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~The scars of others should teach us caution.

~St. Jerome

The scars peppered my hands with permanent blisters and left a texture like sandpaper, but that was nothing compared to my back. It looked like it was thrown through a blender. A blender on fire. And it never really ever did stop hurting, never completely. Even now I can feel a phantom pain, though it has healed over and over and over.

It was something I could hide with a collared t-shirt though, at least for the most part. My hands still looked a little messy, and tiny burns freckled down my arms, and don't forget the swirl of angry scarring that reached up to my ear. It's not horribly noticeable, but there.

It never bugged me as much as they bugged everybody else.

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

~Paul R. Ehrlich

At fifteen I got my first job, just a few months after my accident. I figured that in only a few years I'd be leaving my parents, so I should prepare. I worked at a mechanic shop, as a junior mechanic.

To get the job I cut my hair boy short, called myself Randy, and said I was eighteen. There wasn't anyway I would get the job being a fifteen year old girl, so I figured a little white lie would do no harm. And it worked. I came home with little more than a buzz cut and told my dad I had a job. He got the situation right away, and instead of yelling at me for lying or being 'unladylike' he said he was proud. I'm still not sure whether he was lying or not, but I lit up like the fourth of July at the words 'I'm proud of you.'

My mom didn't act half as pleased. She stared at my hair for ten straight minutes before asking if I was a homosexual, when I said no she just shook her head. "Then why are you trying to be a boy?" Her tone wasn't hurtful but it struck deep anyway.

I cringed. I didn't know how to react, or why what I was doing was bad. This didn't hurt anyone. So I told her to fuck off, she didn't know shit, and that I was steering my life in the right direction for once. I was going somewhere. I had already been kicked out of school and had to be homeschooled. I had already ruined my chance of normal relationships with people my age, and I had already been nearly arrested dozens of times but I was doing good with this job. She shut up about it, and stopped caring. Within a week she was helping me wash the grease stains out of my uniform.

I think I loved that job. Everyday I went through hell and back to please my bosses, I worked with constantly hungover coworkers, and I carried everyone's load, but I was doing something. That's all I needed to do. Something to set my mind to, and thanks to this distraction, I was able to step away from starting fires for a bit. The way my father put it, the dragon was sleeping.

Sure, I still lit a few fires, but mostly old barns. Most of the time I could just go back to my fire pit and burn trash and yard waste. I assumed things were better like that, and they were. For a while, no one got hurt.

The best part about my job was all the spare parts it allowed me to take home. At the end of the day, after junking a car or a motorcycle or something, there would be all sorts of parts no one needed anymore. I'd ask my boss If I could take some for my car at home, and he'd say yes with the kind of tone that showed he really didn't care. After a while he realized I didn't have a my own car at home, but he still said yes, but now with an amused look.

I started a hobby of tinkering. A lot better than setting fires.

For my sixteenth birthday, my father built a shed in our backyard and let me build my own little workshop in there. It was the most out of character thing for him to do, but every once and a while he'd pull something like that.

I remember my mom watching from the kitchen window, her face pale as a ghost's, and shaking her head as she observed us hoist a wall up. She was half convinced I would cook meth in there or something on that level, but my dad had a little more faith. I think he allowed it because he knew it deterred me from my fire starting habit.

Mostly.

Between the scraps from work and the crap I pulled out of the junkyard, I was free to create whatever the hell I wanted. Blueprints for all sorts of shit lined the walls like wallpaper and wood shavings carpeted the floor.

It was a place I really called home.

And I made flamethrowers in there. I made other stuff too, but not anything worth mentioning. I didn't show them to my parents of course, a long time ago I'd learned it's best not to show them much of anything.

I'll admit the first flamethrower was little more than a spray paint can (as fuel) on a stick with a lighter in front of the nozzle as a pilot light, (something I have no fucking idea how I didn't kill myself with), but they got better. Most were never made, most of them never made it farther than a picture on a paper. One such blueprint was one with the primary part made of a car muffler. It was too dangerous to make but the idea of it always made me giggle.

And then one day, when I was nearly seventeen years old, I made the best one yet. In lack of a better way to put it, it was my baby. My fifty pound, beautiful flamethrower-baby with more examples of fine craftsmanship than most cars. And thus I needed to test it. I needed to use it.

I swear when I say it wasn't meant to be a weapon. It wasn't suppose to even see any action, but it did. When I designed my flamethrower, it was really just an extension of my hobby,

something to do and a nice piece so show off to anyone who came into my shed.

I didn't want to kill anyone with it. That was never the intention. But as soon as it was done I needed to use it.

The racetrack looked old, with lots of fine woodwork to make it seem fancy even though all the horse shit made it look like shit itself. My father took me down there to see a race one day, when the track was new, when I was just a girl. I saw all sorts of different men place ridiculous bets on horses they've never seen before and flip when their horse lost. One man in particular, he lost half of his years salary. That was how my father taught me not to gamble, at least not with money.

I licked my lips in anticipation. I could feel my fingers itching and my breath getting ragged. A job and a new hobby could throw me off my habit for a while, but I'll always come back to it.

I stared at the track for a full fifteen minutes, trying to convince myself not to do it, to turn around, before I torched it. My new flamethrower worked like a charm, it felt as if it was pure power in my hands. I had to retreat a little bit so I didn't suffocate.

And then the screaming started. A continuous, almost inhuman screeching coming from the burning structure, rattling in my ears like a bell. I deflated immediately. Someone was in there. I don't know who, and I don't know why, but someone was in there. I had to back up another twenty yards as the smoke grew and my legs wobbled all the way.

And then the screaming died down, but my heart sped up. It went thump thump thump in my chest so hard I thought it would rip itself out.

I watched from afar as the firemen arrived in not one, but two large fire engines. It would take them hours to completely put out the flames, and by then the fire would have already desolated the area.

At the rate it was going, the fire could have spread to the field. It probably did, but I left too early to see. I should've left way before the fire engine showed up- but Jesus Christ that wasn't the problem, the biggest problem was that I had just killed a man, or a woman, or a child. But someone had been in there and I was responsible for their demise. This time it wasn't in self defense, or from shock. There wasn't any justification. In a way it was an accident, but the fire had been on purpose. I think I started crying.

Why the hell did I have to fuck up so badly?

I felt just the same as when I started my first fire, useless, a bit regretful, small, full of adrenaline and truly properly terrified, but also happy. I had just roasted some poor mother fucker and my emotions were so out of control, yet somehow I felt happy. Giddy, even.

By the time I made it home it was already eight in the morning. Both my mother and father had already left for work but there was a note scrawled out on the fridge letting me know I'd be in some deep shit when they got home. They didn't even know the half of it.

Sneaking out seemed like stealing candy next to murdering a man. Luckily I wouldn't have to keep it a secret for long.

~Karma's a bitch.

~unknown.

I don't know what possessed me to go to work the next day, but I did. By ten o'clock everyone agreed that I should not be using power tools. By eleven everyone agreed that I shouldn't be around an open hood of any kind. By eleven thirty everyone agreed I shouldn't be near the shop at all. I was still a nervous wreck from the day before. I was so useless at work I got sent home early.

"You okay Randy?" My boss asked. I almost didn't register that Randy was me. I waited too long to respond.

I shrugged. "Just a bit out of it sir."

"You look sick."

I shrugged again. Then he sent me home, where I knew I would have to deal with two livid parents, still mad about the night before. He offered me a ride, a ride I should've fucking took, but I denied and said I'd prefer to walk. I

It was a bit of a walk home, about two miles, and I was almost out of town. On twenty fourth, turning on to highway H (a long mostly-dirt road) when a gas station on the corner blew up without warning.

Flames gushed out at to a 30 meter radius, eating, devouring, destroying. Like a ferocious monster it obliterated everything before I could fucking blink. Everything was just a big blur of black and orange I couldn't tell what was fire what was smoke and what was flying debris.

I hardly had time to scream before the flames hit. And it hurt so bad. I was tossed like a rag doll, and then skidded to a halt on the asphalt. Soot and fire rained down. The inferno roared and I couldn't even groan, couldn't even whine. I coughed and a mixture of blood and teeth seeped through my lips.

All I could feel was pain, all I could see was orange and all I could smell was burned flesh. All I could hear was the fire and my heart go thump, thump, thump in my ears. Everything burned. It burned so bad. Even breathing burned, it hurt so bad I stopped.

Somewhere far away a dog was yelping. Someone else was screaming. Some car was honking. My heartbeat got so loud it blocked all that out as I lost consciousness.

Thump, thump, thump.

...

The world was moving with nothing more than a gentle hum. Sirens. Yelling. Muttering. Radio static. It was cold.

Consciousness lasted all of twenty seconds.

...

I didn't dream at all.

...

~It is said that time heals all wounds

~unknown

I woke up in the burn unit, but I didn't know it. It looked like some sort of hell, and thanks to a fine assortment of various medicines, I was hallucinating heavily. I woke up scared and hurt in more ways than one, and I also felt an emotion I wasn't use to feeling. I was lonely. Linely and terribly impulsive. My body was too weak to do much, but I leaped up from my bed and ran.

For a few blissful moments, I felt nothing. Then all at once, like getting hit by a train, everything hurt. I stumbled and that's when one of the hospital personnel caught me.

A man held me into the wall and held me there till I calmed down. "We ain't gonna hurt you none," "It's alright honey settle down and we'll tell you what's what." I screamed and clawed all the while as if they were monsters. Someone injected me with a sedative and I slipped back to sleep.

...

I woke up again some time later with straps around my arms keeping me to the bed, making sure the last episode didn't repeat itself. It was dark, like night time, and everything from my toes to my head hurt. My head hurt so much I didn't dare even move it to look at myself.

I ran my tongue over my teeth to find out they were all there, many of them having to be fake because I remember losing quite a few. Would they look real? They felt real. That was good enough for the moment.

After enough time laying in the dark, ready to piss myself in fear (I did actually need to pee), I got a little brave. I shifted around and felt around for bandages.

I found many.

There was one on my leg, closed around my knee, and some thick bandages on my inner thigh, rubbing against my crotch in the most uncomfortable way. One arm was bandaged loosely, and my stomach was tightly. On my head, covering the right side of my face, I could feel the pressure of a bandage. That made me choke on a sob. What the fuck did I do to my face. I didn't need scars on the fucking face. It immediately scared me. I had enough fun hiding my scars, I didn't need one on my face from a fire I didn't even start.

I cried. Like a baby. Loudly, with heavy sobbing. Eventually a nurse came in, held my hand and told me the situation while I wailed for my father like a ten year old.

Yep, I was sixteen, halfway to seventeen and crying for my father.

The nurse told me I had third and second degree burns covering 35 fucking percent of my face, and a little bit up my left leg. A piece of metal wedged itself into my thigh, it was removed, but they have to watch the wound closely. My torso, she said, was heavily bruised with a good bit of glass cuts, along with a bit of first and second degree burns, but other wise would be fine if I gave it time to heal.

I was hurt bad, she told me as if I didn't know. I'd be in the hospital, particularly the burn unit, for a long time. I wasn't brave enough to ask how long a long time was. I cried a little more and waited for my parents to come because if they didn't get here soon I'd probably die and Jesus Christ I just needed them.

Thanks for reading, hope you liked it, please drop me a review, and have a wonderful day.

Edited 05/05