The only examples of true humanity that I’d ever witnessed came from my family, which was rotten to the core. I’d grown up with those who gained every time I was in pain, and this is after my father disappeared,there was an argument, a body, and then I never saw my brother or father again.I think about that night often. After that most people only cared about me when it was convenient for them. They’d bring drugs around,not that my mom cared. High as a Kite, my uncle would try to play with me and not realize he was squeezing every bit of life from my seemingly incredibly frail neck, users and abusers. Smiles plastered their face as they plotted your ruin; that was just their nature, their eyes and their words shouted they never made a single mistake, they believed this they shouted it nothing was wrong in their world. To me these people were garbage,I was garbage, yet they were family so all those feelings that were negative grew guiltier, heavier, and finally they crashed down on me until I broke. I wanted to love them, I needed to love something, but instead I was filled to the brim with an antagonizing, bitter, overwhelming self hate. My life was broken the people I cared for I also hated, even my brother who vanished, why did he leave me with these people whom I can’t hate, but can’t love either? More and more I thought about them, how would these people behave at my funeral? Would they pretend to cry? Would their detached emotional states allow them to truly cry for me?....Or would they simply be trying to keep up their innocent angelic facades? The only person who ever truly cared was my brother, and he left me with them he left me with this feeling, to pick up everybody’s broken pieces. He left me...Humanity was disappointing. Betrayal was the first thing I knew, and kindness was something I’d never know.

Strange thoughts rambled about my head, ‘burn. Just burn, Burn, burn,burn,burn. BURN!’. The thought was oddly compelling, I knew it didn’t make sense how could lighting yourself on fire make any sort of sense? But somehow the thought was

Strange thoughts rambled about my head as I layed in the dark, ‘burn. Just burn, Burn, burn,burn,burn. BURN!’. The thought was oddly compelling, he knew it didn’t make sense how could lighting yourself on fire make any sort of sense? But somehow the thought was hypnotic.I had one goal when I rose from my small tidy cot; find a lighter.

Tommy’s one bad habit was his addiction to cigarettes, that was currently why I was shuffling through his bag in the dark. Cold and firm my fingers grazed the sleek form of the zippo lighter, I pulled the form from the bag and walked outside into the moonlight.

Why was I doing this?I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe I wanted to take myself away from what awaited me when I returned home, if I returned home...I didn’t want to be swallowed up by the humanity that had surrounded me, to be turned into someone like them would be hell. I wanted to go up in a burning white hot fire, to be nothing more than ashes that’d blow away in the wind without a single trace I existed. Then no one would hurt me.

A glint of moonlight reflected off the zippo, it was a clear night with a light breeze tugging at the sandy blonde tips of his hair. I focused on the moonlight that shone down like a cool stream of water, then the contrast of the orange flame, then a sharp searing pain erupted on the skin of my arm spreading and spreading. I was okay with this pain, simply because I knew it’d be over soon I’d turn to ash and be free.