Fundamental

Chapter 1

Arsonist's Lullaby
(1997)

    
        Gasoline wafts through the air and I'm high on the fumes and the moment, the erection pressing against my pants seam is evidence of the excitement. My heart pounds and I can't help myself anymore, I take the matches from my back pocket and pull one out. I drag the head on the sandpapery box and when the flames kiss the match I can't help but stare for a second. The warmness of a single flame encases my body with goosebumps. Just as the flame begin to reach my fingertips, I stand back and flick the match into the window of an old rusty car. The vehicle is instantly covered in the red flower, giving me a grin that I haven't had in awhile.
        I watch the fire grow faster by the heartbeat. The heat is nearly suffocating, but the smell of the toasted air and the sound of flames beating against the wind makes me feel alive. I stroke myself slightly, the hard on is almost painful. I clench my fists and close my eyes trying to retain as much of this moment as possible, I try to store it so that I can remember it later. When I've had my fill, and the blaze is as hot and big as the sun, I grab my backpack from the ground, dust it off, and start the walk back to my house, sure that someone will be coming around soon.
        The walk is about an hour long and I spend the time smiling to myself and fiddling with the matches in my pocket. When I make my way to the house it's dark, the moon is full and stars seem to go on for miles. I stopped for a second to listen to the nights' music, the calls of crickets and the hooting of owls make up the orchestra, and the rustling trees seem to be its conductor. The wind blows and I could have sworn I heard it whisper something to me. Maybe it whispered it's sorrows, maybe it's regrets, maybe it tried to tell me to go back and get lost somewhere. Maybe I just didn't listen.
        I open an unlocked door that is more like the gates of hell, I open the door and sure enough I have stepped into the icicle pit. I look around before I walk in, a shiver crawling up my spine at the sight of my mother sleeping on the couch face occupying yet another bruise. I walk over to the couch, crouch down next to her and place a hand on her cheek, careful not to touch the contusion that lay purple and swollen on her eye, a tiny cut outlined at the corner. I stare at her sleep, she's peaceful when she dreams. In moments like these when I can't see the fright in her eyes and the hurt coming out as whimpers from her lips, I wish she were dead. It'd be so much easier for her. No more pain, no more sorrow, no more of the man she told me she once loved.
        This only makes me hate him more. I take my hand from her cheek and stand, leaving a feather kiss on her forehead, my fingers lingering for only a second. Her eyes flit open and she's now staring at me with eyes that could break the hearts of thousands. I look away and find something else of hers to look at. I settle at her hooked nose that has a hump in it from last year, when he shattered it.
        "What are you doing back so late," she whispers her voice hoarse and broken. My gaze shifts to her lips, they're thin and chapped and I can't believe she ever kissed that monster with them.  "Come on Jesse you know how he gets." Her breath hitches and I turn around to see the man that keeps us trapped here. I take my backpack off and set it by my feet.
        "Hell have you been, boy," he spits.
        "What the hell did you do to her," I growl, my lip curling with anger.
        "Don't talk to your father like that," my mother begs quietly.
        "Father," I sneer. I look at the man my mom wants me to call dad and scoff. "My father" is tall and balding, his grimace is made of crooked yellow teeth and words that hurt. He has bags under his eyes and I thank every god there is that he's losing sleep. The sweat stained wife beater is partially hidden by an unbuttoned red flannel, and the smell of cigarettes and hard liquor follow him everywhere. The way he looks at me is cold and completely void of passion. The feeling is mutual, I say to myself. "This sak-O-dicks is nothing but a sperm donor," I spit through gritted teeth
        "Jess-"
        "No ma," I interrupt. "He can't keep treating you like this."
        "Don't you still have that bruise from last time or should I remind you who the hell you're talking to." His nostrils flare and his fists clench and right now he looks like the devil he is. But truth is, I do remember, in fact every time I put my backpack on, the bruise on my shoulder won't let me forget who owns me. His gaze falls to my mother's and he tells her to grab him a beer. She complies, wrapping her robe tightly against her body and walks to the kitchen.
        I'm staring into the eyes of a demon and I can't help but hate my own. I got his eyes, I share the same blue and hopeless tint in my corneas just like him. When I smile, they crinkle in the same spots, and I wanna gouge my eyes out just thinking about it. He sits down in the love seat that sits directly under the window that leads to an old kitchen with a hole in the wall from when he slammed my head into it, knocking me unconscious for hours. I still bare a tiny scar just above my eyebrow. He said I deserved it, that if I just shut my mouth, things like that wouldn't happen to me. But it's not me that I care about.
        My "eyedentical twin" pulls a pack of squished Newports from the front pocket with hands that could kill, flips the lid and pulls a cigarette out. He puts the near empty pack back where it came from and puts the stick of tobacco between his lips, never taking his eyes from mine. My mother comes back with a cold beer in her hand, water beading on its tinted glass. He grabs it with big meaty fingers and sets it on the old scratched dark wood coffee table that's stained with my mother's dried blood. She sits back down on the couch. The living room is dank and smells like dirt and cigarettes and the freedom me and my mom never had, "living room" isn't exactly fitting. Beside me, there is a TV that I'm not allowed to touch that's got a crack in it that runs from the right edge to the left one. I actually don't know how it cracked. I watch his eyes flick from mine to my pocket and back to mine. He asks for a match.
        "I don't have one," I lie. I won't let him take them, not even one, he might have me in shackles, but my sword made of matches and these lungs that are filled with ash is my liberation. He can't take that from me. He gives me an impatient look.
        "I know you carry matches with you, don't play me stupid," he says over his Newport, his tone aggravated, "now give me a damn match." He barks the orders and my mother tenses. I grab my backpack and sling it over my shoulder, and wince.
        "No." I can hear my mother's breath hitch, and if I'm being honest, I'm mortified. I look down at the floor and imagine myself sprawled across it yet again. I shudder.
        "What'd you say to me, boy?" He takes the cigarette from his lips and puts it next to the beer that's now formed a water ring around its base. He gets up from his chair, brows furrowed and head cocked to the left. He's three feet away but I can still feel the fist that will connect with my chin. I feel my mother wrap thin fingers around my wrist.
        "Just give him the mat-"
        "Shut up bitch! You don't think I can get it myself," he shouts. I tighten my jaw and clench my fists, rage ready to tear through me.
        "Don't talk to her like that," I scream. A malicious grin slithers onto his lips and my rage is interrupted by fear. I put my backpack back down and he steps a little closer, and terror extends a cold claw out to me and begins to crawl up my chest, making my stop.
        "I'll talk to her how I want, and you not gon do nothin but get an ass whippin. Now you'll do best if you loosen your hand and shut the hell up." Sometimes I forget why we stick around, but when I look at my reflection the answer knocks hard and loud against my skull. She wouldn't leave. Not while I'm around, and even then, would he let her? I look at the ugly room I stand in and ask myself for her: Is it even worth it? Is us not ending up homeless and starving someplace dirty worth it? Is bruised and beaten worth the pain? I ask myself this for her, and answer the same way she would, and that: be strong, it only hurts until it don't, and this house ain't no home but it's all I got for you, Jesse.
        I can feel eyes drilling into me as I dream. I look to see that he's closer to me now, he staring at me confused and disgusted, and I don't blame him.
       "You know what? You're not my son," I look up until I'm staring into the same eyes as my own, hope filling my chest, making my heart beat just a little quicker. "You're a mistake." I look down, my heart not as fast, and hope gone. I slide a hand into my pocket and feel for my sword, I grab it, rubbing my thumb on its cardboard sheath.
       "Fuck you," I mumble. He grabs my face hard, making me wince. When he brings it so that I'm looking at him, I see that his face is contorted with rage.
       "Speak louder, boy!"
       "Fuck you," I roar. Before my eyes close completely to blink, his knuckles are in complete contact with my abdomen. The pain starts off small and direct but then spreads until I'm hunched over and begging by lungs to work again. His hand moves to my neck and the sound of him shouting and my mother wailing makes an ugly sound in my ear.
        "You'll learn to respect me, boy! Don't you ever..." his words are drowned out by the sound of my heartbeat. My face feels like a balloon that might pop and I'm trying to claw my way out of his grip. It takes a second before I ask myself my I want to escape. I look at my beginning and my end in the face over my spotted sight and let my arms go limp. "Kill me" is what I'd whisper if his hands weren't stopping my words and my vision wasn't now cloaked in darkness.
        When they say you see your life before your eyes, they're wrong. What flashes are the memories that made you feel alive, that makes you hungry for those moments again, or makes dying easier. So in my moments when my lungs are vacant of air and I begin to lose myself, I think of my fire. I think of the way the flames licked at the sky like it loved the taste of life. I remember the heat and how comforting it felt, like the burn was whispered to me, like it was calling me home. I can't remember if I've ever felt warmness like that before. I take my sword made of matches out of they're cardboard sheath and drag the blade on a sandpapery floor. The sword ignites and I cut my gasoline soaked skin. The flames engulf my body, my lungs are filled with the ashes, and I'm breathing smoke. I close my eyes and try to soak in the last of what I believe to be life, and I realize for the first time in the fifteen years that I've been surviving, that the fire... it's my
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        He releases my neck and my lungs nearly explode from the breath they took. I'm coughing and the throbbing in the back of my head makes me want to pass out. I'm still dizzy and trying to regain my sense when my mother pulls at my arm, trying to help me up, I push her out of the way and continue coughing and dry heaving. Tears demand my eyes to listen to them I'm scared that they might comply. I try to blink back whatever I can in the hopes that I don't start something I can't stop. I should've died right then, I should've. I guess that's what happens when Demons play god, little boys like me stay trapped in purgatory.
        I can hear him sit back down in the loveseat, and I hear the television click on right after. I can feel my mother's eyes on me as I try and catch my breath, then I loose it all over again when I hear the news lady begin to speak.
        "Fire marshals have just put out yet another fire. Officials say that it was none other than the Pyro Pioneer. The fire was small, but police got to the scene in time to cease it from setting the anything or anyone aflame. Though none were injured during the latest events, he is still at large and is very dangerous, be sure to re-" Thomas changes the channel before she finishes, but it's too late, I smile to myself, giddy with excitement. I count this a small victory.
        "The Pyro Pioneer", I love it.

Fin.

Hello guys, gals, and my non-binary pals! First and foremost I'd like to say that if you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship of any kind, please ask for help. No matter what, don't stick around!!! Secondly sorry for the late update but thanks for reading and i hope you enjoyed! Thirdly, thank you CpnBeartato for telling me when I'm fuckin m'shit up (a.k.a being my beta reader)!

Some of you may know i have a deep love for Hozier. Well, Arsonist's Lullaby is one of my favorite songs by him and i can't tell you how many times I listened to that while writing. You guys should check it out!

Dont forget to comment, vote, and share! I hope you guys have great days/nights, y'know today's a great day to smile, and never let go!