1 Chapter One “Fire”

It always started with fire and always ended with fire. There was something purifying, yet destructive about it. As a boy he would stare into its flickering flames for hours on end; feeling its warmth dance across his young skin, like playful shadows on the barren walls long overdue for a fresh coat of paint.

Every time was like the first; exciting, sensual, burning his soul, igniting a powerful yearning deep within. It was in a hidden, unexplored place, deep in the mysterious depths of his mind. Throughout the years he asked himself; why, why had fire become his life? No answer ever came; there never was. He was who he was without any regret; his curse unto death.

The memory of his first time ran through his mind as clear as mountain spring water. The screams of his enemy broke the calm silence of the darkness, like thunder booming in the heavens above on a beautiful storm-filled night. He was deliriously drunk with an incomprehensible ecstasy. A drug addict filled with a fire-induced erotic orgasm, set in motion by the roaring flames blistering the skin of the sick bastard who had been his demon; his torment, his fanatical obsession. Now in the end only ashes would be left of the murderous scum who delighted in the torment of others.

"Scream you son-of-a-bitch; scream in agony; scream for mercy; mercy you showed no one," Sam shrieked, taunting him in his final seconds of life. He learned the secrets of fire long ago. There was nothing it couldn't destroy if it was hot enough.

It was always the same every time he woke up in the middle of the night soaked in sweat, drenched with memories of his past. Was he the man in his nightmares; or were they just twisted ramblings of a malfunctioning brain? One permanently damaged by the accident that robbed him of so much of his past and now threatened to take away his future?