Page 16 of Burn For Me

Trips like that were for other families, normal families, but that was not mine. The only trips I could remember were going to the casino, racetrack and the smoke-filled bar that let me and Ash sit in the corner while my father got wasted. We’d also been left in a dirty motel room with bags of snacks from the vending machine all day instead of going to the amusement park like promised. Later that night, we were forced to listen to my drunk parents fuck in the bed beside us. Not exactly the excitement we’d been looking forward to.

My fist clenched tighter on the knife I was using to whittle a piece of wood. Some of the anger that always burned bright in my chest rose in time to the fire in the pit.

My eyes were trained on the dancing orange flames that felt like family. The light sensation in my chest faded as I thought of another fire, more specifically, who’d been inside that fire. My hand stilled from working on the wood, and I looked down at the piece I was whittling.

I hadn’t intentionally carved Adalyn, but it was her eye that stared up at me from the chunk I’d chosen to work with. The earlier sadness gripped my throat, and I had to push that emotion aside. The shadow of death slithered over my body like a blanket and seeped into my skin as it once more consumed my soul.

“They will pay Adalyn. I’ll make them all pay, I promise you.”

I was going to need money to complete my plans, and my lip curled when the realization hit that I had the answer all along.

A bright light was shining in my eyes and bathing me in warmth. Confused, I blinked and sat up straight, gasping as I tried to piece together where I was and why. Staring around at all the items that I’d known as a young teen and then out the window, which had been the source of the bright light, I pieced together where I was. How long had it been since I’d woken up to sunlight on my face? It must have happened before the asylum, but the memory was so faded it felt impossibly out of reach.

Taking a steadying breath, I pieced together about the last couple of days. The attack on Adalyn, the fire, Adalyn’s death, and my walk here to find the Giltberts dead.

The sun was so bright unbelievably bright. Had it always been this bright? Holding out my hand I let it filter through my fingers, and it looked like glittering dust against my skin.

“Are you my sunshine now, Adalyn?”

My heart rate began to even out, and I stood to stretch. Last night, my search of the house had yielded only stale or out-of-date food. There were some very helpful granola bars, cans of soup, beans, fruit, and vegetables. There was also a single can of peaches that I planned on coveting as dessert for a few days.

Yawning I made my way outside and rekindled the fire pit, which didn’t take much coaxing. A fire was never really dead. It only lay dormant until it seized the opportunity to re-ignite and spread once more.

Marching back inside, I aimed for the massive pantry with all of its little canned treasures. Grabbing a can of beans, I made my way back out with the hand crank can opener, and with a few short twists of the wrist, the top was free. Dumping the can into a metal pot I’d used last night to boil water and set it on the small makeshift grate to heat up.

The one thing that we learned by living in my house and taking off with my brother at such a young age was survival skills. We could live off the land for months if need be, but this was like finding the Ritz and all the rooms vacant for the taking.

The ability to eat breakfast when and how I wanted…made the meager meal taste as good as any gourmet meal. The farm needed a lot of work, but as long as no one filed a death certificate for Mr. and Mrs. Giltbert, I could live here as long as I wanted. A flutter of something unexpected rose in my chest. Even in death, these were still the two nicest people other than Adalyn I’d ever met.

After I washed my pot, my next adventure was to see if the generator was strong enough to run the shower. Cold or not, my body needed a good scrub. Then lists needed to be made—three lists, actually. I needed one for what I planned to do next around the farm, a list of what supplies were necessary to make that possible. Finally, there was the kill list. At the moment it held four names, but there was a decent possibility of more names being added. The shit list was what I’d deemed it. The corner of my mouth pulled up at the thought. It was my sarcastic homage to my father. He liked to call me a worthless piece of shit so the name of the list seemed fitting. But first I was determined to make this a functioning farm again, resurrect the dead, so to speak.

By two o’clock, I had a massive old phone book on my lap and was going through the pages and pages of Davises. I drew a line through the next four that I knew couldn’t be Jim. I didn’t know if he’d been caught in the fire, but I did know I hadn’t seen him at work.

It was amazing what you picked up on if you bothered to listen. And it was equally amazing the things people would say when they thought that those around them either weren’t listening or couldn’t hurt them with that information. Simple things really, like what buildings and restaurants were near their house or what side the sun rose and set on. Jim had been nice enough to mention that he hated how the name of his road, Slipper something, sounded girly.

I circled all the places that I could find with the word Slipper that could potentially be Jim’s. Looking through this phone book was a long shot since the clunky thing was a few years old, but at the moment it was all I had. The internet would be very helpful right about now.

Tearing the page out, I folded it up and stuffed it in the pocket of the pair of jeans that I’d found upstairs. Mr. Giltbert hadn’t been as broad as I was, but he’d been roughly the same height. I was officially a grave robber on top of all my other sins. If I was going to hell anyway, I might as well make the ticket worthwhile.

Florida was beautiful. I hadn’t appreciated it growing up, but after seeing nothing but white walls for so long, the colors were almost too bright for my eyes, especially the vibrant greens and blues. The swaying palm trees and white puffy clouds reminded me that no matter how dark my soul had become, a small part of me still craved normal. Whatever the fuck that meant.

I wheeled the old bicycle I found out of the shed and around to the front of the house. Pulling the hood of my hoodie up over the top of the baseball cap made me feel safer. Couldn’t take the chance of being recognized.

It felt good to peddle and use my legs for a purpose again. The first street I was paying a visit to was most certainly not Jim’s place. Jim always said he didn’t have neighbors, and this place was in the middle of a massive subdivision, so I peddled on past it.

By the time I found houses number two and three, which were close together, the hot afternoon sun was beating down on my back. House number two had been a total bust with the gated community and locked gate, and house number three wasn’t looking much better. The name on the mailbox was completely different, and the letters looked new. The gold and black didn’t have a scratch on them, which told me that if this had been Jim’s house, he’d moved.

It took another hour to get to the fourth house. As I made my way up the street that turned into a dirt road, the hair stood up on my body like it already knew we were at the right place—the energy, the kind that only happened when I burned something down, coursed through my body. I stopped at the end of the driveway, and I could barely see the house from the road. Biking on a little further, I found a slim path that animals had created through the surrounding bushes and trees.

I stood among the shadows of the dusky sky and tall trees and stared at the black pickup truck that was near the small garage. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember if that was what Jim drove. It wasn’t like I could see him arrive or leave at the asylum.

The lawn was pristine, manicured grass with a line of sunflowers that added warmth, which was a real contrast to the man that I’d seen almost every day. The longer I stared at the pretty home, the angrier I became until I was the scariest garden gnome ever.

Gone were the good feels from earlier as the beast that lived in my mind stood tall and reminded me why I was here. This man had tormented me and hurt Adalyn in the most humiliating way possible. My fists clenched as the image of the house engulfed in flames swirled around in my mind while those living inside screamed for help.

The door opened, and the man himself stepped outside and jogged down to his truck. I watched the taillights come on and glow a bright red as he put the vehicle in gear and backup up. I ducked down low as the truck turned in my direction and then around the small roundabout to head out to the road.

I waited until I couldn’t hear the truck any longer before walking around to the back door and peering through the windows. A light was on in the house, so I kept expecting to see someone else, but every window I passed didn’t show another living being inside. Jim mentioned a girlfriend a couple of times, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had already ended badly. He couldn’t seem to hang onto a woman. Then again, it takes a special kind of human to put up with a narcissistic cheater.