The Arsonist

It was as if all time had slowed, slurred as your figure emerged from that crumbling doorway. Like an angel descending, you reached out your hand to pull me out from my own material despair. The flames licked at our feet, and I felt myself melt into your arms. You showed me that I was okay. That there was light, besides my orange, scorching, self-inflicted suffering. Your light was white, blinding, numbing all my senses as I stumbled towards it. Resigned to burn, I had waited to be swallowed, too eagerly, by the flames that trickled and spilled from the ceilings to the bursting carpet.

The roof creaked and groaned, grappling with my fire. Hard steel beams thudded to the floor where dust met smoke. There was a lot of smoke. It had a serene quality to it as the fluffy clouds engulfed us, like a warm, comforting blanket that burns out your insides. This flaming mess reminds me of myself. I suppose I saw it as a fitting end to someone like me. Was that why I’d done it? I can’t even remember…

Then, I heard your voice. You were calling to me, asking and asking and asking if I was still breathing. I crawled to you, a moth drawn to a stunning flame. Your strong arms pulled me out of the fury where I knelt. My body was dragged away like a broken doll, away from the red, away from the black, away from the echo of my choking and spluttering in the smoke that scraped them from my aching throat. Soon I was under the night sky. I saw the way the stars glimmered with hope on your dark, glossy mask. And how the glaring light of sirens lit up the stripes on your clothes like fairy lights. I never once glanced back at my ruined home.

You’ve been busy lately, haven’t you? You worry me; what if someone else hurt you? Would you carry someone else if they needed it, the way you carried me? I don’t like the thought. You’ve found your way back to me, heeding my calls like siren songs towards the steep banks of Hell’s great lakes. I’ve heard they’re filled with midnight blue fire… I’m sure one day I’ll know.

You will never know how much I wish to see your face, yet I never have. You never show me. I keep drawing you out, praying that you will take off your mask for me. I’m so thoughtful, aren’t I? Thanks to me, jobs have been popping up all over, like little fireworks for us to watch together. Isn’t that romantic? Where shall we meet next? The church? The school? I’d incinerate anything if it means you’ll come back to see me; …

So now I sit under the same stars you showed me, coaxing the demons I summoned just for you. Painting the perfect picture where red meets black, and the sky burns amber. All so I can catch a glimpse of you, strong and brave and sweetly innocent to the root of your peril. Tonight, you will not escape me.

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if we met, face to face. I wonder if you would smell bitter, like charred firewood, brittle, strong and fragile at once, giving light and warmth as you burn, just for me. I know we are connected, you and I, and it’s your fault. You have me hoping that one of these dark nights, my golden flames will claim you, your body, your heart, your mind, your soul. I get excited just thinking about it. People will say you were only doing your job, but I know it wasn’t like that. It meant something special, you just don’t know it yet. You have no idea what you did.

Tonight, as expected, the sirens wail, crimson trucks circle my masterpiece like harpies, ready to crush my efforts. And I will watch them try.

Tonight, as expected, you don your black mask for me. But why keep the flames out? How could you choose breathing over me? I am your air… In that suit, my feeble efforts can only flicker at you. I wish you would let me singe your skin. I imagine it thinning, cracking, burning, bubbling, turning red and turning black and fluttering to the flaming floor. Why can I not have you?

I admire your bravery, but would it kill you to scream and cry a little, like everyone else? Perhaps that’s what makes you special, hero. But you saved my life…

And I hate you for it. So this time, my Pandemonium, my raging, deafening red storm will swallow you whole, finishing what you started when you decided for yourself that I deserved to live, that I was worth saving. Your sweet little mind thought it knew what was best for me. You’ll never know how much I long to live in your starry world, where that was an accident, where all of this was a horrible, tragic accident. I want you to pull me from the flames again and to let me look at the stars again. For a second that day, I was alive. But you were just like all the others. You left. And now you will be just like all the others. 

Dead. 

Mine.