Short Stories

Don't Play with Matches

I close the wooden door behind me and hang my bag up onto the pegs next to the door.

"Everett!" my mom calls.  "Is that you honey!?"

"Yes, Mom!" I yell back.

"Come set up the dinner table!" she says.

"Yes ma'am!"

When dinner is ready, my mother and I sit at the table meant for four people, not two. We eat in silence. Every once in a while we will give one of the empty chairs a quick glance. Neither of us can't stand looking at the empty chairs for a long time.

The Empress took my father and older sister. She tortured them and didn't even bother giving us their bodies back. The Empress is a heartless woman. She has killed hundreds people already. She says that she is looking for something, but she won't even say what she is looking for. Everyone wants her to be stopped, but there is no one brace enough to defy her.

After dinner, I help my mom clean up the table. Then, I go to bed.

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I wake up shivering. Goosebumps run up and down my whole body.

What happened to my blanket? I think. I never kick off my blanket at night. Even if I were to get separated from my blanket, I wouldn't be this cold. I have my night clothes and the house isn't this cold at night.

I sit up. At least, I try to sit up.

My action is met resistance from chains on my wrists and ankles.

"Help!" I shout.

My voice echoes off of the stone walls. Wait. Stone? I don't know a single person that is rich enough to own stone walls. That means that I'm not in Kansas anymore.

"HELP!" I shout again.

"Quit your whining you pathetic little child," says a cold, feminine voice.

I fall silent and stop moving. I almost stop breathing for fear that the woman would kill me for making too much noise.

"That's better," she says. "Now, tell me, where is the map, little boy?"

I don't answer for fear that this is a test. The woman realizes this for she says, "You may speak."

"Map? What map, ma'am?" I reply.

"You're not going to tell me, little boy? I guess that we'll have to do this the hard way then."

The woman reaches into her pocket and pulls out a box of matches. She takes one of the little wooden sticks out of the box and lights it.  She then does the same with a second stick.  The woman puts away the box and takes one lit match in each hand. 

The woman takes each match drags them along each of my feet.  The pain is awful.  As a child, I had once burned myself playing with matches.  That pain did not even come close to comparing to the pain that I am currently feeling.  It is like a million pins being dragged across my skin.

I scream. It seems stupid to scream because t won't do anything to save me. It's just my automatic reactions

"Maybe now you'll tell me where the map is, little boy?" the woman asks.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," I tell her, "but I don't know what map you are talking about."

"That's it," she says. "You have lost your privileges."

"What privileges, ma'am?" I ask her.

"Your privilege of living, little boy."

I start to scream, but the moment that I start, the woman presses the presses the matches against my cheeks. That doesn't get the reaction that the woman wants, though. I just scream louder.

The woman pulls out the match box again and lights many, many more. She lines them along my body. From my feet, up my legs, onto my torso, down my arms, and onto my hands. My skin is no longer visible because it is completely covered by burning matches.

The pain is indescribable. My body burns and it doesn't stop. Blisters form all over my body, but they dot last. They melt from the flames.

At first, I scream. I scream because it is the only thing that I feel like I can do.  However, after a while, I stop screaming.  The pain is the only thing that I remember being able to feel.  The pain is still there, but it feels different.  My body has become used to the constant burning feeling. 

I regret the moment that I stop screaming.  The whole time that I was screaming, the woman watched me with a blank face.  No sympathy, but there wasn't any enjoyment, either.

The moment that I stop screaming, the woman pulls out her last match.  She lights it.  She forces it into my mouth.  She holds my jaw shut.

I scream.  Well, I scream to the best of my ability. 

The match burns my tongue.  It burns the roof of my mouth.  It burns my teeth, my gums, the sides of my mouth.  It burns my throat and my lungs.

Soon, I am no longer able to breath because of the amount of smoke that is in my mouth.  I feel like I am drowning, just replace the water with fire.  I am drowning in flames.  I can't swim.  I don't even know where the surface is anymore.

I am drowning.

My last thoughts are, She is the Empress.

I drowned.

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A/N Hello humans!  I know that this one isn't as long as the others.  I also feel like it isn't as good.  This is part two of four of the four part thing-a-named-bober.

I would like to give a special thanks to unscriptedmistake and LegacyBorn for answering all of my weird questions.

I don't know when the next to parts will be done since tomorrow is Monday which means school. Yay!  Not really.  I will try to have the next one down by like Wednesday.  No promises, though.

Thanks for reading!  Until next time! ;)

~saaraisme