Hi, back with another chapter. Thanks to all those who reviewed/followed. Please note, our female pyro does not resemble the female pyro model on the interwebs. Our pyro does not have those big ass boobs or big ass ass. Just no.

~When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

~Nelson Mandela

It took me eight months to get my lighter collection back to it's former glory. On the day I was tossed into the reservoir I lost at least four good zippos, and those are hard to get a hold of when you don't have money.

And the beginning of a lifelong fear of water started. It scared me. Not scared in the way some kids are to clowns, or in the way teenage boys are of teenage girls, no, this was a real fear. A real fear that led me straight back to the fakest fucking doctor I ever saw.

And he said: Hydrophobic. He said it as if it was as light as a feather, it danced across his tongue without effort. Hydrophobic. I didn't wanna believe it, my parents didn't either, but it was hard to deny when I flinched and shouted every time a raindrop hit, or when I even came close to a river or that god forsaken reservoir. Showering was barely standable, but the option of a bath flew out the window.

It made my parents scared. Scared for me I think, scared I wouldn't live a normal life with the direction I seemingly insisted to follow.

It made me scared too, but no way I would let anyone know it, not while they were looking.

I liked it when they weren't looking. It made it easier to get away with stuff, and as a teenager, I pulled all kinds of shit no one saw.

~The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money, and for fun.

~Jimmy Breslin

I started using my fire pit less and less as I grew up. My imagination dulled and I couldn't hear the voices through the crackling like I use to. That, and I just found bigger and better things to burn.

At the age of fourteen, I burned my first building. Nothing big, just a cabin-like shed way past the racetrack and out in the field. At one point it held farm equipment and a dire infestation of rats, but within forty minutes it was reduced to a shell of ash and then just smoke.

I wore the best inconspicuous old hoodie I could find, a black one with all sorts of rips and tears, and a pair of ratty jeans and left. I paid careful attention no one saw my face, cause if they did, it'd be over.

I did it with nothing but matches and a little bottle of lighter fluid. I would later find lighter fluid to much of a cheat to use, but at the time I needed the extra help. I got some on my hands.

I lit a match and the shed lit up like a Christmas tree. I'm sure it was visible from the highway, and maybe even from the old racetrack, but no one came immediately.

It looked lovely. Fucking fantastic. The shed burned like pine cones, and never before had I enjoyed playing with fire so much.

I stood back to admire my work. And then I deemed it admired enough and proceeded to get the hell out of there when the weeds in the field started to catch too. It spread quicker than I anticipated, and the greens of the field smoked, filling the sky and my lungs. I looked around for that bottle of lighter fluid, covering my mouth and nose from the blinding smog.

I found it with flames already eating at the plastic outside. Even teenage me, who would be sent to the burn clinic three times, could identify that if the flames burned through the plastic, it would be bad.

The whole deal was just an amateur mistake. And I committed another one when I didn't just turn tail and run the fuck out of there. In the spur of the moment I knelt down to try and snatch it before it combusted, thinking I could save it.

As soon as I touched it, the container exploded.

You can imagine how my hands felt. Raw. Blood colored with blisters so big I couldn't close my fingers.

Fire, as much as I love it, as much as I use it and tie myself to it, hurts like a bitch. It ate away at the skin on my hands like it was nothing more than paper, and I screamed. Screached. Like a wounded animal, a cornered wolf.

It made me feel small, the way the smoke became everything and ate the sky. Breathing was hard. It was hot. My hands hurt.

I held them close for a moment, and looked around. The fire was spreading, across the field rapidly, something I would've been proud of if I didn't feel so goddamn scared.

The sound of sirens coming down the highway brought me back and I sprinted away, wondering the south end of town till the smoke in the sky went away. I returned home at three in the morning.

I my parents noticed my burned hands. The noticed the frantic behavior and the stench of smoke buried in my clothes. And I'm sure they read the damage reports of arson in the next day's paper and tied two and two together.

And I had never felt so alive, than at that moment when I read the destruction report in the paper.

From that day on, my mother had a hard time looking me in the eye, and she couldn't stand to be in the room as my father patched up my hands.

~I can burn down in minutes what takes you years to build.

~Unknown

To say I had a rebellious teenage phase is an understatement. When my father, a hardworking man doing his very best to give my mother and I a good life in America, said I shouldn't go somewhere, I made it a goal to get there just to spite him. I was fifteen, nearly sixteen when I killed my first man.

It's safe to say I wasn't where I should've been. In a part of town my father told me not to go.

And I ran into a stranger on the street. He had greasy hair, hungry eyes, and oversized hands with nails trimmed like a girls.

This ended up being another time when another 50 pounds or six inches would've came in proved to be another time showing I wasn't tough. I wasn't strong. Or brave.

I wasn't bulletproof.

I wasn't mean.

I was so goddamn stupid, is was I was. This proved to be another time to show me I couldn't be a dragon. At least, not yet.

Fast forward forty minutes and the greasy guy was locked in a bathroom at some sleazy closed nightclub. I was in the bathroom with him for a bit, long enough that all damage was probably already done. Long enough for him to make me feel lower than dirt, Long enough that everything was left sore. I was covered in bruises and I was just as ready to kill something as I was to curl up in a ball and cry.

How I had gotten away exactly I can't remember but as soon as I got out the bathroom door I slid a broom through the handle so the man inside couldn't get out.

Then I slid to the floor.

And I cried.

The greasy man was banging on the door behind me, demanding I open it and let him out. He was yelling and hollering, barking rabid words. I told him to shut the fuck up once and then stayed quiet as he continued.

Everything hurt. My pride, my skin, every muscle in my body, everything.

I noticed the bar across the nightclub. FulIy stocked. I went to it.

Getting up hurt and walking hurt too, a different kind of pain. It was more of a throbbing pain and I hated it. I hated the man behind the door, I hated the nightclub, I hated how fucking stupid I was. I hated how fucking vulnerable I was. I hated it.

I threw a bottle of whiskey as hard as I could. It shattered into a million splintering pieces of glass and the alcohol seeped over the floor. A bottle of rum followed it.

It was hard to hear myself think over the deranged ranting coming from the bathroom and the blare of glass bursting but I realised something I probably shouldn't have. Alcohol is highly flammable.

I had matches in my clothes, a lighter too. The air got a lot colder when I remembered my clothes were locked in bathroom with.. him. No way in hell I was getting those back. If I were to unblock that bathroom door he would've come out and likely kill me. He could grab my neck and never let go. He could ram my head in the wall and crack my skull.

I decided that being as naked as the day I was born and without a lighter was fine.

Lucky for me, it was a fucking nightclub. When this thing was open, people probably smoked in it all the time. There was a matchbook in one of the bar drawers. I smashed the rest of the bottles in the bar. Half of the shit I threw I never even heard of before. One particularly heavy bottle was splattered right up against the bathroom door.

The greasy fucker was absolutely howling. Seething the oddest combination of words.

He called me sweetie. Hon. Doll. Bitch. Runt. Whore. Cunt.

I lit one match. I started to walk out, and was reminded that even walking hurts.

The place lit up fast. Like a flashfire. The greasy man behind the door realized what I was doing before he even smelled the smoke. If he was loud before, now he was fucking thunder. Screaming at me to free him, begging for all he's worth for me to let him out. Maybe I felt bad. Maybe I realized I was killing a man.

I thought I would've liked to hear the sound of people I hate screaming. All those nights as a kid listening to such horrible things in the fire pit, thinking I would like it, I hated it. I thought causing them -causing him- pain would be easy.

I'll admit to being slow as fuck getting out the burning building, but in my defense I was a bit fucked up at the moment. Couldn't think right.

I was so fucking close to the back door when the floorboards beneath me gave way. Bare skin landed on hot burning coals. The screaming, coming from both the greasy man and I, was so ear splittingly loud I didn't even hear it.

~When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work.

~Edward F. Croker

...

I think the firemen came quick. I think I heard them burst through the door only minutes after I fell. It's hard to say. Consciousness drifted away so often that time was hard to grasp. As was air. Yes, by the time firefighters came air was particularly hard to come by.

One firefighter, with a painted mask and a shit ton of gear, was walking through the hallway next to me. The firefighter had a painted mask and he was humming, singing even, as he cruised through the hall. The wall in between us had already crumpled and left an ash skeleton, flames creeping up whatever was left.

He didn't see me. I yelled. I yelled louder. I yelled louder still. My voice was so fucking hoarse I still don't know how he heard me though the fire and through his equipment. He seemed surprised to see me, half dead, buck naked, suffocating on smoke and burned to shit and back.

He took of his mask and held it against my face till I found my hands and did it for myself. He had a lopsided smile, the kind that's warm. I didn't know why he was smiling. I didn't care either. "You are lucky I'm here kid." He mumbled several encouraging things I'll never remember and hoisted me over his shoulder before taking leave.

I would see him again.

...

I dreamt of the dragon dying. I dreamt of the noble beast taking its final breath and being swallowed by the sea. I dreamt of that god damn greasy man with big hands and hungry eyes.

I dreamt of him killing the dragon. He ripped of its wings and held its head in the ocean, and all the fish in the sea were drowning and with the beast.

I dreamt of other even weirder shit too, the likes of which I can't explain.

I woke up screaming. My throat was sandpaper. My head was

I was held down to the bed. They, the medical staff, held a pillow to my mouth till I calmed down and told me I burned myself real good. Third degree burns covering half my torso, and various spots on my arms and legs, they said.

I was fed more pain meds, someone called and told my parents I was awake. My parents arrived with a couple of police officers.

As stupid as it was, I was damn sure they had come to take me away for arson. At first, I thought about running. I thought about lying too, but I knew they would see right through it if my mom had already told them of my past behavior with fire.

Dear god, did my fingers itch for my lighter. Or matches. Or someone else's lighter. The stress was unbearable. I didn't want to be arrested.

My mom cried over me and my dad told me simply the nicest things as the two police officers stood in the corner, waiting for us to finish our family time.

The officers questions were easy. One of them sparely mentioned the roasted corpse found in a restroom but they didn't really ask about that, they only wanted to know what I was doing naked after hours in a nightclub while it was on fire.

So I swallowed my pride and told them. I told them all of it. I even told them how I locked the man in the bathroom and how I started the fire on purpose.

Neither of the officers were mad, they looked at me with pity and empathy. They agreed that what I did could be settled as self defense and shock. They didn't pursue it further and left.

My mother cried some more.

My father hung his head in shame, but I'm not sure if it was shame in me. He repeatedly cursed that bastard man I meet under his breath, but didn't reprimand me for being where I wasn't supposed to be. I'm not sure he said anything to me at all.

I was released a month later. My family acted like a good functioning family for maybe another month before I messed it up again.

edited 05/03