I Burn Everything

Introduction

The dreams have been happening every night since I was seventeen years old, but I have no idea why they began and chose to plague my mind.  It was always the exact same every night night after night never failing to repeat itself in the same cycling pattern that had an iron hold over my thoughts during the day.  They took a hold of my being becoming the master mind leaving me as the puppet like zombie.

I was forced to do things against my will.  Setting fires and surrounding myself with things of that nature become an even more permanent part of my life.  It was always with me ever since I was just three, but in these past two years I've felt myself slipping away and giving my life to this disease.  My room has become an eternal home for matches and lighter fluid much to my family's disdain.  At times I found myself moving on my unconscious accord to bonfires or house fires happening just to sit in the background and watch the flames dance across the shadows and play out like a story.  The most troubling thing wasn't that my family didn't recognize me; it was that I didn't recognize myself.

But the dreams never left despite my best efforts; they haunted me through every waking moment until I relived them at night.

Everything was exactly the same down to the nitty gritty details - the sounds, the smells, the cracks in the plaster, the boy next to me.  He had a pinkish tint to his dyed dark blonde hair and pale skin but no face.  The outline of his eyes, lips, and nose were there, but his face was not.  In his hands was always an old metal lighter that he twisted around in his fingers.  The cracks in the plaster surrounded his body like it was trying to worm its way into his body.  We were in a hospital room that smelled of disinfectant with groans of agony from other patients filling the room.  As always we watched a bonfire party go on out the window wishing we could stick our hands in the fire.

But I could never remember his name.

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All my life I knew there was something wrong with the way my brain worked around fire.  Any other person's reaction would be to move away from fire while mine was to move towards it getting as close as I could.  I would stare at it with such intensity because it consumed my entire being becoming like a twin of sorts.  It became my evil twin that forced me to play with flames across my skin and the walls of rooms.  It has killed me, and I'm living as a ghost of a person I used to be.

I had these strange dreams that started when I was twenty that was always the same without fail.  My thoughts always drifted towards the dream during my waking time being the only thing I could focus on at times.  It clouded my vision making it the only thing I could see at times was the dream and nothing more.  Questions came at me like bullets but none have been answered by the dream; if anything, I only got more.

It was always the same with cracks in the plaster surrounding me with the sharp smell of disinfectant filling my nose and groans of pain filling my ears.  The girl next to me had silver dyed hair and porcelain like skin but no face.  It was as if someone took the blur affect from Photoshop and used it on her face erasing her features.  In her hands were a pack of matches that she constantly counted to make sure they were all there.

And it always ended the same:  we watched a bonfire burn in the distance always wishing to be a part of it.

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