Slay

Don't Try This at Home

The girl slipped like a shadow through darkened streets. She paused to adjust the straps of her backpack, running a mental inventory of its contents. When the first light drops of rain kissed her skin, she raised the hood of her jacket and continued. By the time she reached her destination, her heart was thumping almost painfully in her chest and her body thrummed with tension. 

She scaled the fence. This, she had to admit, was mere theatrics. She was easily small enough to fit through any of the gaping, rusted holes in the wire. She only did it for the danger.

Come to think of it, that covered most of her motivations.

Long, wet grass brushed her feet as she tiptoed through the overgrown garden. She switched on her torch, and its beam swept over leaves and crumbling bricks. The structure before her could loosely be called a double-story building. After years of disuse, it had deteriorated into a crumbling shell, sprayed here and there with graffiti, giving the overall impression of a building held together with chewing gum and a prayer. The girl had heard that it had once been an electricity substation.

Under the torch's light, the floor of the building was damp. Rain fell in through ragged holes in the roof and the side where one wall had fallen down completely.

 The girl drew a matchbox and a small cardboard tube from her backpack. The tube was packed tightly with 'rocket candy': potassium nitrate and sugar. She placed it on the stone floor and retrieved her safety goggles from the little niche in the wall where she kept them. 

She turned off her torch. A match flared in the darkness.

It fizzled out. She muttered something under her breath and tried again, holding the new match against her rocket candy. It started sparking. She jumped back, retreating to a safe distance.

The tube flared up into a blazing white-hot flame, glowing red around the edges and billowing out surprisingly huge clouds of smoke. She choked on the smoke and caught her breath, leaning forward, the dazzling flame reflected in the lens of her goggles.

Something was wrong.

The seemingly innocuous floor around the blaze glowed, alight with a practically transparent creeping blue flame. She snatched her gaze away from the dying fire and watched, mesmerized, as the spectral flames crept across the stone, towards her. Their heat shocked her back to reality and she scrambled backwards, eyes still fixed on the encroaching glow.

It reached the opposite wall. The gap between the floor and the wall sparked and blazed up into a fire she immediately recognized. 

Survival battled with fascination, and won. The girl was up and running as soon as her feet hit the grass. Branches, heavy with rain, whipped her face as she streaked across the untamed garden. She ducked through a hole in the fence into the neighbouring property, rounding the corner of their house to crouch behind it.

A fuse. The whole floor had been a fuse.

The noise of explosions vibrated through her body. Her ears rang, too hard to hear the rumbling crashes as the building imploded. Dust filled the air. It choked her like the smoke had, and she buried her face in her jacket in order to breathe.

As the dust settled, before she climbed the fence again and ran, she saw that the abandoned building was reduced to a heap of rubble. 

A/N: Credit for researching explosions goes to my brother! Also, sorry, I know this chapter wasn't funny, and doesn't seem to tie in with the rest (yet)... The next one will be back to normal, I promise!!