The Pyre Starter

Introduction

Two more steps, and it would be over. Though his tears fell few and far between, some rolled down his cheeks now. He made no attempt to wipe them away. Only two more steps, he told himself, staring down at his worn sneakers. Just two more.

He heard the rumble and whine of a familiar motorcycle in the distance. One of those plastic Japanese things. A step up from a bicycle attached to a lawnmower engine. Despite all his attempts to slip out of that aging concrete prison undetected, he failed. He failed at so many things. Why not add one more? But the path to this secluded spot was thick and covered in thorny weeds. With his bad knee, Terrell would have an awful time getting through it, even if he knew where he was going.

Terrell. f*****g bastard, he thought. Only one person on campus owned a machine that sounded like that, and he doubted it was a townie.

His head dropped, and he squeezed his eyelids shut. He silently hoped that the art history major, two levels his senior, wouldn’t arrive before he finished talking himself into it. He thought about taking another swig of the cheap bottle of brown battery acid, but his weak stomach kept twisting into knots. What a waste of the money his sister sent! In a*****e, that bottle would be worth one-third what he paid his roommate’s drunk girlfriend. And it didn’t even taste good. Last thing on earth to go into his system, and he didn’t enjoy it at all.

The plan, to quiet the one remaining internal voice that said he shouldn’t make the dive, didn’t appear all that successful. Wouldn’t people miss him? The handful of friends? His sister? No matter how busy she was raising her family, she would. Over the last year, she invited him to holidays and dinners and even a vacation. She tried to fold him into her life. She was the best family he had, she always reminded him. And what would she be without her baby brother?

Better off. He didn’t go to class, didn’t care about his grades. He never called her even though she worried all the time. When she sent him money and supplies, he simply blew through them as fast as he could. Only one thing on the whole planet made him even remotely happy. The clueless stare of an unattainable love interest, who became the unwitting subject of countless impossible fantasies.

Otherwise, he hated this place almost as much as himself. Rich kids, cliques, meaningless bullshit treated like actual life problems. His fellow students just wanted to party and work as little as possible to earn a piece of paper.

He couldn’t be more different from his assigned roommate, the sports hero. One hundred percent white, affluent, and sociable. The guy had an on-campus girlfriend within a few days of arrival and an endless supply of friends. Everybody liked him and wanted to get to know him. He was nice enough, leaving the cohabitating hermit to his own devices. Meanwhile, his counterpart could barely be compelled to put on unwrinkled clothes most days. Apart from the rare occasion where he attended class, he only left the dorm for food and a half-assed attempt to socialize once a week. At a student club, of all things.

“Dakota?!” called a voice from the forest behind him. It was close. A lot closer than he’d hoped Terrell would be this soon. He didn’t want any witnesses. In fact, he hoped no one would ever find him, or if they did, the only thing left would be a few unrecognizable bones scattered amongst the rocks.

If he really intended on jumping, he’d better do it now. No way would that nosy jackass—arguably one of the few acquaintances Dakota managed to make since arriving on campus—no way was he going to let him die. Hell, he’d obviously followed him all the way here. For what reason, the freshman had no clue. The two hadn’t known each other for very long, and he’d tried to leave without alerting anyone. But Terrell was an active member of the one group Dakota had any interest in, and he’d labored extensively to ensure Dakota felt welcomed. Perhaps he’d gone looking for the younger student at exactly the worst possible time.

“Uh, ‘If I could free my hands,’” he said to the dry riverbed beneath him. A line from his favorite story that he’d rehearsed for this moment. “‘I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream.’“

With a sigh, he took a small step forward and then one more into the air. It was something like seventy meters to the ground. More than enough to kill him.

But his hurried trip toward certain demise was abruptly halted by a fleshy hook, which snagged him across the chest and under one arm. The culprit let out a cry of pain as his knee—forever damaged thanks to some sort of violent accident in his teens—connected with one of the railroad ties. But his grip didn’t loosen, even with Dakota struggling to free himself and plummet the rest of the way down.

“You f*****g asshole!” he shouted with a voice that cracked. “Terrell! You stupid piece of s**t, let me go!”

This “good” Samaritan was no athlete. No pretty boy with a hoard of groupies. His various permanent injuries, mostly to the right side of his body, disabled him, and the cold November weather probably worsened it. On a good day, he still walked with an obvious limp, and while his damaged arm worked somewhat, it rested lifelessly on his leg or a desk whenever he sat down.

But he was at least forty pounds heavier and five inches taller, and he leveraged himself against a rusty rail so that he wouldn’t tumble over the edge, too.

It was his fully functional arm that grabbed Dakota by the abdomen and began hauling him back up to the bridge platform. Terrell groaned and winced at the clear pain this act caused, but he didn’t relent, and the suicidal young man soon lay on his side between the old steel train tracks. He was “safe” for now. No freight engine had crossed this aging wooden structure in almost a decade. And Terrell wasn’t about to let him make another attempt. “Sorry, man, I can’t let you do that.”

“Why the f**k not?!” His hands began searching for that neglected bottle of liquor. He may not have liked the taste, but he could at least throw it at the do-gooder who thwarted his plans.

But Terrell found it first. He looked at the label for a moment and shrugged. It seemed like he planned to make use of the free booze, and perhaps he thought taking it from Dakota was for the best. Without so much as asking, he slid the bottle into his backpack and zipped it closed. “I don’t know what’s eating you up, but whatever it is, you’re not gonna find a solution at the bottom of a ravine. You’re not, okay? I can’t let you just off yourself. God, you’re what, eighteen? Nineteen? If I have to drag you to the health center kicking and screaming I will.”

“f**k you, Terrell. You have no right to stop me, and it’s none of your f*****g business what I do with my life. Just leave me alone. You don’t even know anything about me.” He had it all planned out. He was ready to go.

Terrell merely shook his head in response.

As tears welled up in his eyes despite all attempts to avoid it, Dakota lay on the decaying wood, paralyzed with despair. He wanted to make a run for it. Certainly, he could get far enough away that Terrell wouldn’t be able to catch him in time. But he couldn’t make himself move. He felt defeated. Devastated. And anyway, he never intended to have an audience for this. He just wanted to die. He didn’t want to scar anyone or make them feel responsible. Why couldn’t Terrell just get lost? Wasn’t he entitled to end his own life if he wanted to?

“I don’t think that’s true, actually,” Terrell finally replied. “I’ve known you for a few weeks now, and you seem like a pretty good person. At least by my standards. I dunno if that means anything to you or not. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to know your whole life story to know you shouldn’t kill yourself.” Terrell crawled over to Dakota before sitting down at his side. “Because I know what the world’s like. I mean, there’s a lot of bad. Believe me, I know. But there’s so much more to it. You’d be missing out on a lot of amazing stuff if you died. This world is filled with incredible, astounding things, and you’d be wasting an opportunity to experience them.”

Dakota sniffed. After a long pause, he lifted his head enough to glare at the guy. “Oh, yeah? Like what? Don’t tell me you’re gonna start in about how complicated DNA is or how many strokes of a brush you can count in a Rembrandt painting. I’ve heard that s**t already, and I don’t care. It’s boring. I’ve been alive for almost twenty f*****g years, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. I wanna die. Even if you don’t let me do it now, I’ll come back later. So why don’t you just leave? I absolve you of all responsibility. Go away.”

Terrell shook his head emphatically. Reaching down, he rested his hand on Dakota’s arm. He bit into his lower lip for a moment, seemingly trying to decide what to say. He started hesitantly, “No, umm—what if—what if you could do anything you wanted? I mean other than hurting yourself. What if you could feed a whole nation or travel anywhere in an instant? What if you could do literally anything you put your mind to? Would you wanna live then?”

He scoffed. “Is this some sort of suicide hotline tactic? I counter with, ‘There’s no way I could do that,’ and then you say, ‘But you could do some of what you wanted if you just let yourself be happy.’ Well, I tried that, and it didn’t f*****g work. So, I don’t wanna hear—”

“No. Dakota, no. Hey, that’s not what I mean at all.” His tone, a strange mix of confidence and fear that was hard to pin down, caught Dakota’s attention immediately.

“What?”

He rubbed Dakota’s arm reassuringly and dipped his head a little lower in an attempt to be closer to his level. He spoke slowly and quietly, as though there could be other people around to hear him. “What I’m saying is, there’s a good chance that, whatever you could think of, there’s a way to do it. And it’s easier than you think. There’s something big going on. Most people don’t even know about it, but if you’ll let me, I’ll—I’ll prove it to you.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that. I don’t want anything. I don’t care anymore.” Pain, failure, and loneliness brought him to the brink. And a sort of hollow listlessness that came with being in a new place and having little in common with everyone around him. He doubted this miracle solution could offer him a renewed sense of hope. It just sounded like Terrell was pitching some new-agey cult.

But he didn’t skip a beat. With deep brown eyes, big and round, he held a steady gaze. “Well, umm, do you remember all those volcanoes a year or so back? Disrupting flights and evacuating whole towns?”

“Yeah, so?” Who wouldn’t? All the rich people complaining they couldn’t go on their yearly vacations made him physically ill.

“What if I told you that I think a person caused them?”

Dakota forced himself to sit up. He didn’t hide his contempt. “I’d tell you that that’s not how science works.”

He nodded. “You’d be right. Normally. But, I still think there’s a person out there who made those volcanoes happen. And I think he created them from scratch as a warning to other people who can do stuff just as crazy—essentially telling them to back off.” Terrell gulped, and it was clear from his worried expression that he feared Dakota wouldn’t believe a word he said.

“What, like countries with nukes? ‘Mutually assured destruction’?” International Relations 103, an afternoon class he actually showed up to, now and then. Nobody fires their biggest guns because the other side would shoot, too, and then both parties would kill each other. But they do a lot of public testing, and they make sure everyone knows exactly what they’re capable of. And that keeps the enemies at bay. “Only with, what? Magic s**t? What the f**k are you on?”

“Exactly!” He moved to place his remaining hand on Dakota’s other arm but stopped. “Exactly like that. Only it’s real, I swear. There are people who can do ridiculous stuff, pretty much anything you can imagine. Things you see in comic books and movies. People can really do these things, and the world’s gotten small enough that they’re starting to fight each other. And I can prove it. I’ve been doing research. I can prove it to you!”

Dakota didn’t know how to feel. It certainly seemed like Terrell believed what he was saying, but it sounded like lunacy. A complete and total work of fiction and paranoia. It had to be. “You’re the one who needs to go to the health center,” he quipped. His eyes drifted longingly to the side of the bridge. He still wanted to jump, but how could he make himself do it with Terrell here?

He couldn’t.

Terrell smiled, the way religious nuts smiled when presented with undeniable proof that their beliefs were lies. But when he spoke, there wasn’t any hint of defensiveness or blind faith in his voice. “Hey, I know how this sounds. I know. But I wouldn’t tell you if I couldn’t verify it.”

He shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“I—I have one. I have one of the sources. Where the power comes from. I have one, and I can show you a bunch more.”

“Oh yeah? Where? You got a stash of magic wands?”

Terrell tried to laugh it off. “It’s closer to that than you think. But anyway, I don’t have them here. We’d have to take a drive upstate. We can go this weekend, if you want. You and me.”

Really? Dakota didn’t have a vehicle of his own. And, as far as he knew, all Terrell drove was that bike of his. Could he really trust his safety to this guy? Who, for all intents and purposes, seemed to be in severe need of medication?

But just as he thought it, Dakota had to chuckle at himself. He tried to take a leap off of a bridge a few minutes ago, and now he was worried about his personal wellbeing? What exactly scared him? Dying or socializing? And what did he have to lose? Maybe it was crazy, but a trip on a motorcycle would at least be interesting, and he certainly didn’t have any plans.

“I know some stuff about it,” Terrell continued, “but I wanna take you to meet someone who can do even more and teach you how it works.”

“And who is that?”

“My cousin.”

Dakota sighed. Giving up came naturally. “Fine. But if you’re full of s**t, I’m coming right back here, and I’ll make sure you can’t f*****g stop me.”

Terrell smiled wide. He rose to his feet stiffly and offered Dakota his hand. “Deal.”