Fire Meets Gasoline : Wildfire

Chapter Fifteen : Genesis

    JOHN MCHALE. Five years is a long time, for someone that is locked up it doesn't go fast, but I managed to go through it. A lot of things happened in five years, but a lot more happened in the seven years in total since the warehouse fire. After I was out, I didn't know where to go, but then a truck went by as I was walking towards nothing, and when I looked over, it was my mother. She was clean, thankfully, and according to her, she began a job in the same recovery center she once was. She was happy to see me, but nothing could bite the feeling that she somehow felt sad for me, not a single mother in this world wants to see their child locked up for years, and her eyes made sure I understood that. I stayed in her house for a really long time, not because I was saving money, although that too, but because I was fighting with the town clerk so they could give me the junkyard back. It was a long journey for that, but eventually I was able to get the land for myself, and then I put in the work to clean it all up.

I found a job just down the town fixing train tracks. I didn't know that was even a thing, but with a record like mine, it was the only thing I had available for those years. It was sometimes lonely. I won't lie, I would stay outside during the summer and look at all the land that had no use because the person that was the magic of the place was no longer there, yet.

Jennifer and Lin visited me a lot during the first years, each of them lived slightly away from Elpida, so I understood why they would take months to be able to come, but once they did, it was a blast. Jennifer no longer had her long black hair, instead it was short and light brown. She explained to me how the police almost arrested her, Lin and Alex on that christmas night, but thankfully due to Lin's powers they dogged any questions and just escaped the town as soon as they could and prayed every time they watched the news in the hopes they wouldn't see our dead bodies. Lin's beard was no longer a thing although we could still see some traces of it. We would go to the firepit down close to the river and just hang out and drink beer like there was no tomorrow, it was like reliving a bit of my young days since I barely had them. I was twenty-seven when I left prison, and although I didn't consider I was that old, I knew either way that I lost some of my youth.

Talking about losing, the house I had in LA was an enormous shitshow to solve. I had years of debt, then all of the sudden, someone paid it. I knew who it was, and a part of me wanted to thank the person for all they've done, but I also knew they didn't want to see me anymore as they promised they wouldn't, so I kept their words and mine and just thanked them indirectly.

Besides that, I didn't lose anything in those seven years, in fact, I gained.

I learned about the difference between being alone and lonely, I knew how to be on my own now, I wasn't afraid of people leaving me, instead I cherished them enough to make them stay and feel loved just like I was feeling. It was mutual. There was no more second guessing myself either. After years of staying in prison, I knew and learned how to know my value as an individual, and there was no one that could tell me otherwise.

As I said, those seven years were long, painfully long. But then, in the beginning of the summer of 2029, just after I turned twenty-nine, I took the small car I was able to buy and drove off to the middle of Nevada again, this time it was to meet someone special.

It was really hot that day, enough that if you stared long in the horizon you would start to see things. I took my shades and my umbrella and hove it over my head, I stayed in the prison parking lot for hours, people passed by and thought I was

crazy to just stand in the heat, but again-I didn't care. It was almost the end of the afternoon when the gates began to open, the sound of buzz chilled down my spine because it reminded me of the time I was the one leaving the cell forever. Slow footsteps came and the sound of heavy breathing and happiness took over the man, he had a buzzcut and there was no sign of facial hair, his eyes were still honey-like, his lips were delicate just like the first time I saw him, and his bracelet was still there on his arms. However, this wasn't Mike Torrentes, it was just Mike. Someone that was different, he was a new person after all, through the way he walked to the way he talked, it wasn't the one who was so furious with the world that almost killed his own father, it wasn't the one who used someone else's trauma as leverage, and it wasn't the one who died at that cold winter night in Seattle.