up to one of the broken windows, I tossed the roll inside and moved to the opposite side to bring it out that window so it was threaded through. I repeated this process with the other cars as well and smiled at my job well done once finished. I picked up the jug with what was left of the fuel and poured it along the trail of paper towels until I got back outside.
Chucking the empty container off to the side with the others, I hummed a tuneless song as I made my way back to the pile of goodies I'd brought along. I picked up the blowtorch and continued humming as I walked back over to where the paper towel trail began. With no hesitation or real thought to any consequences I might endure when all was said and done, I fired that sucker up and held it down to the first towel. In less than a second, the cloth-like paper went up in flames with a small woompf sound and spread down the line and into the garage.
It was a thing of beauty, that fire. The way it spread so quickly, the way the flames danced in the light breeze, the way each of the cars started to slowly burn as the blaze engulfed their gas-soaked interiors. It wasn't long before the walls and cupboards in the building caught fire as well, leaving me proud and a little in awe of what I had accomplished in so short a period of time. I wasn't dumb; I knew the Cullens had a security system on the main house that likely tied into this building as well. It would only make sense. And as I heard the wailing of sirens in the distance, I knew I hadn't finished my job a moment too soon.
It took the fire trucks and other emergency vehicles several minutes to navigate the lane leading back to the Cullens' house and flame-engulfed garage. I watched emotionlessly as the fire fighters began running around like chickens with their heads cut off. No one seemed to notice me at first. It wasn't until Charlie arrived in a flurry of flying gravel and dust that anyone saw me standing off to the side.
"Bella! What the hell happened here?"
The wind had picked up and was fueling the fire that was threatening to spread to the overgrown foliage surrounding the building.
"Bella, answer me, dammit. What started this?"
I turned to Charlie and said, "Not what. Who," before handing him the blowtorch and walking away just as the first car exploded.