fic: Fire (PG)
A/N: This is actually part of a fanfic series about fires, but it stands nicely by itself, since it has no references to anything in the show, except the main character in this story, which you could say is a recurring guest character in the series the fanfic is about.
BEFORE.
~~~~incipient~~~~
When I was born, I was small, but hungry. I don’t remember the actual moment of my birth, of course. But I know it happened inside a wall, because that is where I first became aware of my own existence.
~~~~growth~~~~
I had one and only one purpose, and that is to grow. Like any predator, I had to consume in order to grow. It’s not an act of cruelty, and the violence that ensues is just part of the natural course of things, and not an end unto itself. Consumption is violent, no matter how it is done.
Immediately after my birth, it wasn’t clear whether I’d survive. I needed three things to flourish: heat, oxygen, and fuel. Inside the wall where I was born, there was heat, coming from two wires that were never meant to be bare, and never meant to touch. The mice that had chewed their plastic coating off skittered away as I approached, but would themselves soon fuel my growth.
Once I was born, I continued making my own heat. I had plenty of fuel-the insides of the walls were framed with quite delectable wood. But soon, it became hard to breathe, as my growth and consumption of fuel used up the oxygen in the small compartment where I was born. If I didn’t find more oxygen, I would die before I was fully grown.
~~~~fully developed~~~~
Soon enough, though, I gnawed my way through the wall, and rejoiced in finding a new, large room, immense compared to the inside of the wall, where there was plenty of oxygen, and delicious new fuel.
~~~~flashover~~~~
I consumed fuel and oxygen, and I grew. I could feel myself growing stronger, and the larger I grew, the more fuel I needed, and the more oxygen I needed in order to be able to digest the fuel effectively. I grew to fill the room I’d opened up into.
Within the room, the oxygen-containing air was pressed lower and lower to the floor by the combination of delicious hot gases and my beautiful flames. Soon, the whole room was at my peak temperatures, and everything that could burn was burning.
But after just a few minutes of this glory, during which I frantically devoured everything I could touch, I began to need more oxygen than was available.
~~~~decay~~~~
I had filled the sealed room with my own waste products, from floor to ceiling. I needed more oxygen to grow again, to have any hope of escaping the untenable environment I’d created for myself. If I could have controlled my own movements, I might have been able to break into another room, but my movements were governed by the laws of physics, and not my own petty desires. So I languished, snacking on gases being released from decomposing fuel, waiting for an opportunity to grow again. Waiting to breathe freely once more.
There were surfaces in the room that I knew I could not devour, unless I attained the heat of a sun, or of a nuclear inferno. One of these surfaces had the gall to try to reflect my own heat back at me, and at the same time to keep me from the oxygen I could almost smell on the other side of the transparent surface. I quickly quashed the mocking, covering the smooth, thin surface with particles of my own waste, until it was dark black, and had no choice but to absorb the intense heat I threw back at it.
I continued to fill the room with partially-digested gases. Without the aid of more oxygen, I just couldn’t finish everything I tried to eat. Wisps of the precious gas came in through cracks developing in some of the rooms surfaces, and in turn I puffed wasted out of those same cracks, just as an organism might breathe. In, out. In, out.
~~~~backdraft~~~~
All at once, one of the thin, shiny, inedible surfaces that I had covered with my soot buckled. I was no longer separated from the outside, and a rush of fresh, delicious, oxygen-rich air fed me. I grew, and grew, explosively and gloriously! I was suddenly hotter and larger than I’d ever been, and I gobbled up the partially-combusted gases I’d been snacking on halfheartedly only minutes before. I devoured any remaining solid fuel in the room. Nothing could stop me now! My heat tore through the ceiling, quickly ravaging the fuel between the ceiling and the roof, and finally I was free, shooting my beautiful flames through the roof of the house and into the night.
Vinyl siding melted, and produced delicious gases for me to feed on. Asphalt shingles had their own special tang. In this modern structure, there were so many things made of plastics, and they were delicious-first they were solid, and I could chew on them, but as I made them get hotter, they melted, and outgassed, producing a scrumptious secondary flavor. My favorite, though, by far, was the wood that was the main structure of the building. It was so easy to consume, didn’t have any unpleasant aftertaste, and there was so, so much of it!
There were some elements in the structure that I couldn’t consume, but that felt my power nonetheless. Pipes burst when the water in them became superheated steam, but the puny quantities of the poisonous liquid affected me not at all. Windows shattered, sometimes from my tremendous heat, and sometimes from my other kinds of power. Plaster cracked, and crumbled into dust.
NOW.
~~~~extinguishment~~~~
Something is happening! Oh, it cools, it cools so painfully! The cold hurts me, like I know the heat hurt the mice. Water is everywhere, a deluge from above, from the sides. At first my heat vaporized the water, but now there is so much of it, coming from everywhere, that I fear for my very life.
I am still hot-the water is rising as steam-but my heat is waning. I can no longer eat solid foods so easily, and the solids are not turning to gases as quickly. I am beginning to fear for my life! I fight valiantly, but I weaken with every gallon of the vile liquid that touches me.
~~~~under control~~~~
The water is pouring over me now, and I know the end is near. There is still plenty of fuel, which I move towards hungrily, but the struggle to stay warm is sapping my energy. My heat, my precious, life-sustaining heat, is being robbed from me by the men with the water. I lick at them angrily, through a window that they haven’t applied water into yet, but to no avail-my tentacle of flame is immediately quenched when a stream of the horrible fluid is redirected to the fuel that produced the gout of flame.
I know I am doomed when the men start getting closer, and closer. My body has split into many smaller fires, and it pains me as each is extinguished. I have cleverly hidden most of myself under collapsed beams, where I know that the men will not want to go, but all too soon the deluge from above finds my hiding spot, and I am so, so cold.
AFTER.
~~~~overhaul~~~~
I have been reduced, from all my glory, to minuscule hot spots, lingering in the ruins created by my orgiastic feasting. My roars have subsided into whimpers, as the men now begin finding all the hiding places of all the children I spawned. One by one, places where heat is hiding are discovered, and the fuel is prodded, rolled, and cooled-oh, the pain!-with yet more water. Steam rises, giving away the hiding places, and although it takes nearly as much time as the fiercest part of the battle, the pockets of heat are conquered.
All except for one.
~~~~rekindle~~~~
I burrowed into a heavy beam between the first floor and the basement-a tiny ember. Not even an ember, really, but more a dream of a flame. The mass of the beam contained my heat long after the last man left. I waited, growing slowly but steadily, all throughout the day, until nearly twenty-four hours after the time of my first birth.
When I was ready, I ate through the porous beam, pushing my way through to the surface. The fuel nearby was waterlogged, and not easy to eat, but as I got hotter, I was able to spread to some of the other fuel that remained after my initial gorging.
I knew, when I started this new life, that I would never be as glorious as I once was. But still-the feeling of coming to life from what looked, even to trained eyes, like a pile of dead ashes, was exhilarating.
Soon, they would come to me again, but in a way, just by making them return, I had won, from one point of view.
Some time later, probably after I started producing visible waste, they came for me again. This time, I was vanquished in minutes.
But I would be back. I would return, to some other place, at some other time.
I always come back.
BEFORE.
~~~~incipient~~~~
When I was born, I was small, but hungry. I don’t remember the actual moment of my birth, of course. But I know it happened inside a wall, because that is where I first became aware of my own existence.
~~~~growth~~~~
I had one and only one purpose, and that is to grow. Like any predator, I had to consume in order to grow. It’s not an act of cruelty, and the violence that ensues is just part of the natural course of things, and not an end unto itself. Consumption is violent, no matter how it is done.
Immediately after my birth, it wasn’t clear whether I’d survive. I needed three things to flourish: heat, oxygen, and fuel. Inside the wall where I was born, there was heat, coming from two wires that were never meant to be bare, and never meant to touch. The mice that had chewed their plastic coating off skittered away as I approached, but would themselves soon fuel my growth.
Once I was born, I continued making my own heat. I had plenty of fuel-the insides of the walls were framed with quite delectable wood. But soon, it became hard to breathe, as my growth and consumption of fuel used up the oxygen in the small compartment where I was born. If I didn’t find more oxygen, I would die before I was fully grown.
~~~~fully developed~~~~
Soon enough, though, I gnawed my way through the wall, and rejoiced in finding a new, large room, immense compared to the inside of the wall, where there was plenty of oxygen, and delicious new fuel.
~~~~flashover~~~~
I consumed fuel and oxygen, and I grew. I could feel myself growing stronger, and the larger I grew, the more fuel I needed, and the more oxygen I needed in order to be able to digest the fuel effectively. I grew to fill the room I’d opened up into.
Within the room, the oxygen-containing air was pressed lower and lower to the floor by the combination of delicious hot gases and my beautiful flames. Soon, the whole room was at my peak temperatures, and everything that could burn was burning.
But after just a few minutes of this glory, during which I frantically devoured everything I could touch, I began to need more oxygen than was available.
~~~~decay~~~~
I had filled the sealed room with my own waste products, from floor to ceiling. I needed more oxygen to grow again, to have any hope of escaping the untenable environment I’d created for myself. If I could have controlled my own movements, I might have been able to break into another room, but my movements were governed by the laws of physics, and not my own petty desires. So I languished, snacking on gases being released from decomposing fuel, waiting for an opportunity to grow again. Waiting to breathe freely once more.
There were surfaces in the room that I knew I could not devour, unless I attained the heat of a sun, or of a nuclear inferno. One of these surfaces had the gall to try to reflect my own heat back at me, and at the same time to keep me from the oxygen I could almost smell on the other side of the transparent surface. I quickly quashed the mocking, covering the smooth, thin surface with particles of my own waste, until it was dark black, and had no choice but to absorb the intense heat I threw back at it.
I continued to fill the room with partially-digested gases. Without the aid of more oxygen, I just couldn’t finish everything I tried to eat. Wisps of the precious gas came in through cracks developing in some of the rooms surfaces, and in turn I puffed wasted out of those same cracks, just as an organism might breathe. In, out. In, out.
~~~~backdraft~~~~
All at once, one of the thin, shiny, inedible surfaces that I had covered with my soot buckled. I was no longer separated from the outside, and a rush of fresh, delicious, oxygen-rich air fed me. I grew, and grew, explosively and gloriously! I was suddenly hotter and larger than I’d ever been, and I gobbled up the partially-combusted gases I’d been snacking on halfheartedly only minutes before. I devoured any remaining solid fuel in the room. Nothing could stop me now! My heat tore through the ceiling, quickly ravaging the fuel between the ceiling and the roof, and finally I was free, shooting my beautiful flames through the roof of the house and into the night.
Vinyl siding melted, and produced delicious gases for me to feed on. Asphalt shingles had their own special tang. In this modern structure, there were so many things made of plastics, and they were delicious-first they were solid, and I could chew on them, but as I made them get hotter, they melted, and outgassed, producing a scrumptious secondary flavor. My favorite, though, by far, was the wood that was the main structure of the building. It was so easy to consume, didn’t have any unpleasant aftertaste, and there was so, so much of it!
There were some elements in the structure that I couldn’t consume, but that felt my power nonetheless. Pipes burst when the water in them became superheated steam, but the puny quantities of the poisonous liquid affected me not at all. Windows shattered, sometimes from my tremendous heat, and sometimes from my other kinds of power. Plaster cracked, and crumbled into dust.
NOW.
~~~~extinguishment~~~~
Something is happening! Oh, it cools, it cools so painfully! The cold hurts me, like I know the heat hurt the mice. Water is everywhere, a deluge from above, from the sides. At first my heat vaporized the water, but now there is so much of it, coming from everywhere, that I fear for my very life.
I am still hot-the water is rising as steam-but my heat is waning. I can no longer eat solid foods so easily, and the solids are not turning to gases as quickly. I am beginning to fear for my life! I fight valiantly, but I weaken with every gallon of the vile liquid that touches me.
~~~~under control~~~~
The water is pouring over me now, and I know the end is near. There is still plenty of fuel, which I move towards hungrily, but the struggle to stay warm is sapping my energy. My heat, my precious, life-sustaining heat, is being robbed from me by the men with the water. I lick at them angrily, through a window that they haven’t applied water into yet, but to no avail-my tentacle of flame is immediately quenched when a stream of the horrible fluid is redirected to the fuel that produced the gout of flame.
I know I am doomed when the men start getting closer, and closer. My body has split into many smaller fires, and it pains me as each is extinguished. I have cleverly hidden most of myself under collapsed beams, where I know that the men will not want to go, but all too soon the deluge from above finds my hiding spot, and I am so, so cold.
AFTER.
~~~~overhaul~~~~
I have been reduced, from all my glory, to minuscule hot spots, lingering in the ruins created by my orgiastic feasting. My roars have subsided into whimpers, as the men now begin finding all the hiding places of all the children I spawned. One by one, places where heat is hiding are discovered, and the fuel is prodded, rolled, and cooled-oh, the pain!-with yet more water. Steam rises, giving away the hiding places, and although it takes nearly as much time as the fiercest part of the battle, the pockets of heat are conquered.
All except for one.
~~~~rekindle~~~~
I burrowed into a heavy beam between the first floor and the basement-a tiny ember. Not even an ember, really, but more a dream of a flame. The mass of the beam contained my heat long after the last man left. I waited, growing slowly but steadily, all throughout the day, until nearly twenty-four hours after the time of my first birth.
When I was ready, I ate through the porous beam, pushing my way through to the surface. The fuel nearby was waterlogged, and not easy to eat, but as I got hotter, I was able to spread to some of the other fuel that remained after my initial gorging.
I knew, when I started this new life, that I would never be as glorious as I once was. But still-the feeling of coming to life from what looked, even to trained eyes, like a pile of dead ashes, was exhilarating.
Soon, they would come to me again, but in a way, just by making them return, I had won, from one point of view.
Some time later, probably after I started producing visible waste, they came for me again. This time, I was vanquished in minutes.
But I would be back. I would return, to some other place, at some other time.
I always come back.