Chanyeol

I hate Mrs Woo. She is a thief. She is a liar. She is probably a mass murderer when nobody is looking. She probably ties up bad students in her attic and harvests their bone marrow to stifle her incessant need for street-grade drugs.

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So I guess hate is a strong word. Not strong enough, I think. I despise Mrs Woo. She deserves to lose her eyebrows if I get the chance. She deserves to open her microwaved lunch to find it all burnt into a tasteless black crunch.

Let me explain to you why I hate this monster. I was sitting in class, just left to the very centre of the room. I’m an average student, my grades always impress the teacher but I never get the highest grades that label me as a favourite student. Anyway, we were learning some history on the Second World War. I admit I’m not very good at history, especially when the topic is on wars; I always mix the two World Wars up and can’t tell them apart.

Well, we were taking a small quiz to show our progress in class, and the entire room was silent. Everybody was dedicated to their tests, methodically writing down each answer. I was having a bit of trouble, so I took out my lighter and started twirling it in my fingers.

To get this straight, I never even lit the lighter. I just twirled it in my fingers. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, I’ve memorised the exact weight of the lighter to the closest gram, and I never drop it, never fumble. Twirling the lighter helps my concentration. And I managed to scrawl down a few more answers, starting to gain some speed in my work.

Mrs Woo was walking around the room, clopping on heavy high heels to announce her presence wherever she goes. Occasionally she would ask someone to look back to their work, or lean over a shoulder to see the student’s answers. I’ve never had a problem with Mrs Woo until today. When she came clip-clopping over to me, I expected her to be happy, I was getting some of these answers down! Instead, she snatched my lighter from my fingers and tucked it away up her sleeve.

“See me after class.” She whispered, a stern look accompanying her strict voice.

After class, I walked up to the desk and added my test to the top of the pile.

“May I please have my lighter back, miss?”

She didn’t look up. She continued to shuffle her papers like they were much more important than me.

“No.” she answered, and it was clear that that was all she wanted to say.

“Please miss, you don’t understand. I need my lighter, it’s incredibly important.”

Mrs Woo looked up at me over her half-moon glasses. Raising her eyebrows her fringe line raised another centimetre, pulling her tight hair in an even tighter bun. She opened a drawer from her desk and pulled out a red lighter; my red lighter.

“Park Chanyeol,” she said, wagging the lighter with each syllable to emphasise her point “In this school, this object is considered a weapon. It is against school policy to have any sort of arsonist weapon on school grounds! I’m going to have to keep it.”

I felt my breaths start to quicken

“No, you don’t understand. I need it. I… my breathing… it...”

“It’s a lighter, not an asthma puffer, stop fighting for it. This conversation is over.”

I stood with my mouth open, unable to speak from the lump in my throat. She collected the tests in her arms and placed the red lighter on the top. Standing up, she didn’t even reach my shoulders. It amazed me how someone so terrible and powerful could be so small.

I was taking short rapid breaths now. I felt sweat drip down my neck and my vision started to get blurry. I needed to get my lighter, or just any lighter in general. Leaving my bag in the classroom, I ran out into the hallway, speeding down to the entrance gate on my long spindly legs. Pushing through teachers and students, I hear my English teacher yell out behind me.

“Park Chanyeol! Shouldn’t you be headed to class now?”

But I ignored him. Racing out onto the street, I dodge cars and cross the road, earning myself plenty of blasts from car horns. The closest service station is a few blocks away, I’ve often gone there after school to buy an iced drink or a packet of chips, but now it feels like the furthest place I could run to. I’m pretty athletic, so I pumped my legs as hard as I can until my hands slammed into the ‘push’ sign on the front doors of the service station. I barge my way to the front desk, beside the cashier is a stack of simple cheap lighters.

I pick up a shiny red lighter, and after a quick hesitation I pick up another two, a yellow and a white. Without bothering to check if I paid the right amount, I slammed my money onto the counter and walked out the door. I slip a lighter into my bag, another into my sock, and the last one I clutch to my chest.

My breathing slows, and once again I feel safe. I take my time walking back to school. I breathe in the air. I click my lighter, feeling the flame grow in size until I lifted my thumb off the metal switch. After I begin to understand the feel of the lighter, the weight, I slip it back into my pocket and get back to my class.

I should explain. I depend on lighters for my mental health. It’s a bit weird, but when you know me you begin to understand.

When I was fifteen, only a few months away from turning sixteen, I got a tattoo. I never went to get it done; it just appeared once when I was out staying at a friend’s place after a party. The awkward thing was, I couldn’t hide it, it appeared behind my right ear, a simple outline of a bird.

I just assumed someone slipped something into my drink and in a drunken state I went out and got an illegal tattoo, so I avoided my parents and school for a few days while I hunted around for a tattoo removal artist. The problem is, I went to every tattoo removal place and had needles stabbed into my neck, but after every try I just left with a sore neck and a tattoo looking as new as the day it appeared.

About a week after I found the mark, I finally made progress, but not in the way I expected. I was at my eleventh tattoo removal artist, and this guy was painful. I found him in a badly lit street, the floor littered with suspicious splatters and cigarette butts. The man, fat and stinking, smoking the short stub of a cigarette between greasy lips spoke in a raspy voice.

“So, we gettin’ more on er takin’ her off?”

“Uh, off please”

I tensed my body and shut my eyes as I anticipated the stinging pain, but this time it was much worse. The man was rough and he tightly grasped my neck to stop me squirming. Letting out a howl of pain, I reached out with my hands and tried to hit something. He man pinned me down with his elbows and lent over me to get a better look.

“Stop movin’ there, this is some very delicate progress” He blew hot smoke into my face and lit a new cigarette, the end of the last one being screwed up into the dusty floor.

Once again the searing pain hit my neck and I let out an audible cry. I felt heat sizzle the room and through my closed eyelids I saw bright red and orange. The man yelled out in pain this time, and threw me off the chair.

“OUT YOU DEMON! OUT!”

He started throwing things at me to drive me out; papers, syringes, his shoe. While dodging the missiles and making my way to the door, I barely registered the burnt out cigarette that was only lit a minute ago, the missing eyebrows and the crispy charred posters of women hanging on the wall.

I walked on the street with my hands in my hoodie pockets, kicking some litter down the curb. I left my wallet down in the parlour. I considered going back, but there was only a library card and a few coins in it, and I wasn’t in the mood of returning to a man who called me a ‘demon’.

At first I didn’t realise why he kicked me out. I returned to my home and confessed to my parents that I got a tattoo, and moved back into my room without much difficulty. Two months later I ran into the man on the street, and to my surprise, he turned tail and ran.

I began to notice a connection between me and fire. When toasting marshmallows, the fire grew bigger. When sitting with my smoking friends, I began to wish for them to stop smoking, and all their lighters stopped working. Heating food on the gas stove was quicker and most of my food ended up burnt.

It clicked that I had fire powers when I was set on fire. While heating up magnesium over a Bunsen burner in the science lab at school, I picked up the clay dish with my fingers, not realising it had heated up to 100 degrees Celsius. My lab partner screamed at me and I dropped the dish.

“Chanyeol-ah! Its too hot! Quick get some cold water!”

I wasn’t burned at all, but I knew something was wrong with me. To pretend that it hurt, I rushed to the tap across the bench. My baggy lab coat sleeve caught on the Bunsen burner and I was engulfed in flames.

For at least ten seconds, fire up my arms and back like a cloak. I threw off my lab coat and stomped it on the ground, killing the fire with it. It seemed like minutes, but until the silence was broken I was the centre of attention in the entire class. After school, I was the talk of the cafeteria.

I had the most nicknames in the shortest amount of time. I’ve heard them all; Flames, match, kindling, The Human Torch, gasoline, combustion boy, tatts, birdy, ink, Bunsen boy, The Boy Who Lived. The list goes on and on and on and on…. My all-time favourite was Phoenix. It was one of the only nicknames that joined both my two new ‘features’; the fire and the tattoos.

When I bought my own apartment, I began to experiment with my powers; I started to control fire with more ease. I held fireballs in my hand. I set myself on fire. I found that big jackets were useless when I had internal heating. I preferred hot coffee over a cold drink and a packet of barbeque chips. My life became heat-orientated.

My only fault was that I couldn’t create fire. I had to find my own fire. That’s where the lighters make an appearance. I carried my own lighter everywhere. It was easy to add it to my public image; I found that people assumed that anyone with a tattoo in high school smoked. Of course, I never smoked. I’m much too proud of my voice to ruin it with that.

So I carried a lighter with me wherever I go. I had a collection of lighters everywhere. I always had a simple lighter wherever I went, and I felt safer. Knowing that I could create fire wherever I was gave me security. I walked the streets no longer afraid. I was the most protected person in the dark. I could stop muggings; I was one skin-tight suit away from becoming the next member of the Avengers, or the X men.

I didn’t know how dependant I was on the lighters until Mrs Woo stole it. After that day I decided to ramp up my lighters. I actually bought out an entire box from the next service station I visited. I had a lighter above the shower head, a lighter in the cutlery drawer, a lighter in the pot plants, behind the sofa, in my guitar case, I had lighters coming out of my ears.

I could finally live in safety. It may be a bit pathetic, being so dependent on fire, but I can breathe well.

-----------------------

It was the middle of the weekend. I had no plans, except to get outside for some fresh air. I even woke up at 8AM to prepare some pancake mix before I got changed. I decided to take a shower.

Blasting my shower speakers through the steam, I took a shower a bit longer than I expected. I realised that after I had listened to at least ten different songs that I should probably get out. I turned off the hot water tap (I never use the cold water tap anymore) and switched my radio off, throwing me into a calm and peaceful silence.

I heard a clash and footsteps coming from downstairs.

There are people in my apartment.

With wet hair dangling into my eyes, I fumble above the shower head for a lighter. It isn’t there.

I pull on a pair of sweatpants; leaving wet patches in the fabric through my still wet legs. My pockets have no lighter either. I know something’s up. People who obviously know about my fire powers are in my house. Still holding my towel, I creep out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. There are at least five lighters in my bedroom, but they have all disappeared.

I begin to panic. Without my lighter, I’m just a tall gangly boy with no protection.

I peer down a crack in the stairway and I see the ugliest thing in the kitchen.

It’s a man made of black jelly, his skin always changing shape like rippling water. With purpose, it reaches above the fridge with black claws and pulls out another lighter. It walks out of my limited vision range.

With my big ears, I listen to multiple footsteps leave the kitchen and begin to clear the living room from any lighters. I creep down the stairs, my wet body still leaving footprints in the floorboards.

The gas stove has a button that ignites each hotplate. I turn on the gas to the smallest hotplate and click the ‘spark’ button. No gas comes out. I try to catch the spark as it attempts to light the absent gas, but it jumps too quick for me to conjure a flame from it.

I think the men are returning, so I do the only thing I could think of. Grabbing a handful of spoons and knives from the cutlery drawer, I shove them into the microwave and set it for a few hours. The plate inside starts to rotate just as the first monster enters the room. With a surprised snarl, it bares its gooey black fangs at me and his friends arrive to back him up.

The microwave explodes.

Once I was sure that there were no more flying knives or spoons, I latched onto a flame and gave it incentive to keep burning.

You see, with fire, it’s easier to keep it burning than it is to control it. I let the flames do whatever they wanted, as long as they never stopped. The black beasts had retreated to further in the house, so I walked into the living room, surrounded in an enclosure of flames.

I heard a snarl from across the room, and then I was hit with the couch.

The couch was pushed by the monsters. I don’t know how many pushed it, but it sent me flying across the room.

I smash through the window and out into the street. Busy men and women walking to work scream.

“The boy is on fire!”

“Why isn’t he burning?”

“He’s the devil!”

The black men had disappeared, but now I had a different problem. The people were scared of me. Reluctantly, I diminished my flame until it was gone.

“What do we do?”

“It’s the devil!”

“Do we kill it?”

“It’s just a boy!”

I attempted to reason with them.

“Stop! I’m not the devil I was attacked by these black things! I need help!”

But they didn’t listen. I was being filmed on numerous phones. I didn’t know what to do, so I crawled into the foetal position.

A boy my age pushed through the crowd and knelt by my side.

“Dude, get up.”

“I can’t. They’ll kill me if I do anything.”

“They’re not going to do that.”

I open my eyes to see that he had grabbed my hands, holding them with sincerity. On the back of his hand was a tattoo similar to mine, a tattoo of an intricate star. I look up to his face. His flawless complexion and rounded eyes made him look quite a bit younger, and he had a hoodie pulled up over his face. I could see the crowd around me still watching from a safe distance.

“I’m Baekhyun. You’re safe now. Close your eyes.”

I close my eyes as a bright white light shines around me. The startled yells of the crowd tell me that they see it too. Or rather, they don’t see it. Even with my eyelids firmly shut, the usual darkness is replaced with white, the light so strong it shines through to my retina.

I feel a hand grab mine and gently tug me to stand up. Guiding me, Baekhyun pulls me along behind him in his blinding white light.

For once, without my lighters, I feel safe.