There Is a Fire
By katehall717
- 484 reads
Pyromania runs in the Hall family. “That’s bullshit,” you might say haughtily. Well, sorry. But pyromania is a mental disease. Mental diseases are hereditary, and trust me, the Hall family is full of them.
My dad has a strange fascination with fire as well. He’s an Eagle Scout, and likes to show me again and again how to make a fire by touching a 9-volt battery to steel wool. He waves it around on a stick triumphantly, calling it “redneck fireworks.”
My uncle used to work as a firework technician, creating and setting them off at shows and gatherings. Whenever he talks about it, he gets a haunting twinkle in his eye, and a weird, crooked smile on his face. He’s the one who brings the truck full of fireworks and explosives to every family gathering, constantly reminding us that he has them.
As a young thing, I often sat in the backyard with two sticks and rubbed them together for hours on end in a futile attempt to start fires. I had a mental image of setting the lawn on fire, with me leaping gracefully from rock to rock to escape the flames. I had dreams about setting people I knew on fire.
At birthdays, I always sat closest to the cake, not so I could score the corner piece with the icing flower, but so I could watch the candles being lit one by one. As my friends got older, I got more excited at the increasing number of candles stuck in the buttercream icing.
I remember lighting my first candle. I still lived in Pennsylvania, and I was around 8 years old. We had friends over, and were sitting outside in the courtyard. I begged and begged my mom, and she finally gave in. I burned myself, dropping the candle and match so it went rolling across the rocks. While some 8-year olds might have been turned off by this incident, it only intrigued me more.
This past year, I was making a pretend diary for my British Literature project, of Fleance from Macbeth. Obviously, my Fleance had died in a fire, and his diary was found with charred pages. For the project, I had to burn the edges of the diary pages. My mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight. I stood over the kitchen sink, holding the lavender-scented candle to the pages and watching them burn. I don’t remember this, but apparently I stood burning a single whole page for six minutes, watching the flames curve around the edges in a daze. It sounds weird, but I honestly don’t remember doing it.
I am not allowed to own a lighter, the matches are kept on a shelf that I cannot reach, and I am not permitted to have candles in my room.
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Mental diseases aren't
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