Abi: Playing with fire. [19/30]

I remember, today, my obsession with fire.

I remember a childhood friend, Christina, and I would burn pages of her colouring book (that she won from a colouring competition. I was to say it was a Beetlejuice one, but I cannot be positive). We’d do it in her backyard, sitting up against the porch so that we could burn the pages right under it and let it fall to the dirt below. It was our little secret thing, even Amanda wasn’t around when we did it… In fact I think we were trying to cast spells on my sister (I wonder where we’d picked up the idea of spell casting, because I didn’t start studying Wicca for at least four more years… we must have seen it on the telly or something). If you recall, my sister was still just my shadow, and not yet solid as a person to me, in those early years…
Of course we were not to be caught doing this, because surely eight year olds ought not play with fire… I think we were very lucky to not have something go dreadfully wrong all those days.

I remember when we moved to Arcadia I had a stash of matches, a large pot, loose newspaper, and candles in my room hidden in the farthest closet. I’d used the pot to burn things in, basically for amusement.
I’d stare at the fire for ages. Just the way it moved, the smoke that came out… it was mesmerizing… and so impermissible.
I never remember being caught, which is so weird, as you would think that people could smell the burning of things… Where the hell were my parents when I did these things?!

I do, vaguely, remember the event my sister described in a post earlier this month, about me burning her with the end of a cotton swab while we were playing with fire on the living room floor (in my fire pot, I believe)… I don’t ever remember it being intentional as she had often tried to say to me through out the years. (She used to be very keen on pointing out all the times I wronged her; and still does, though I perceive it as only teasing now.)

On one occasion I learned how NOT to put out a fire. I remember I was in a rush, and needed to put the pot of burning paper out that sat on my dresser in the corner. I had on hand only a half bottle of Snapple… which when poured on the fire did put out the flames, but only AFTER making a  flash of fire a foot high, in the air above the pot.
I will not attempt that one again.

I do know my mum had a fear of fires, she would never light the pilot on her mum’s stove (and was so entirely pleased to not have a gas stove for herself). I don’t remember if she explained that to me or not, but I know she often got flustered (to put it gently) at me lighting candles as well.

What’s humourous is I lost my interest in fire after a few years, most likely because it’s not so forbidden once you become an adult. However, for the longest time I was, and still today, considered a pyromaniac… And John still insists on hiding spare lighters and matches from me (or else I will take them and hide them myself, because it’s always nice to have something on hand). Apparently my like of fire puts people off… and of course I still play with fire from time to time, naturally, but my element of life-time passion is still air.

It’s odd to me is that I developed a fear of fires for awhile… I don’t fear my very controlled fires, I fear those of others. I have heard so many ill tales of events to do with fire that just the general fear of one coming from no where (or my neighbours) has haunted me for several years… which might have been tied in with the recurring nightmares I had about fire (which I haven’t had in quite sometime, OR the fear either).