The Setting: School
Age: 15 years old
Plot: A scary lab incident during science class has Clove re-living the nightmare of her mother's death over and over again...
Her lungs were burning; every gasp for breath was painful beyond words. Her chest heaved, and her heart gave a meek attempt to continue to pump oxygen throughout her body, but to no success. Her eyes were closed, and even as she flung them open she felt the smoke cloud over her eyes and she immediately saw stars. Her skin was burning off in painful flakes and pieces, and she heard her hair sizzling all around her. It was only a matter of time before she was just a charred lifeless piece of mangled flesh, waiting for someone to notice she was missing. But no one ever would…
“Clove!”
With a swift kick to her desk, Clove’s head shot up, her hair falling forward in her face and she huffed her bangs out of the way. Beside her, Paul was staring at her with concern dancing around in his brown eyes. “I’m fine” she said dismissively, rubbing her temples with her fingers. God, she hated falling asleep. Ever since that fire when she was six years old, her dreams were plagued with nightmares of the Healing Centre catching fire, with both her and her mother trapped inside to roast alive.
The questions that fluttered around in her head since that day were repetitive as well. Why had her father set fire to the Healing Centre? Did he know that Clove and her mother were inside? If he did, would he have pulled Clove out of the burning building if she hadn’t crawled out the window? Of course, she had never gotten answers to these questions. He was always too drunk to give a shit about his daughter or anything else except for getting laid and re-filling his scotch glass.
Her gaze began to focus on the teacher at the front of the class, Mrs Hilton, with her button-up blouse and her grey pencil skirt, her hair pulled back in such a tight bun that her eyes were nearly popping out.
“Is there a problem, Miss Enfer?” she asked testily, tapping her foot against the floor. “No, there’s no problem.” She mumbled, straightening her spine and rubbing her eyes slightly.
“Good. Now, as I was saying, today we are going to be studying one of nature’s most natural killer, Fire.”
Her heart hammered in her ribcage, and she felt her breath hitch. Five feet in front of her, a small propane torch was turned on, the blue-white flames flickering over some dried grass. Her grip tightened around the edge of her desk, and Paul cast anther worried glance at her. He, along with the entire class and the most part of District 2, knew that she was trapped inside a fire when she was younger. She absent-mindedly adjusted her leather jacket over her shoulders, feeling the cool leather brush up against her burn marks on her back.
Mrs Hilton walked forward, her black glove tugged up firmly around her wrist and she took out the burning grass, holding it up in the air and they watched as the smoking fire began to die out, the embers jumping and leaping away from the grass in random directions, sizzling quietly on the lab bench.
“Gather ‘round everyone, gather ‘round…” Mrs Hilton chanted, tugging out some fresh grass of all different colours and textures. “we are going to watch the process of smoke, and we are going to learn how to make proper healing pastes out of these charred grasses.”
Slowly, one by one, every student scraped their chair back and surrounded the small lab bench with murmurs of assorting topics. “this is lame” “didn’t we do this yesterday?” “the fire bug will sure enjoy this…”
“The fire bug will sure enjoy this…”
Clove’s head snapped up as she heard that, and without a seconds hesitation she launched towards the offender, shoving them backwards onto the ground and delivering a swift punch to the side of their face.
Aaron Taylor looked up at Clove with a wide eyed expression, gasping for air and holding his bleeding mouth. “You fucking psycho bitch!” He spat at her, kicking her in the ribs.
She stumbled backwards, catching her elbow on the side of the lab bench. Mrs Hilton jumped in surprise, the grass falling in slow-motion out of her hand and onto the ground. It laid to rest a few centimeters away from Clove’s pantleg, and she didn’t even have time to take a deep breath before it began to consume the fabric around her leg.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream, her leg thrashing and catching another student in the shin. The heat quickly consumed her leg, and she felt the few hairs she had missed while shaving began to singe away and the fire started to heat up and burn the layers of skin that it touched.
She looked up and around in pure panic, students running backwards to get away from the fire, Mrs Hilton standing on her lab bench and squawking “Calm down! Everyone just calm down!”
“Out of the way, dumbass!” Said a voice, and Clove watched as one of the quiet students in the back of the room, Skylar Halen, ran to the fire extinguisher. His blue eyes flashed in excitement as he shattered the glass surrounding the extinguisher, the glass tumbling away and he snatched it away from the holster. He looked up at her and shooed the crowd away from her, shouting “hold still!” as he pulled the pin and the mist shot out quickly, cooling her leg off to an almost painful temperature.
She screamed and squirmed, and she heard the small thunk of the metal extinguisher hitting the ground. Skylar bent down, holding her shoulders tightly and shaking her.
“Hey! You’re okay, you’re okay…” he murmured, but when she looked up, she wasn’t looking at Skylar, but at her father.
She smashed her forehead into Skylar’s nose, sprawling backwards with her arms and crawling away from him.
“Get away! Get away from me! You killed my mother! You killed my mother!” She screamed repeatedly, and a hand clamped over her mouth as a second pair of arms held her arms back.
“Clove, calm down. For fuck’s sakes, calm down!” Cato snarled, grabbing her jaw and squeezing painfully to stop her thrashing. She whimpered quietly, still struggling against the grip of both Cato and Paul as she lost consciousness, her heart still hammering in overdrive.
Fear.
