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I'll let you in on a secret: I thought it was beautiful.
I remember every single Saturday night. Those were the nights that brought life to the ashen pit behind our house. Those were the nights that brought life to me. When I was too little to strike the match, my father would do it, but that didn't mean I wasn't watching close enough to taste the shimmering droplet of sunlight, pulsating like a tiny beating heart, a living thing. Wild and unpredictable and beautiful. The way I always thought of myself back then. I guess we grow up pretty quickly.
When I wasn't too young, I treasured the nights I got to light the pit, bring about the first spark of a whirling bonfire. I'd strike the match whenever I could, against whatever was in my immediate vicinity. I'd cling to it, relishing the little flare of heat and pressure as I held it close to my face. And I always noticed the way the longer I held it, the more I focused on its energy, the more it seemed to sizzle up just a little brighter. It made my day, watching it become that much more brilliant in my presence.
Finally, I would toss the match into the flaking, blistered circle of charred wood and stones coated in moon-white ash, watch as it took flight and engulfed the wood - as always. Smoke would stream towards me, warping the air around it as I let the flurry of sparks rain into my long hair and watched the tips of the flames flutter towards my legs, never daring to touch but coming close enough that I could feel the way they surged with unspoken energy. The way they seemed to enjoy being around me as much as I did them.
When I was twelve the pit was deemed, despite our living practically in the middle of nowhere, a safety hazard for the rest of the town. It had gotten too big, too flammable, hosted one too many bonfires. They came and filled it with cement, and I scraped my initials into it as a reminder of what I had lost.
But that wasn't all I would lose that year; my father left shortly after to fight in the war. I never saw him again.
My mother lay slumped in her bed for months. I simply sat in the harsh, gravelly remains of our fire pit, striking match after match and watching them burst up, then sizzle out, their curled, scorched skeletons shriveling to the ground, pulverized. I emptied every box we had - and we had a lot.
When I did finally extinguish the supply, I stopped leaving the house. I'd stare and stare at a blank spot on the dingy, peeling wallpaper, despondency searing through my head and crashing against the edges of my thoughts like an inferno.
The portion of the wallpaper I had been staring at darkened suddenly, as if smoldering. Then, without warning, it burst out in a tiny flame.
What had just happened? I scrambled for a damp rag, patting the spot vigorously until the fire had been smothered. I gave an audible sigh of relief, but the tiniest twinge of bitter sadness seemed to have wormed its way into my gut. I smothered it the way I had the flare.
Over the next few days this continued to happen; I usually caught it before it could devour a large portion of the house, but the wallpaper, already dirty and faded, was falling to pieces and covered in black streaks. It was only a matter of time before it grew out of control.
The morning the entire kitchen table went up in the blaze was the day my mother died. I didn't tell anyone; who would there be, anyway? I simply glowered at her bed, at the limp husk beneath the pale blue sheets for hours, hot tears behind my eyes like fresh embers. And I watched as the ends of the bedsheets began to curl up, grow black, then red, and start emitting a faint trail of smoke, nor did I move when the whole bed was engulfed - or even when it started spreading up the wall.
I had no one left. The thought resonated around my head like a bolt from a flare gun, and as a board from the wall collapsed to the ground, sparks and fire spilled across the room toward me, the flames growing impossibly brighter as they neared me. Ravenous, they licked at the wall the exact way they'd done with the chunks of wood when I was so young.
By this time even more of my house had been afflicted; I could hear the shriek of sirens in the distance who must have seen the pale glow on the horizon, even from their range out in town.
Another board succumbed, this time from the ceiling, and sent a torrent of smoke gushing straight towards me, wrenching tears from my eyes that left streaks in the layer of ash that had already formed on my face.
I peered out the window, the flickering blue and red already within viewing distance of my house. I considered waving frantically - I could easily shatter the glass with one of the flaming boards littering the ground - but I paused.
The fires seemed to pulsate; the room was now little more than a smoking skeleton silhouetted against the churning inferno. I caught a glance out the window of a pathetic arc of water stretching towards the room, doing nothing to stop the tireless force consuming the building. And that was when I realized - I wasn't devoid of everyone. I still had one thing left.
I smiled, letting the tips of the flurry nip my ankles, and stretched my face into a smile that was really more of a grimace as I recalled memories exactly like this, only on a smaller scale.
The world was collapsing around me, but it wasn't my world. My world was on ahead. My world was the conqueror, the overwhelming energy, unstoppable, unforgettable.
I burned the image into my mind as it burned itself into my flesh, and gave myself into the flames.