Inferno

Part 1: Suspicious Stranger

It can't be tamed. It has a mind of it's own. The fire is wild, it's free, and it's something I'm not... alive.

My life has been one big routine. Even my love life is predictable and I don't know how to break out of my cycle. Looking up "predictable" in a dictionary will give you a picture of April Annenberg.

I stare at the flame, chained from it's full potential by the switch on my stove. Just think, if I were to twist it to highest power, how far would it go? I feel the urge, I feel the urge to switch the fire on completely and watch it take over. Seconds before I'm about to, I turn off the fire and speed walk out of the kitchen.

"I was close today," I mutter to myself. Too close. My hunger is deepening, and I don't like it.

I check the clock on the wall, 5:32 AM, I still have time. Unconsciously my focus turns towards the woods behind my house. It looks tempting. Walking around the woods before the sun comes up has always been a guilty pleasure of mine.

But these days a girl going out alone before the sun comes up is going from ordinary to dangerous.

There are rumors of a serial killer around the neighborhood. Apparently, an arsonist. If it is true -- which it probably isn't since the senior citizens next door don't have the best credibility -- the killer and I have one thing in common. We share a love/fascination for fire.

I pull on my slippers and walk out the back door. Before stepping out, I hear my mother stirring from her sleep upstairs and make a mental note to make less noise when I come back. Branches are snapping under my feet. So many damaged trees, so many less animals. Nostalgia washes over me, the days when dad was alive, the days when the trees were full and pure, the days when my sanity was something I never thought twice about. I try to keep myself away from thinking about those times.

Jesus Christ, April, that was a year ago. Move on.

After Dad died my mom had to go from housewife to working widow. All in all, we didn't have enough money to pay for everything without Dad. I sold some of my clothes, I sold my jewelry, I got a job. My mom decided we couldn't live like this. How she calls "survival mode". So we put the house on the market and rented an apartment. Nothing was the same. Sure, my mom acted like she was more content this way. But when she thinks I'm sleeping, I can hear her sobbing in her lonely bedroom. I knew she wanted her home back. So, we went back to the house to see what our competition was and we were pleased to see that no one wanted the house. Let me tell you, the house is actually pretty modern, well updated, and safe. However, It turns out that some idiots from school started spreading a rumor that my old house was claimed by the angry ghost of my dad, and that's why I moved out. Which is completely ridiculous. Yet, surprisingly, it did the job. For all the potential buyers who weren't superstitious, they hated the run down forest behind the house. The only people who actually wanted it was us. Eventually the landlord lowered the price and we moved back in.

That brings us to our situation now. My mom is a wreck. I'm the one who would always attempt to get her out of bed but she will never budge. So, I stopped trying. She started "working" from home, and takeout menus are filling up the side of the bed that my father used to occupy.

Thinking about my mom always makes me feel guilty. I tried everything to help her, but she just doesn't want to be apart of the world anymore. The only place I feel welcome is at school, which is really sad if you think about it.

There's a shuffling of leaves a few yards ahead of me. I stop dead in my tracks. The good part about being in a rundown forest is that no one bothers to come near. Sometimes it's thought of as haunted,and sometimes people think that's where the serial killer's hideout is. But I trust the forest, it's practically my home.

Once I start feeling like I imagined the noises there's a silhouette of a man in front of me. He steps closer and I step back, stumbling on a broken branch. The sunset should be coming up soon, but until then I'm sharing a forest with a suspicious stranger.

"Hello?" I call out. "Who are you?"

Seconds pass by and they feel like years. The stranger doesn't answer, and my fear is growing. Maybe the paranoid neighbors are right, he could be the aforementioned serial killer. Anything's possible, right? Just when I'm about to turn on my heel and sprint back to the house. I hear him mumble something.

"Sorry, what was that?" I ask shuffling a little closer to hear him. But he speaks louder this time.

"My name is Christian." He says a bit louder than before. I don't know why but that name strikes a cord. I've heard it somewhere before. Finally pushing back the thought of the stranger being a murderer, I answer again.

"I'm April, I live down there." I motion my head toward the general area of my house. The sun's starting to come up. Christian notices too, because he steps back.

"A pleasure meeting you, Ms. Annenberg." Then he runs off before I can scream out what I'm thinking.

I never told him my last name.

〰 AUTHOR'S NOTE 〰
Hey guys, my name is Helen. I'm 13 years old. My biggest inspiration for this story is the song Arsonist's Lullabye: by Hozier. It's not added but you can look it up on YouTube, if you're curious. Please continue reading, and have a nice day!