The Arsonist

3:57 pm, September 3rd

He was running in the rain, splashing through the grassy quicksand they called a school playground, mud flicking onto his clothes as the feet that splashed them submerged into the filth. The bell had rung for recess, and he was late. Again. The teacher was going to scold him, in front of the class she didn't know was listening intently, tell him about responsibility, and. well, responsibility.
He could see through the film of the downpour that the teacher was already huddling them around her, ushering them towards the door. Most of the time he didn't get in trouble because she herself was usually late. But at times like these.
He worried that the teacher was going to call his parents again, "to express her concern" that he was a trouble child. A trouble child? Everyone was a trouble child at his age; he often tried to reassure himself. There was nothing wrong with him - absolutely nothing.
He tripped.
The tripping and falling face-first into the mud was bound to happen. He lay still for a moment with mud seeped between his lips and he tasted the oily-sweet chemical filth on the tip of his tongue. If he wasn't wet already, the puddle beneath his clothes made sure of that. He felt like a despicable worm.
This. Sucks. He told himself.

Peter remembered well that day. The first day of when his life truly began. Granted, face-down in a puddle of mud was not so glamorous, but in the end, that mud puddle gave rise to magnificence.

Pulling himself up, he gazed down at his filthy filthy clothes. He could see the rainbow shimmer of car oil shimmering down his plaid shirt. At times like these, he hated life, but at times like these he could laugh at himself. Mother and Father had so many expectations for their little boy. A perfect, flawless single child, now would he? Their greatest: to see him standing in the rain, dripping with greasy mud. Surely, a child of their dreams.
But then the children started laughing at him. Suddenly, it wasn't so funny anymore.
Not all the children laughed. Most of the kids were like him - shy, soft, and would never hurt a fly. But some of them were real devils - the kids who played war during recess, threw rocks and pinecones at people playing tag - those were the people who laughed at him.

He could laugh at them now. This story didn't happen so long ago - he had only been in the institution for eight months. They were probably still suffering the consequences of their actions.
"And then what?"
Peter grinned smugly, a dramatic effect for the audience.

With the gasoline drenching the front of his body, and his glasses smeared with gritty mud, he couldn't see a thing. He couldn't see the kids holding their bellies, but he could hear them screeching with laughter. He could hear the teacher's voice calling sharply for him to come in, but he couldn't see if she was saying it out of anger or compassion for his well- being. He could feel that his hands were red-hot, but he couldn't see if they bloody of whether he had scraped them or not.
He couldn't see the rain turning into mist as it touched his body, but he could hear the hissing of steam.

He pronounced his famous, wicked grin. The audience was enraptured.
"Go on!"

He could hear that one girl had stopped screaming her head off in derisive laughter. She was the only person who stopped laughing in time - perhaps to stare in awe, who knows - as a column of white steam formed up and around him, rising up around him like a formidable white tower. A white tower of impending doom.
The next moment - bam - he was alive in flames.

Peter relished the respect the audience was paying to his story - it was quite a story as it was true. They were captivated. So many of them had endured for years what he too had endured, but none of them had the chance, or ability, to do what he did.

The flames were charcoaling his clothes in the mud and the grease, bearing a thick malicious plume around him, and a dark aura. It burned the mud right off his glasses in a sour hiss of steam and stench so he could see again. He saw little shadows - his fellow classmates seemed so much smaller now - and headed towards them.
A bare foot squelched his weight through liquid rubber and sent up another plume of pearly steam as he stepped into a puddle. He moved forward.
There was no need to say that everyone now was screaming and screeching now - not in laughter but in terror - to his satisfaction.
In a few seconds, the children were ushered safely inside the classroom - the teacher moved quickly. They were cowering behind the glass windows, crying and unable to keep their eyes off the terrible spectacle before them. A boy, one of their own, had just gone up in flames and was heading right towards them! Just like a malicious being of hell.
Anger.
Righteous anger that Peter had never ever felt before, an emotion that he believed he should've felt long ago but could never summon out in all his young life, simmered into his mind.
He often felt when he was treated unfairly, he should be angry. But he could never bring up that righteous emotion. Never. It was bizarre, and depriving.
But now, well. Here it was.

The audience was nodding. Yes, yes, they too had felt anger. Anger at the disrespect they received, anger at the unfair judgments, anger the world for making them this way. Yes, he could see them drooling with their compassion for his anger now. At least they had the satisfaction of see one of their own carrying out their righteous revenge. They all deserved it.

Through need, desire - he didn't know - he found the water at his feet all a sudden, gone - it must've evaporated. He noticed now that the fire engulfing his body wasn't red-hot anymore - it was cold blue. It was the hottest fire there was, after the searing white color that clung to his skin. Most of his clothes were gone or just left in smoldering tatters hanging on his body.
In a sudden storm of rage, flames flooded from beneath his feet like a deadly savannah fire. The edges were orange, but as the blue flames flicked on, everything in its path was incinerated. Everything.
A lone basketball exploded with a painful KABOOM. Bits of trash were left behind as little piles of black ash. A jump rope lying on the ground shuddered like a snake before the heat melted it all into dry ash. At his command, the fire climbed up the column that supported the covered area, and ate up the tiles, reducing them to bubbling tar dripping off the gutters.
He was invincible.

"The end."
"Aw, come on man, that's not the end."
"Yeah. You didn't tell the whole story." His friends were being good- natured. They liked his story, but they found the last chapter greatly amusing.
"It's the better part of the story. The rest is boring," Peter said, waving his hand away.
"Hey Pete, hey Pete, y-you d-didn't mention th-th-the p-part ab-bout th-them calling n-nine-one-one," Cody, the stuttering one, pointed out.
"How many normies does it take to call the police?" Zach piped up.
"It took six!"
The others laughed. Peter laughed too. He had heard how four kids and two adults from the school dialed nine-one-one to the emergency center, all in the first half-minute.
"Yeah, how it took the fire fighters half an hour to cut down the circle of flames you grew around for them," added Angelica, the anorexic. She liked the idea of him being untouchable.
"And then when they reached you they couldn't get you to stop flaming, and when they couldn't do anything else, they had to hose you down!"
"Hose you down!" echoed Harper, the schizophrenic.
"Like a common mob criminal," Azura said admiringly. She was instituted for exhibiting dangerous behavior.
"And I'm just a kid, just like the rest of you guys."
"Yeah. Just a kid," Harper echoed back.
They were silent for a moment, gloomily pondering their existence in the state's top mental institution for children.
"But it happened three times again, didn' it?" Azura started again proudly. "You set the jungle gym on fire and all those children that laughed at you got first degree burns -"
"B-but of c-c-course, they didn't kn-know h-h-he did that," Cody added.
"And then you set your neighbor's hairdo on fire when she dissed your gramps about being mental," she continued.
"Distance of a hundred feet!"
"And the police didn't even know what hit her," said Azura, proud that Peter had outwitted the police.
"But then my parents busted me that night because they knew I did it - I know, I know, you don't have to tell me," said Peter, but he was smiling all the same.
"And you burnt the house right down to the ground."
"And then they sent you here."
Another self-resentful moment of silence.
"With us," Ralph, a big kid (apparently "dumb" but Peter never knew what was so dumb about him) said dejectedly.
"Aw come on. You guys know I'd rather live here with my 'homies' than with my parents, right? No way, not with them normies. Not with the grown- ups. Hanging with my friends is far better than anyone and anything out there."
"'Cos the grown-ups here know for a fact that you can set them on fire, whenever-you-wish," said Angelica.
"Something like that," Peter laughed. "Something like that."

A few days later, announced by Angelica flying into the room like a frantic leggy stork, life as Peter knew it changed again.
"Peter, Peter!"
Most of the kids including Peter, at the moment were gathered around the TV in the common room of their living quarters. In this institution, they were lucky to have one another as company. When their mental conditions had been deemed stable, they were allowed to wander and live in an open area of the building away from others were locked up in their individual units.
"What is it?"
"They're taking you away!" she wailed, falling onto Peter.
Everyone's attention was riveted on Angelica. Angelica was one who often called unnecessary attention to herself, but in the event of taking Peter away.
"What?" he said dumbly. "What do you mean? How do you know? What happened?"
"A guy walked in and asked to see you," she sobbed. "He was, he was. He was like, old. Not really old, but he had a lot of white hair old."
"Maybe it's just a doctor. Or maybe another magician that wants me to set his bunnies on fire again."
The others laughed at his joke, but nervously.
"Come on, Angelica. What else - did you see, hear anything else they were talking about?"
"They went into Doctor Crumb's office. The old guy, the head doctor, and the administrator. The Lyncher!"
The Lyncher was the pompous tight woman who held the occupation as administrator of the institution. The head doctor wasn't so bad - he was nice, as far as Peter knew.
"And then?"
"And then I ran here to tell you."
The other kids looked at Peter frightfully. As much as they hated being in an institution, they never dreamed about going to the outside world - with the normies. And that Peter, their ringleader and a strong friend, was going to leave them - perhaps forever - to go into the brave new world.
"Hide him!" roared Ralph.
They grabbed him, opened up the sofa, and stuffed him in.
Uncomfortably, they stood around the tattered sofa, wondering if they did the right thing. They felt like they had just buried him in a piece of furniture, which in a way they did. Did they hurt him? Could he breathe in there?
A moment later, the couch cushions flew into the air like a bomb had been ignited within. Peter sat up. To their relief, he wasn't mad.
"That's not the way to do it," he sighed.
A nurse came into the living room right then, beckoning for Peter to come with her. He gave his friends a regretful look, and left the room.
In the doctor's office, Peter found himself seated across from Dr. Crumb, the Lyncher, and an eccentric-looking white-haired man who didn't look old enough to be his grandpa. Little did he know at the moment.
Dr. Crumb introduced the stranger as Frederick.
"He claims to be your grandfather," the doctor said. "Do you recognize him?"
Peter stared at the stranger in a puzzled way. The same grandpa that the neighbor said was crazy before he set her hair on fire?
Something hit his kneecap - something hot and fiery and burning. He looked at Frederick - the man grinned.
Could it be? Another pyrokinetic? Could it be that his grandfather was the pyrokinetic that passed it on to Peter? How else could a man shoot pure fire from under the table without combustion?
If this was true, then it was incredible.
Frederick spoke up, the same knowing smile melting his features. "I did hear about a young boy setting his neighbor's hair on fire for her saying that his grandpa was a crazy."
"Surely you're not. that grandfather?" asked the Lyncher skeptically.
"Oh no, no. Of course not." Another tantalizing flame hit Peter's knee. He flinched. He got the message.
Peter was literally fireproof, but that didn't stop him from feeling fire when he least expected it.
"And Peter's parents agreed to hand you his guardianship, is that correct?" asked the Lyncher.
"Papers and John Hancocks, all right here," the man said confidently, tapping the formidable stack of papers at the middle of the table.
Apparently the doctor and his people had already looked them through, and were troubled by the fact that Peter's parents had decided to disown him. Peter himself was not the least bit remorseful - he had already had himself convinced that he was unloved and disowned when his parents decided to send their son to a mental institution.
"Right," said the doctor. He was faced with the fact that one of his patients - a psychiatrist's patient was usually rather long-lived - was getting discharged. "Right. We'll give you, and your grandfather, some alone time before you sign your own documents."
The doctor, the Lyncher, and the nurse left the room. Peter was left facing Frederick.
"So, grandson." Frederick looked very happy with himself.
"You're my grandpa?"
"That I am. But do call me Frederick. I would feel too old being called grandpa. And fact is, I'm not really your grandpa."
"Come again?"
"Biologically, yes, I am your grandpa. But I was not a very, uh - presentfather to your mother, running about doing crazy things, so."
"Then why isn't my mom, uh, pyrokinetic. Like us?"
"Like us? Well, there was no need for her to be pyrokinetic. People like us - other types, even - are born when we are needed."
"Does that mean I'm needed?" Peter was confused. What kind of occasion required a man who could play with fire?
"Yes. Sadly, you are." He didn't look the least bit sad. In contrast, he was bubbling with contained excitement.
"So you are my grandfather. Right?"
"Yes, yes, I am. That's the only way the gift it passed on," he said, as if he were schooling a difficult child. "It skipped your mother because her generation didn't have to - lets say - rise to the call of duty. My generation did, and in the end, we did. Your generation needs you, now. And don't ask about how they knew you'd be needed - it has something to do with prophecies and all that foggy stuff you'd better leave that to those seers.
"Anyways." He put his index finger on the table to make his point. The wood beneath his fingertip sizzled a stream of fine smoke. "There is one line - and only one line ever - of pyrokinetics."
"I'm not the only one. Am I?" He didn't want to be the only one. He had never wanted to be the only one.
"No, no, of course not. As all humans were descended from one chicken, so to say, us pyrokinetics are born from the first and only pyrokinetic. The point is, if you see another pyrokinetic walking around, he or she's probably your third or fourth cousin - something like that, I'm not very good at that stuff. The actually 'splittage' occurred when your great-great - several generations at least, did some stupid things and left his offspring lying around."
A lesson about the family tree, thought Peter. "Right."
"Otherwise we would've had a clan of fire-breathing babies all in one spot."
"Right."
"So, any questions before I whisk you off?"
"Yeah," said Peter, shaking himself. The whole line of words that his so-called grandfather had just told him was just sinking in. "Actually - where are we going? And most importantly, why?"
"Good questions. Good questions, my boy. We are going to Freelance, a decent town in the Rockies. I live there, and you will be living with me as I teach you about being a pyrokinetic. You will go to school there. You will not set children and their playing equipment on fire - though I doubt that high school students. Anyways. And then I will introduce you to why."
"Can't 'why' come now?"
"'Why' is very complicated. If you want to know now, I have no objections. Only that it's very long and complicated, and extremely unbelievable if I don't offer you any hard proof, which I don't have at the moment. You might not believe me, and it would make the whole situation at hand far more difficult that it needs to be, and trust me - it does not need to get more complicated. But you could say that the proof of being a living arsonist would work."
"As long as you're not carrying me out do any crazy heists or anything."
"No heists. No serious criminal activity. I don't believe so."
They stood up together.
"Does this have anything to do with fire and doom?" he half-joked. He looked at Frederick's falling face, and realized that he had hit some truth.
"Yes. Yes, my boy, yes it does."

Despite having seen his friends all cry for him in one form or another - Angelica spewing tears like a broken faucet, Azura chomping on her trembling lips, Cody stuttering and crying at the same time which gave to a choking kind of sob, Harper staring directly and straight through Peter which he hadn't done since he was first instituted, and Ralph sniffling and wiping his eyes - Peter admitted that he did feel cocky at his first breath of fresh air.
He was fresh out of a mental institution, and he was dangerous. He just had to flash for himself his famous wicked grin - it was a fantastic proposition.
Frederick with the boy's suitcase in one hand grabbed his grandson's elbow in the other. "Come on, you don't know the first thing about setting this world on fire, lets go."
Peter walked down the road with his new-found grandfather. A man that he had doubted existed, but now was in whom he found the absolute solace.
"So do they call you a crazy? Like my old neighbor? Is that what you're still known as?"
"Aw, no. Your old neighbor thought I lived in a mental institution, which sadly, most of us do have to go through, as did you and I." Peter found a great comfort in that. "But, your mother thinks I sell turquoise in New Mexico.
"As for what my friends call me - I'm a fire breather." He winked.
"We can breathe fire?" Peter was astounded.
His grandfather laughed into an "of course not."