Wheels turning, dirt spinning and thunder sounding in the distance Amy Lynn drove her red jeep towards a blanket of dark clouds. She could smell the rain and she could detect small flickers of lightning striking the ground miles away. Storms didn't scare her anymore, she was thirty, not the frightened twenty year old anymore that use to work at Shoney's. She had had a bad past, her father had kicked her out when she was twenty and she had remained homeless until she was twenty-five. In the back seat of her car was a few suitcases full of old memories, photos of her father and mother, tapes of her playing dress-up and other games with her sisters and letters from her grandparents.

Slowly turning the steering wheel she drove her jeep around a bend and down a long stretch of road, her eyes locked onto the sky, wishing that it would set the road on fire. She was so caught up with searching the sky for the long zig-zag white lights that she didn't know she had hit something. She drove on until she felt her car die.

"Now what!" Amy screamed.

Opening the door and stepping out she walked around her car, she stopped and stared in shock of the green mess that was on the side of it. She didn't want to but she felt she had to anyways, she slowly bent her knees and sat down, with a huge gulp of air she looked under her car. She saw nothing, sitting up she felt something slam into her the side of her face. She crashed to the ground, she could feel blood flowing from a cut to her cheek. Standing above her was a small child, with bright red, yellow and orange eyes.

********

Waking up a few hours later, Amy felt something cold and wet on her forehead. She tried to feel what it was but discovered that her arms were tied behind her. Screaming as loudly as she could and struggling as much as she could she tried to escape. After five minutes of screaming and struggling she stopped, breathing deeply she felt tears in her eyes. She couldn't remember a time when she had been so scared. A thud to her left made her turn her head. The small kid that she had seen earlier was standing beside a small beach chair.

"What are you looking at?" the kid yelled nervously.

"Who are you?" Amy squeaked.

"The name is Arson." he said.

"Why are you here?" Amy asked.

"Me and my half brother ran away from home," Arson said. "we couldn't take it anymore!"

Amy, in some ways, knew what he was talking about, she couldn't take most the the shit her old man had put on her. Her grandparents, she felt, were her real parents. They had always been there to take care of her, they had always stood by her side whenever times looked bad. When her grandparents died she had tried to get the same from her father, her mother having left her father when she was 8.

"Where is your brother?" Amy asked.

"Half brother!" Arson snapped.

"Pardon the...excuse me." Amy said. "Where is your half brother?"

"He's on his way to this state called Texas," he sighed. "we'll see each other again."

How many times had she told her father that she was going to run away and never come back and how many times had she actually had the gall to do it? She had said a lot of things as a young teenager and she had never done a single one of them. She had walked the streets, done a few drugs and gotten into some trouble but she had never ran away from home. She had been too scared, too scared that if her father had found her he would have hurt her.

"How old are you kid?" Amy asked bravely.

"Five," Arson snarled. "and it's not kid, it's Arson human!"

"And my name is Amy," Amy introduced her. "Amy L..."

"Do you think I give a damn about what your name is?" Arson yelled. "Just drive me to that state..."

"What state?" Amy asked, disgusted.

"You know, that state with the trees that have the white flowers."

Amy had no idea which state he was talking about, she had lived in eastern California all her life and not once in her life had she seen such a tree. Thinking hard she remembered her grandmother telling her about the beautiful Dogwood tree with its flowering plumes. Her grandmother had told her that it was the most beautiful tree in the world, and her grandmother had also told her that it was Virginia's state tree and flower.

"Are you talking about the Dogwood Tree?" Amy asked. "It's the only tree I can think of with white flowers."

"Is it the tree from Vir Hinny?" the boy asked.

Thinking hard Amy realized that if she did take the boy to Virginia she'd probably be charged for kidnap. The boys father was probably looking for him and if he looked anything like the young boy in front of her she was going to be in trouble. The boy had a dark red, almost black head with bullets for teeth, the top of the bullets were colored blood red and the bottom was silver, his lower teeth were silver. From what she could see he was wearing a dark brown jacket and dark red pants, the same color as his face, he also wore a pair of dark red almost black boots.

"Hon," Amy started. "don't you think you should be heading home, your dad may be..."

"Look human my dad don't care for me," Arson screamed.

"What do you mean?" Amy asked, she had a bad feeling about this.

"He's always yelling at me," the boy cried.

Now she understood the young boy, at times she would also take her fathers word too far and would think that he hated and didn't care for her. Smiling warmly, but not intending to do as the boy said, she nodded her head. She intended to find out where he had come from and take him back to his home.

"Where'd you come from?" Amy asked. "Where did you live?"

"In a medium sized home in Pasadena." Arson said. "Can we go now, I got a schedule to keep up."

The boy walked forward and with a small knife he cut the rope around her wrists, slowly rubbing her raw wrists, she started walking towards a door. Her jeep was still in the same place that she had stopped it and the door was still open. For an instant she visualized running to her car, getting in and slamming the door shut and speeding away. Motioning with her arm, she told the boy to climb into the passenger side, of which he did.

"Don't even think about taking me back home," the boy snarled. "I do not feel like using this on you."

Amy thought that the boy meant that he was going to use the knife he had used to cut the rope that he had tied around her wrists on her, swallowing hard and looking from the corner of her eye she saw a horrid sight. The boy was pointing to his right arm, which looked like the hand had been cut off. Adjusting her eyes she saw that his arm was really a flamethrower, the same color as the boys face, deep dark red. Swallowing hard, she put her key into the ignition, turned the car on and started driving east, she intended to do as the boy had told her.