It started when I was a kid.

I stole matches from the kitchen junk drawer. Birthday candles. Anything with a fuse. I gathered bundles of dry twigs from the yard and kept them in a locked toy chest under my bed. I stood on my tippy toes to take the kitchen lighter from its place in the world. Just to hold it in my hands for a minute. My parents told me cut it out, quit it, and I did for a while. I used to hate getting in trouble.

But you can adapt to anything.

Every fire is made from three elements.

One: fuel. Things you can burn. Scrap wood, dry leaves, a three story bungalow in the suburbs. Anything and everything you’d ever want to remove from this earth forever.

Two: oxygen. Air to feed the flames. Fire is a living thing, like you and me. It needs to breathe. Nothing catches in a vacuum.

And three: combustion. The spark to light it up. If you build the fire right, you never need much. Just a tiny nip of heat in the right place and you can burn the biggest building in the world down to a thin black sheen of ash that drifts away to nowhere in the first slight wind.

Everything good I’ve ever done in this life has been the product of these three things, combined in the right amounts in the proper order.

Here is the trifecta my entire world rests upon.

Fuel, Oxygen, Combustion.

Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

Adam Eleanor lives at 1337 Pinnacle Park Lane.

It’s a three story bungalow made of wood, and drywall, and three other types of insulation.

The wood of the house is very dry. It will catch quickly. If I had to guess, the whole thing could be engulfed in ten minutes, start to finish. I don’t know how I know this, but I do.

It’s a warm night in late May and the breeze across town is strong.

Adam Eleanor is throwing the last party of high school tonight.

Everyone’s invited to the last party of high school. Even me.

Unfortunately I can’t make it to the party. I have plans.

In the first grade, I’d get home from school, dash up to my room, and set fire to my homework.

I’d tear it up into tiny jagged triangles and light them off one by one with the matches I’d stolen at breakfast, while Mom wasn’t looking. The next day, I’d tell my teachers the dog ate it.

But we didn’t have pets.

One afternoon I accidentally set off the overhead smoke alarm and my parents rushed in to find me in the act. I still remember their faces. How they froze in place in the doorway when they saw me there with that burning teepee of multiplication tables and charred matches between my legs. The moment they registered once and for all this was going to be a whole thing. The cold recognition of what was now the capital P Problem they’d have to deal with for years to come.

I remember before there was anger, scolding, punishment, before I feigned shame and contrition and endured the long time-out and first visit to a clinical specialist, before all of that, there was something else in my parents’ eyes. Something no Mommy or Daddy should ever feel toward their firstborn son.

When they looked down at me in my room that day… for no longer than a fleeting moment…

They were afraid of me.

On the walk to Adam Eleanor’s house I already know This Is A Very Bad Idea.

I know this because I’m saying to myself again and again, This Is A Bad Idea, This Is A Bad Idea. But whenever I say to myself This Is A Bad Idea, I always end up doing it. It’s like a fundamental law of the universe.

I’m dressed all in black and have my hood up. No one would ever think to stop me. I’m in the suburbs. I think about if maybe I can still stop myself from doing what I’m about to do, but the little click’s taken place in my mind. The switch has been flipped.

You can always feel when the decision’s made.

I was nine years old and it was February and I turned the gas stove on and held my left hand over the fire for eleven seconds without moving. I could feel my skin melt and curl in on itself like a marshmallow you leave to die on the stick.

I was tall enough now I didn’t have to stand on my tippy toes. I could just reach right over the electric blue flame. Most human beings have a built-in animal instinct to pull away from the heat. But I guess I’ve always been a little different. I have a patchy tattoo of mottled pink flesh right here to prove it.

It’s not that I didn’t feel the pain. Those were real tears in my eyes. I just didn’t pull away from it. I could stay inside of it. Transmute it, kind of. It didn’t get me off though. I had to get my kicks from lighting other stuff on fire. Everyone’s got their thing.

Most kids do things like: go to soccer practice or choir or chess club.

I did things like: set off homemade fireworks in lidless public trash receptacles after dark. Sneak out way past my bedtime with my pockets full of lint from the dryer machine. Collect trash from the streets of my town and burn it all down to ash. Burn anything I could get my hands on. Even my own clothes if that’s what it took. Tell myself each and every time I lit up that this was the very last time I would ever light up.

Shame, guilt, self loathing, these gifts came early. They come with the territory.

I’d tell myself, This has to stop. This is very bad. This is not a good habit I’m developing here.

But then again, nobody got hurt. Not yet, at least.

These were the early days.

There’s a narrow window of time where Adam and his goons are out buying surplus liquor for the party and the house is empty. I have fifteen minutes to get inside the house through the back door, prepare the building for its dramatic conclusion, and bounce. I don’t have to worry about cameras on the door or anywhere else because Adam’s already taken care of that. The windows are draped and there’s no visibility from the front. I slip around the side, unlatch the gate to the backyard, and stroll through to the sliding door.

Yes, it is always this easy to break and enter a home in the suburbs.

Except can you really call it “breaking” when everything’s unlocked?

Valentine’s Day of third grade is when I really knew I had a problem.

Picture it.

All the kids milling about depositing bullshit Hallmark offerings into brown paper bags.

Stickers, lollipops, little candy hearts made of colored chalk. You remember. There’s not much sentimental value to the ritual when you keep in mind every child is required to give one to everyone. No discrimination. Everyone gets a trophy.

We’re 10 minutes into the festivities when Emily McBride yells out to the whole room, Who left a match in my bag? And everyone stops what they’re doing.

God forbid someone exercise a little originality.

Teacher looks inside Emily’s bag and frowns. Then she checks Arthur Dennison’s bag. Her forehead creases cut deeper into her face. She checks the next bag. The next. The downward slant of Teacher’s eyebrows becomes parabolic. She marches up to the front of the class and says Alright, who wants to speak up? Who put all these matches and fuses and homemade pocket explosives in everyone’s paper bags?

No one says anything.

So Teacher pulls the age old, Come forward now and you won’t be punished.

Which, for the record: that promise has been kept exactly zero times in the history of elementary school.

No one? she says. Alright then.

She instructs the class to empty their bags. The perp will obviously be the only one who hasn’t deposited a match/fuse/pocket explosive into their own stash. Surely. Everyone groans and empties their bags. And sure enough, it’s in my brown paper bag they find something unexpected. Two things, actually.

First, no one in the class has left me even one chalky pink heart or Hallmark card or offering of cheap candy. What happened to “No one gets left out on Valentine’s Day?”

What they do find is: a small translucent bag of, what is that, gunpowder?, a juice box full of pure grain ethanol, two individual sets of flint and steel, and a tangled mess of unidentified multi-colored wires.

Both my parents pick me up from the office.

They say things like: Haven’t we talked about this, and We thought you were feeling better, and We’re not angry, honey, we’re just disappointed.

There’s nothing I can say to get out of this one. I have to face the music. I have to go back to the listening experts that very afternoon.

Later that night I hear my father break down into tears from the other side of the wall. Him and Mom are in their bedroom. I hear him collapse into these low, racking sobs, muffled by Mom’s arms wrapped around him. I can tell he’s been holding it in.

No matter how well he hides it, my father’s cries have a way of echoing through the thin capillaries of our house. I grit my teeth and force myself to hear it all. I deserve this.

There is something very, very wrong with me.

This is the night I hold my arm over the stove. The first time.

I’m dousing the floors, walls, and ceiling of the Eleanor estate in odorless combustible fluid.

It’s a kerosene base with a number of other compounds mixed in to hide the scent. I’m not going to walk you through the whole process right now. I have a fifteen minute window, remember. But if you really want to hear about it, I prepare it at home in my room in small batch micro brews. It’s fast drying so I can cover every corner of the house and the kids won’t notice they’re standing and breathing in potent flammable aerosol spray until it’s ignited. I’m dousing the family photos hanging in the hallway. The marble countertops. Even though marble doesn’t burn. I don’t care. Douse it all. My nose drips a single tear of blood.

I sniff it back up into my face.

By the time I was 10, I’d learned how to keep my habit under wraps.

How to lie to therapists, psychiatrists. Listening professionals.

The trick is: you can’t ever be cheerful. When they ask you how you’re doing, how you’re feeling, you can never tell them just ‘good.’ They won’t buy it. You have to be a little unhappy. Not too unhappy or they’ll dig deeper. Adjust your medication. Diagnose you with something else. It has to be, Well I’m mostly good, but I’d feel better if…

You have to be specific.

My REM sleep has been inconsistent.

I haven’t had much of an appetite.

Sometimes I drift off in class.

But then you have to say you’re working hard to feel better. You’re doing everything you can. You may not feel great, but you’re fighting like hell to get there. They appreciate this. You need to wince slightly while you talk, careful not to evoke self pity or melodrama. You need a certain “grin and bear it” disposition in the face of your psychic angst.

This is how you lie to people who say they care about you.

When you’re lighting up a suburban home, you don’t actually have to cover every inch of it in combustible fluid. Just the crucial parts to ensure the flames spread. The doorway. The porch. Most of the kitchen. Ceilings. Cover the basics and you’re good.

You don’t actually have to go out of your way to douse sentimental items like the Eleanor family photo albums and antique dresses and this old wooden rocking chair you can tell was hand-built by someone in the family. That’s just a Me thing.

When I’m done with Mr. and Mrs. Eleanor’s bedroom, I move into Adam’s.

Here are the quarters of a perfectly well adjusted young male. A kid destined for OK things. He’ll go to college, work out 3 times a week, get married one day to someone he likes and says he loves. He’ll live with his parents for most of his twenties.

But such are the times we live in. Have you seen the economy.

I douse his room.

Translucent, odorless aerosol fuel all over his checkered bedspread. All over the action figures he still has displayed on his desk. His computer. All of it must go.

I finish off the can on his soccer trophies and then take out the next receptacle from my backpack. I need to pace myself. There’s a whole lot of house left.

So much real estate, so little time.

Another thing you learn with a condition like mine is how to smile so no one looking has any reason to question it. You learn how to live out loud. How to use enthusiasm as camouflage. You learn to play happy in a subtle way. To never look like you’re trying.

Don’t smile too much. That’s a dead giveaway. Just a halfway smile and a thirty percent glint to your eyes. Laugh, but not heartily. Maintain eye contact with whoever’s listening. Nod at a constant rate, only slightly. Learn to ask adults questions that make them talk about themselves. Ask about their work, their interests. Keep your eyebrows furrowed and bottom lip clamped down with your two front teeth. Let them talk and talk. That’s how you avoid getting asked about yourself, your problem, how you’ve been feeling lately.

Smile and nod and ask questions and they won’t ask if you’ve had any recent episodes.

If someone was looking real closely, they’d see the floor and walls of the house kind of shine.

They glint very slightly in the overhead light. But no one looks closely these days.

I take three of my precious minutes to disable all the home’s smoke alarms. It won’t matter anyway. Force of habit, I guess.

I do one more pass over Mr and Mrs Eleanor’s bed. I refrain from pocketing any of their jewelry, watches, or expensive, easy-to-pawn tchotchkes sitting on the nightstand. I don’t need it. Stealing is not my compulsion. Different strokes for different folks.

I’ve never lit any animals on fire. Just so you know.

Never anything living. Or nothing with a central nervous system, I should say. I have no interest in hurting, killing, or maiming. My problem has nothing to do with aggression. It’s not a sexual thing. Not in any direct way.

It’s more like communion with a Power Greater Than Me.

I want to feed it, this God of mine, the flames. I want to watch them eat and swallow and disappear whatever stands in their way. Until both consumer and consumed are gone, dust, ash. You know what I mean?

In the beginning, it didn’t matter what I set fire to. I’d burn anything I could get my hands on.

Then last Thanksgiving I lit up one of grandma’s old photo albums and felt what that was like. Torching something of sentimental value. It’s a whole different cocktail. A more potent experience than you can possibly imagine, unless you’ve tried it.

From that point on, I could only get my hit from burning precious things. Heirloom furniture. Sister’s clothes. Mother’s clothes. Best friend’s father’s prized stamp collection.

Doesn’t matter what it is. It just needs to matter to someone else.

That’s how vices go. They escalate. You develop a tolerance. You start off burning scraps of your math homework and open your eyes one day to find yourself setting fire to Adam Eleanor’s family home.

After a while, you just need something stronger.

Party people will be back at the house in five minutes.

I skip out the back door again. I leave a trail of fluid across the yard in a zig zag. I resist the urge to spell out a message. No. This act requires no words. Let it speak for itself. I trail it out to the the edge of the yard and then hop the fence into the neighbors’ yard.

The neighbors are Ronald and Cara Bronner, both retired and not super involved in the community. Around this time of the evening, they’re both typically tied up with senior night pickleball which is why they’re not home to see me emptying my extra can of fluid in a thick puddle in the middle of their lawn.

A lot of getting away with it depends on nailing the details. Getting the little things right. You have to pay attention. You have to know how people tick.

Tomorrow, when it’s over, when there’s nothing left of the house, when the emotional vibe at the Eleanor’s has evolved from general horror, shock, and awe into the coping mechanisms of suspicion and investigation, they’ll notice the burnt black trail of dead grass leading from the charred remains of their home right into the Bronner’s backyard, and given Mr. Bronner’s recent age-related personality shift, they’ll have nothing to do but suspect the worst. Suspect the obvious. What else would people do?

What would you do?

It makes sense to go out with a bang like this. My cover’s starting to slip anyway.

Last month I set fire to the full contents of my backpack inside a trashcan outside the school. I did it during lunch time after what had been a rough morning. The smoke came out black and floated up to heaven. All the kids in the North Caf crowded at the window to watch. Before security got to me, I’d made it out to the football field and doused the turf in kerosene all the way up to the forty yard line. They didn’t even have to tackle me. I was already on the ground. Hands up above my head, fingers together, clasped tight, as if in prayer.

Samantha, Dorian, Yasmin, Clark are the first to arrive. It’s 10:30 PM.

They’re followed closely by everyone else. Kids I’ve gone to school with since before my problem reared its ugly head. They arrive in threes and fours. Jared. Allie. Carson. Quinn.

Kids I’ve learned world history with. Gone on ten years of field trips with.

Here’s seventy adolescents right on the doorstep of the rest of their lives.

Here’s me standing six inches behind the neighbors fence, watching the most epic, final party of high school gestate and be born just before its grand demise.

From the back side of the house I can see clearly into all the rooms. For some reason, the back of the house is all glass. I see kids getting it on in each of the bedrooms, one on every floor. It never takes long for it to come to that. The kids drinking inside look like they’re imitating parties they’ve watched on television. Keg stands, beer pong, backwards baseball caps.

I wonder if they are pretending or if they actually enjoy this and the movies just happen to get it right. Does art imitate life, or what? Don’t ask me. I’m just a guy with a raging problem.

And about a thousand fluid ounces of combustible fluid waiting at home. Leftovers.

I’ll have to get rid of that when I get back.

Anyways.

Tell you the truth, it’s been a bender of a week.

Tuesday night, I burned to the ground the World War One monument in Alden Park and biked away before anyone saw me. They don’t have cameras at Alden Park. Well, now they do.

What I did was I dusted the whole thing in thermite which is a powder of aluminum and iron oxide and you can use it to melt metal. I blew the mixture out of a homemade contraption I’d fashioned out of the family garden hose.

Took me less than 30 seconds to cover every bronze edge of the thing, then use a good old fashioned match to ignite it.

I indulged myself and stayed put for a full sixty seconds, watching the angular faces of our town’s veterans melt down into shiny putty before I got back on my bike and pounded the pedals home, arriving just in time to watch the story break on the evening news.

11:11 PM will be ignition time here at the Eleanor estate.

I’m not into manifestation or anything. I just think it would be pretty funny. Imagine Donna Hardfeldt executing a private tarot reading in the first floor bathroom, eyes closed tight in total spiritual focus when her seance is interrupted by the dense and sudden smell of very real smoke and for a moment she’ll wonder, hey, is that my candle? And then she’ll open her eyes and step out of the bathroom and learn the truth at the same time as everyone else.

Ten minutes on the clock.

Every time I do it it’s the last time. Every time it’s “tomorrow I’ll change.”

Tomorrow I’ll come clean. Get myself together. Lock in. Figure it out. I’ll work out and read books and do something else to blow off steam. Something well adjusted. Normal.

By making each and every time I do it the very last time I ever do it, I get the best of both worlds. I get dopaminergic release plus the satisfaction of knowing I’ll fix myself tomorrow.

It gives the whole experience a delicious finality.

Ride high on the locked in imaginary future while reveling in the uninhibited thrill of doing the horrible, toxic, very bad thing, right now, today.

And because it’s the last time every time, I have to use up all my supplies every time. So I don’t have any leftovers. So I’m not tempted to do it again tomorrow. This is always a bit of a challenge because I tend to over purchase supplies because my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. But I manage to do it. Every time.

Seventy five 18 year olds chug and snort and try to dance. Unfortunately most of them grew up in families that didn’t possess a basic sense of rhythm. So the big kids inside just kind of slosh around like the cheap drinks they’re trying not to spill.

I already have my 6 AM alarm set for tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to lock in.

To lock in, I have to complete a select handful of rituals. I have to wake up early and go downstairs into the family home gym that used to be my Dad’s office. I have to do no less than one hundred chin-ups and two hundred push-ups and then take a cold shower and then put on all black, unbranded clothing and sit on the floor of my room where I used to flick sparks of flint and steel right onto the knotted hard wood below and I have to just sit there with my eyes closed and meditate for twenty minutes which means try very hard not to think. I have to say to myself Don’t Think, Don’t Think, Don’t Think.

But it’s usually no use because my thoughts usually drift to girls or what I’m going to light on fire later, and please don’t be alarmed by those streams of thought being next to each other. They’re totally different urges and would never cross paths at the same point in the evening.

Relax. It’s like thinking about sleeping with Sydney Sweeney and then separately thinking about the delectable munch and pull on a fresh mozzarella stick.

Both awesome things. Tantalizing in different ways.

Do you get what I’m saying?

11:04 PM. From behind the house, I can see into all the windows.

It’s a beautiful tableau of drunk teenagers. Adam Eleanor himself is leaned up against a banister that can’t support his weight. He’s talking to Genevieve. Or trying to. Genevieve Holt. Say her name a million times and it won’t be enough. It’s hard to see her face from here, from behind the wood slats of the fence, but I’m trying. I can imagine her laughing, nodding, giving to Adam with her eyes more than the time of day, which is now 11:05 PM.

Kyler Berry, a sophomore, attempts a keg stand but is unsupported by anyone so he folds forward and crashes down onto the coffee table below. He lands flat on his back with a smack and stays that way. No one looks into it.

There’s something cliche about all the red solo cups. Something insincere about this whole affair. It’s a high school party that’s too self aware. The place is wreathed head to toe in tropes. I mean have you actually ever been to a party with a keg?

Right. I didn’t think so.

Tomorrow I’ll figure it out. Tomorrow I’ll get myself together. Tomorrow I’ll clean up my room and my habits and my life. Tomorrow. These are things I tell myself.

People have isolated into cliques. They’ve found their little intra-party tribes. No one stands alone. Except for the guy behind the fence. But enough about me, right.

11:09 PM. Genevieve’s standing closer to the bannister now. Adam’s got a smirk on his face like he’s thinking of doing something cheeky. I still can’t see Genevieve’s face. But now he’s leaning in, getting close. There’s that moment where they’re about to kiss. Body language shifts. She flicks hair out of her eyes.

Twelve years ago, when we were in the fifth grade, Adam and Genevieve played a game of tag, just the two of them, and I watched it happen. The game went on for months and months and it was clear-as-day fifth grade flirting. Only one time in my life did I ever manage to sit next to Genevieve on the bus and when I tried to talk to her the words came out stiff.

Tomorrow I’ll find a better hobby and try to make something of my life. Tomorrow I’ll write handwritten apologies to everyone I’ve ever wronged. Tomorrow I’ll surrender up myself to a higher power, something that isn’t the flames. Tomorrow I’ll

Adam’s leaning in for the kiss. I could just strike the match right now. One fluid motion. I could watch it burn for a moment.

What bothers me about these people is that they did not have any involvement in turning out the way they are. It was not through any sum of their own personal choices they were born pretty, glistening, shiny people. They never had to develop personality as a survival mechanism. They didn’t work to become hot, naturally well-liked people.

Although I guess I didn’t choose my predicament either.

Maybe we’re all just born the way are and it’s up to us to learn to deal with it somehow.

I strike the match and hold it in front of me. This is the moment of greatest potential energy. Maximum tension. Everything in the whole universe hangs in the balance in a moment like this.I’ m not looking in the window anymore. I drop the match. It mingles with the pool of fluid I’m standing next to and shoots out across the lawn in the zig zag I left behind. I press my face into the slats of the fence and keep my eyes open, refusing to blink.

There is water in my eyes but I don’t let it spill out.

I hold it there.

Children rush from the home in droves. None of them work together.

One dude shatters a window with a chair to escape though this is not in any way necessary. There are two sets of open doors to run through. He dashes out into the yard and almost sees me behind the fence, but takes a hard left and wraps around the house that way. He’s followed out the window by many others.

Adam and Genevieve are lost in the mass exodus. I have to stop my eyes from searching for them so I can watch my flames eat the house. Wouldn’t want to miss the main event.

Remember why we’re here.

It takes nine minutes and forty seconds for the tendrils to take the house. To swallow it completely. How’s that for accuracy.

I get home and lock my bike in the garage. I take off all my clothes and stand naked in the living room. I leave my clothes lying there in a loose pile. My parents are asleep by now, but I wouldn’t care if they found me like this. Tonight is supposed to be rock bottom.

My nose is bleeding again. I drag my feet into the bathroom, turn the shower on, cold. I don’t even gasp when I get in. I just stand there under the stream with my head down.

I drop to my knees. Clasp my hands and bow my head. I realize too late I don’t know how to pray. I get off my knees and turn the shower off.

I do thirty pushups on my bedroom floor, naked still. I put on pajamas I used to wear when I was younger and drift into the kitchen to cook some ground beef. I put on the television so there’s noise in the room. The news is on and they’re covering the Eleanor house fire.

I turn off the TV.

Tomorrow I’ll get it together. I’ll wake up real early and go for a run and then take a cold shower and I won’t go on my phone, not even once, and I’ll make breakfast for Mom, tell her thank you for everything. Gratitude is the attitude.

I’ll get rid of my supplies. I’ll put them in a bag and drop the bag in a lake.

I just need to get a little momentum going in the right direction and I’ll be OK. That’s all it is.

I just need to get myself together and stop doing things like binge eating cereal and scrolling on my phone and burning down the childhood homes of kids I don’t care for. I should start reading again. Certainly. That’s a no brainer. Fill my brain with all kinds of good things so I don’t have any room to think of the bad stuff anymore.

That would be a good start.

Josh Czuba

Episodes 11

Nothing on this page to show