Violent Delights

I Dream In Fire

With paralysing force, I felt my body hurl against the crimson bedroom wall. My eyes widened and watched on-powerless as I was to do anything but-as every bone in the body that no longer felt like my own began to deform and snap. Arms twisting, legs kicking, spine bending... It was like some invisible being had seized my limbs and was twirling them for his own sick amusement. But there was no pain-no agony to accompany the crack of each bone, and no convulsions or aches with each newly dislocated limb. There was no control either. My body simply ignored the hysterical protests of its brain, like the two were no longer connected. However, one thing that did reveal its presence was a wave of nausea so intense I thought I might black out; as I watched my bones twist in ways that should never be possible.

A sick contortionist act...

Suddenly, an unbearable pain shot through both eyes so terrible, I was genuinely convinced for a moment that they were being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles. My vision failed. Dropping to my deformed knees with a resounding thud, I gathered oxygen to scream for help, only to find that my vocal chords too, had bailed on me. Unfortunately, that wasn't all; even my muscles appeared to be deteriorating, for they could do naught but twitch feebly, in stark contrast to the previous gymnastics act.

"This is it," I thought groggily. "I'm going to die,"

I was too weak to care when my knees eventually gave out, and everything went black.

After what must have been a good few hours, I came to. The weakness that had previously enveloped my body was gone, as if it had never existed in the first place, and I opened my eyes to note with delight that every bone was where it should be. I was however, still rather dizzy, so I decided to take things slowly. My arms stretched out in front of me as far as they would go, clawing the soft cream rug that lay on the laminate floor. Gradually I gathered the strength to heave myself off the floor and reach full height, which, oddly, was a little smaller than I remembered, though this thought passed out of my mind fleetingly. The light from the streetlamp outside streamed in through the window and bathed my room in an orange hue; though it was very late, I felt oddly energized and wide awake. Even stranger than this, my entire being was consumed with a sudden desire to run...

So I leaped through my bedroom window and did just that.

My hands and feet made impact with the ground with surprisingly little force. There were none of the injuries or spasms of pain one would expect from falling such a distance, and I didn't flinch once as the shards of glass from the shattered window fell around me like crystallized rain. Straightening up from a crouched position, I took a deep breath and began to run.

I had never before considered myself even a mildly impulsive person, so to do something as reckless, as wildly spontaneous as this was so out of character that it was almost frightening. Yet even so, I found to my own wonderment that there was something remarkably freeing about tearing through the streets of London at night. When I reached the entrance to St James' Park and felt the grass tickle my feet, I wanted to yell and scream and do backflips out of sheer exhilaration. I had never felt so completely at one with nature; the smell of the trees and the feel of the earth beneath my feet felt like an extension of me. No one was around, so this magnificent experience was mine and mine alone. I wanted to stay here forever; to taste the glory of freedom, to breathe deeply and inhale the beauteous smell of...smoke?

Alarmed, I pivoted round to a vast wall of orange and red. The crackling of the flames was far too loud; the thick, black smoke unfurling from them was far too black. There was just something far too menacing about these flames-like a sinister presence-which made me think with a growing dread that this was not ordinary fire. The blackened, dying trees reeked of death and as I gazed upon the scene which seemed to be getting worse by the second with a kind of paralyzed horror, a squirrel came tumbling out of the brush encompassed in raging fire. It kicked and convulsed in a threshing, flaming circle, and then became still. That was the only incentive I needed. I could run, or end up like that squirrel. Turning to the exit, which stood mere metres in front of me, I put my left foot down, ready to make a run for it, when suddenly my foot was engulfed in white hot, leaping flame. Near drowning in hysteria, I shook my foot until the flames disappeared. I even almost managed to calm down, until the fire reignited itself before my eyes. Appalled, I began wildly shaking my foot again, before noting with a sort of happy confusion that something was missing... Damage. The burning pain that should have been there was not, and there was no melting of the flesh as the fiery tendrils licked the bottom of my leg. Also, it seemed that the fire would not spread past me; like it and myself were standing on the threshold of some invisible barrier. Then all of a sudden, I was slapped in the face by realisation; cold, terrible, smug realisation.