Cobweb Head

p r o l o g u e

I didn't mean to start the fire.

I didn't even know how I started it.

But I was sitting outside the school gym, coughing and spluttering as bile formed at the back of my throat. Hot tears stung my eyes as smoke flooded the sky, staining it black.

Trish scrambled to her feet next to me, and when I looked up, her face was corpse-white. Her bottom lip was trembling. "What did – how did..."

There were sirens in the distance. Trish's clothes were coated in black dust, and her expression had fallen into something both distraught and disgusted, scary as the hellish flames danced in the reflection of her eyes. When I turned, the walls of the school gym were being gnawed at by those same furious flames, charring them black.

We'd been inside just a few moments before.

Fire, the fear had entered my mind just seconds before we'd rushed out. I'm terrified of fire.

Out all the phobias I'd heard that day, hers had been the loudest.

I pressed a palm against my head as a dull throb knocked against the inside of my skull. I had heard it, I had let myself slip, and now it was there. My stomach had started twisting itself into dark knots.

"You... you freak." I heard her from where she stood at my right, and even as she drawled the insult, her voice was shaking. She was afraid.

I heard cars pull up behind us as the siren split the air. Hands took my shoulders, my heart rattled against my bones as if they were some kind of foul instrument, and I was walking away.

There were people checking me for injuries. I was coughing again. My mouth tasted like charcoal and ash, thick on my tongue, and my nose had started running.

I didn't mean to start the fire.