I'm forced into a chair and tied down with duct tape, sobbing, only able to ask "Why?" over and over again. The man doesn't hear me so I start shouting for help.
He punches me right across the jaw. "Shush, little Kiddy," he commends in his slithery tone. "We wouldn't want to wake your family, now, would we?" He laughs, tipping his head back to the ceiling. "It's a joke!" He cackles. "A joke between a couple of good friends! Laugh, Kiddy, laugh!" I choke out a pathetic sound that resembles a cross between a sob and a gasp and he keeps on laughing as he lines up the dining room chairs, single-file, in front of me. He laughs as he hoists up my father's probably-dead body and ties him down. He laughs as he does the same to my mother, brother, and sister.
The destroyed house echoes with his demonic laughter, morphing its once happy atmosphere into something eerie and unfamiliar as he drenches my family in gasoline - a half-gallon for each of them.
"Please... Stop!" I plead, crying like a little girl. He ignores me and sets them ablaze anyway. And I scream "No!" and other nonsense that doesn't change a thing, doesn't save my family.
He punches me again and I taste blood in my mouth. "Burning; Burning; Burning!" he chants, dancing around the burning bodies of my family while I sob. Then he turns to me with his wicked smile and demands, "Sing with me, Kiddy! Sing with me!"
"Nicole? Nicole, sweetie, come back to us." Her father tries everything he can to break the trance she's fallen under, worry creasing his brow as she continues to stare at nothing and scream.
She's been like this for hours. When her family came home from an outing, they found the house ruined and their darling deranged daughter sitting in one of the dining room chairs, acting as though she couldn't move from that seat. She was staring at the four chairs she had placed in front of her, single-file, glancing between them at intervals and sobbing uncontrollably. After being unable to bring her back to reality, her parents had no choice but to call in professionals - doctors, psychiatrists, the whole lot.
The screams continue, begging for someone to stop, that the smoke is getting thicker and she can't breathe. The frail girl is tied down to a hospital bed, but she doesn't move, staring at the ceiling, seeing something only she can see.
Her family had been warned something like this could happen. Their daughter had been suffering from horribly violent hallucinations and delusions for most of her life, all of them circling around the death of her family. More commonly, the death involved fire. The doctors can only suspect that it stems from the traumatic event of being the only survivor of a house fire as a small child, where she had seen multiple family members burning or the outcome the flames left for anyone to see.
"Nicole, please... Please come back..." Her mother sobs, jerking her hand away from Nicole's as blood sprouts from half-moons along her skin. Her daughter continues to claw, trying to break free, trying to stop whatever it is she's seeing unfold.
This goes on for hours into the night.
