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F our Years Ago

The zippo lighter danced between my fingers as I watched my prey pour himself a nightcap, oblivious to the fact that he was about to die screaming.

I rolled the metal over my knuckles in a fluid wave, then flipped it with a flick of my wrist, catching it between my index and middle finger before spinning it into my palm. All the while, the fire flickered, licking at my skin just enough to burn, but not enough to leave blisters. I was quick. I was good. And I was focused entirely on planning to burn Richard Thackery alive.

Fourteen bodies. That’s how many paved Richard’s road to riches. Seven on Morton Street fire, Four in the Elm Avenue Apartments fire. Three in the West Highland blaze. The causes were all different, of course, ranging from electrical fires to an unattended space heater the tenants had been running when he didn’t repair their heat. He was a slumlord, not a fucking evil genius. This fucker wasn’t smart enough to have a master plan.

But I was.

I’d been watching him for months. Waiting. Planning.

I snapped the lighter closed and pulled out my phone, sliding my thumb over the fingerprint scanner to unlock it. A divided screen showed me security feeds from each camera I’d planted in his house over the last few weeks. Breaking in had been easy. The ADT sign in his front yard was mostly for show. It was the waiting that was the hard part.

Three fucking hours on his roof in the rain last Tuesday to plant the bathroom camera. Two days following him through his stupid routine to learn where he ate, what he bought, and who might interrupt my plans. One very tedious afternoon posing as a house cleaner to slip a USB into his computer and make copies of his house key. Each step had brought me closer to my end goal, and now I was ready to execute.

Some of my brothers thought I was lazy, that all I did all day was lie around in my pajamas playing video games. They didn’t realize that a proper hunt took time, planning. Well, Shepherd would understand. We were alike in a lot of ways. But while my older brother enjoyed the anticipation of the hunt, I lived for the kill . The moment my prey realized they weren’t the predator, when they finally gave in and rolled over, showing their throat? Those were all great moments, sure. But I was there for the moment I got to sink my teeth into that throat and feel the pulse stutter and die.

On my screen, Thackery moved around his bedroom with the smug confidence of a man who believed he was safe in his own home. Shower at 10:45. Laptop until 11:30. Lights out by midnight. Same boring routine every night. The predictability of the privileged. Men like him never questioned their routines because they never had to. No one was hunting them.

Until me.

My phone buzzed with another email alert. I’d hacked into his accounts weeks ago to watch him delete maintenance requests while sending them late charges. It was evidence of his crimes that the police would never find because they weren’t smart enough, didn’t care enough. Not that I planned to involve the pigs. Fuck cops. Fuck the justice system. Where were they when fourteen people died? I wasn’t about to trust them to do anything.

His latest email was about the insurance payout for the Morton Street fire. The one where they found the charred remains of the father trying to shield his kids from the flames. The one that would make him two point four million dollars. Minus, of course, the ten grand he’d saved by ignoring the family’s six separate requests to fix the faulty wiring.

My fingers tightened around the lighter. Most people thought revenge was hot—all rage and passion. They were wrong. Real vengeance was ice cold. Calculated. And mine had been cooling for eight weeks, crystalizing into something perfect.

I slipped from my surveillance point on the hill and made my way down toward the house. The autumn air carried the scent of fallen leaves and the promise of rain. It was the perfect night for a fire.

The copied key slid into his back door lock without resistance. Inside, his house reeked of wealth and unearned self-satisfaction. White leather furniture that he never sat on. Art that he never looked at. His possessions were trophies that served no purpose except to announce his wealth to visitors who didn’t give a shit.

I moved through the darkness like I belonged there, placing the charges in all the pre-planned locations. This wasn’t chaos. It was choreography. Fire needed direction to achieve its full potential. Most arsonists were anarchists. They only cared about the destruction, about feeding the urge. They were amateurs. I was a professional.

The shower kicked on upstairs, right on schedule. I counted my steps as I moved, putting everything in its place.

I reached the third floor as the shower stopped. He was humming behind the bathroom door. Probably planning how to spend his insurance windfall. A new car. A vacation in Thailand. Another investment property he could run into the ground.

I settled in the shadows of his home office, breathing in the smell of lemon wood polish and expensive leather. The large mahogany desk where he signed eviction notices sat off to my left, holding the laptop where he tallied his profits against the cost of human lives.

The perfect place for a conversation about consequences.

Footsteps approached. The bathroom door opened.

I flicked my lighter open, the tiny flame dancing in the darkened window. He wouldn’t see me at first. They never did. People saw what they expected, and no one expected death in an office chair.

The desk lamp clicked on.

He froze, hand still on the switch, his body catching up to what his brain refused to process. I watched understanding bloom across his face. “Who the fuck are you?”

I smiled, letting the silence stretch until it physically pained him. People got nervous in silence. They tried to fill it with words, movement, with anything to ease the discomfort of being prey. Thackery’s hand twitched toward his phone. Predictable.

“I wouldn’t,” I said, voice soft enough to make him strain to hear me. Make them work for every word. Make them lean toward the danger. “You won’t be able to call out, not with the jammers in place.”

His face cycled through emotions like someone flipping channels on a TV. Anger. Confusion. The beginnings of fear. He was still trying to hold on to the illusion that he was in control of the situation. He wasn’t. I was.

“Look, whatever this is about—”

I cut him off. “Fourteen people.”

He flinched when I snapped the lighter shut.

“This is about the fourteen bodies that paid for this house. For your stupid Tesla. For your vacation in Dubai.”

Now came the recognition, dim at first. Then it flooded his face as he processed who and what I was. His hand fell from the light switch, dropping limply to his side, prey recognizing predator at last.

He backed toward the door. “Look, I have money…”

The laugh escaped before I could stop it. “Of course you do. Insurance fraud pays well when the witnesses burn to death.”

His face went bone white. Perfect. He knew exactly why I was here. Not random. Not chance. I was a consequence come knocking.

“Those were accidents,” he said, though the words rang hollow. “I had no way of knowing.”

I stood, pocketing the lighter. “Ricky, Ricky, Ricky,” I said and tisked. “Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. But three times? Three times is a fucking pattern.”

He lunged for the door, but I was already moving. I intercepted his escape with a kick to the knee from behind. Bone cracked, and he collapsed with a delicious scream. Something warm settled in my chest, and gooseflesh broke out over my arms. That was the thing about pain. It had texture, depth, and variations as unique as a fingerprint. And the pain of Richard’s torn ligaments and snapped tibia? That was like catnip to someone like me.

I followed him to the floor, landing on top of him. In one swift movement, I brought the lighter back out and flipped it open. The tiny flame sprang free and danced against his throat. His pulse raced as his flesh burned and he screamed.

The scent of burning flesh filled my nostrils—sweet, acrid, primal. Most people recoiled from it. I breathed it in like a perfume. The flame kissed his skin, raising a perfect red bubble that would soon blacken and char. I watched the transformation and licked my lips. This was better than sex, watching the skin bubble and burn.

People never understood when I told them I was asexual. They’d look at me with pity, like I was missing something essential. They didn’t grasp that what burned in me was more pure, more primal than sexual desire. Sex was just bodies, friction and fluid. Messy and mundane. But fire? Fire was transformation, creation, and destruction all rolled into one.

I dragged the flame across Thackery’s jawline, watching his skin blister in its wake. “The Ryerson family died first,” I whispered, barely hearing my own voice. My pulse rushed in my ears, throbbing, pounding. The fire had me now, had pulled me into its hypnotic dance. “Your missing smoke alarms might’ve saved him, you know. Instead, Julia died trying to escape through the window you’d bolted shut.”

I pressed the flame harder to a spot beneath his ear, holding him while he flailed. The spot darkened, blackened, flesh curling away from the heat in perfect submission. My hands trembled. People chased highs in all sorts of ways—drugs, sex, adrenaline. But none of them compared to this, to the power of holding creation and destruction between two fingers and getting to decide which one to unleash.

“Jesus Christ, please!” he gasped, tears cutting clean trails through the sweat on his face.

“Fourteen people, Richard,” I snarled, forcing myself to focus. “You let fourteen people die and now you’re going to pay the price.”

I released him and stood over him while he sobbed. Then I stomped on his ankle, breaking it. His cries got even more pathetic, but I didn’t care.

“Your victims tried to escape,” I said, snapping the other ankle with another stomp. “Crawling through smoke, blind and terrified. They deserved the chance you never gave them. You handicapped them. So I’m going to handicap you. And I’ll tell you what, Richard. If you can get out, if you can escape, I’ll let you live.” I pulled several zip ties from my pocket.

Despite his broken bones, he tried to wriggle away. He didn’t get very far before I kicked him onto his stomach and zip tied his hands behind his back.

“Why are you doing this? Who are you? Why do you care about some broke nobodys who died in a few house fires?”

I crouched beside him, bringing my face level with his. "Why do I care?" The lighter's flame reflected in his tear-filled eyes as I reopened it. "That's the wrong question, Richard. The right question is why didn't you?"

He stared, uncomprehending. Of course he didn't understand. Men like Thackery never did.

He tried a different approach. "What are you, some kind of vigilante? Playing Batman? You think killing me changes anything?"

"I'm not a hero, Richard." The words came out softer than I intended. Almost gentle. "Heroes save people. I just balance the scales."

I stood, surveying the room. His desperate attempts to understand me were predictable. People always sought patterns, explanations. They needed to categorize the monster before them. Vigilante. Serial killer. Psychopath. As if labels could contain what I was, what I represented. As if understanding would somehow save them.

I left him there, bound and broken, on his expensive carpet. From the perimeter of the property, I watched as my preparations ignited. The basement first, flames licking up through the foundation, finding paths through the walls. The first floor surrendered next, windows glowing orange from within like malevolent eyes opening.

Through binoculars, I tracked the fire's progress, imagined the smoke reaching him, filling his lungs with the same toxic darkness that had claimed his tenants. Imagined the moment he realized there was no escape, no reprieve, no last-minute salvation.

The top floor ignited, flames shooting through the roof in a glorious crown of justice. The heat pressed against my face even from this distance, calling to something primal within me. Something that understood fire wasn't just destruction, but transformation. Balance in its purest form.

By the time sirens pierced the night, I was already walking away, satisfaction settling deep in my bones. Behind me, the fire painted the sky in shades of vengeance, claiming what it was owed. What I had offered it in return for its partnership.

Some monsters needed to be stopped. Some lessons needed to be taught.

And some fires just needed the right monster to set them free.