Burning.
Memory in flames.
I remember every bonfire night I ever had.
The people, the food, the smell in the air and the nip of the cold. I close my
eyes and it's all still there, as real as the present. Burnt into my mind.
I remember barbecues as well. Old fashioned
holidays in the country, smoking behind the PE shed at school, restaurants with
more class than sense, cooking at university. Moments of pinpoint clarity in
the haze of my past life. All of them clear in the flames that accompanied
them.
I remember, specifically, the moment of
realisation. Revising for some exam or other in school. Nothing worked - every
fact I learnt turned to haze in a matter of minutes, drifting away with the
same lethargy that my memories had always had. No matter how hard or how long I
studied, I just couldn't learn.
Exams taken and, unsurprisingly, failed. My
teachers couldn't understand, my parents couldn't understand. Everyone was so
angry I picked up my books and ran off. All my effort, and for what?
I sat in the corner of the park that
evening, tearing pages out of my books and burning them. Each one slowly shrivelling,
charring, fluttering madly in the flames, and then gone, crumbling to ash. I
burned every school book I had, page by page, and then I went home again.
Eventually, the resits came. My chance to
redeem myself for the failures, and to justify the expense of the burned books.
I dreaded it. I barely looked in my new books. What was the point, if I
couldn't learn? So I put them out of my mind, watched tv, played games. Then
the exams were on me, and I entered the hall with as little revision as if they
had been sprung on me the day before.
Same situation, but this time something
different. Each question reminded me of a page in my book, a page full of
detail. Sentences, diagrams, all lay behind my eyes, exactly as they had been
as they went up in flames.
Suddenly, it was easy. Every question as
simple as I could dream. I finished in record time, left early. Parents and
teachers cross again, thinking I wasn't taking it seriously, but then my
results came back...
Cheat.
Top marks, more or less. A few points lost
to stupid mistakes - typos, missing information, misreading the question. But
only a few. Highest marks of anyone in my year, in all subjects, and all they
could say was...
Cheat.
I weathered it. With no proof, there was
little they could do. But I had the knowledge now. I've aced every exam since,
jumped through every hoop, won every prize. And I told no one, not even my
parents. It's been expensive, of course. Extra copies of books, photocopies, printouts.
Matches. And of course I couldn't just set fire to things at home. I spent a
lot of time in the woods about a mile from the house. Not ideal, but a limited
field of view, no passers-by. Slowly, I learnt what I could do, and took
advantage.
Skip to now. Good job, good house, good
friends. The job was easy - freelance researcher with a reputation for speed
and accuracy. The house was essential, full of bookshelves, a photocopier, and
a large, functional fireplace. The friends...
I keep them at arms length. Not that I dislike
people, but it's difficult. I had a girlfriend at university, but she hated me
disappearing, feared me when she found out. Afraid of fire. I hadn't thought it
would be such a problem for us. I miss her now. She was lovely, and I remember
her perfectly.
It's not quite the idyll it sounds. Sure,
I've been happy, probably more than most people. I enjoy my work, and I'm good
at it. I have a comfortable existence. But there's the shadow over me. Flames
always create shadows, and the bright points of my life had their dark
counterparts.
I found footprints in the flower bed
outside my house the other day. Sometimes I look outside and fancy there's
someone looking back. I used to think it was paranoia, but there's a face I see
in the crowd, and he always seems to be there when I go out. It's been over a
month now. I think he might be a private investigator.
It worries me. Someone out there thinks
they need to have me followed, have my life reported on like a criminal. I can
feel the gnawing in my stomach, the fear that my life isn't private anymore. I
can't tell you how many times I have been through the rooms of my house, looking
for anything that might look suspicious, that might be used against me somehow.
People are so afraid of fire that they judge before they know the facts.
Fire is the only honest thing in this
world.
I'll have to confront this snooping PI at
some point, before he does any harm. I hope I can make him understand the truth
about me, make him see that my fires aren't to be feared or doused before their
time. They're part of my life, the best part of my life, truthful and purifying.
I hope he can see that. I'm haunted by the memories, crystal clear, of the
people who couldn't embrace the flames as I hoped they would. Their cries break
into my dreams. But they're free now, and I visit them when I can, in my
clearing in the woods.
I'll visit them tonight, let them know
about the PI. I'm sure they'd be glad to see another freed as they are, free of
fear and hate. I'll prepare his spot under the trees, and then I'll commit him
to memory.
