When the firemen arrived my house was already engulfed in flames. My mom, dad, and brother were still trapped inside, but they’d found me rolling around on the front lawn, hands clenched tight against my chest. I’d tried to stop the fire, and when I couldn’t I opened my second floor window and dropped into the bushes below. They thought from my rolling around I’d been trying to douse flames that had been on me, and the state of my clothes had convinced them I’d been caught in the fire.
A kind man had carried me to the back of an ambulance where a man had examined me. My hands and face were blackened with soot, what remained of my clothes singled and almost burned away, but I was unharmed. They told me it was a miracle I’d not been burned myself.
I sat in the back of the ambulance covered in a thin blanket and watched as the firemen tried to control the flames and save my family. Thousands of gallons of water was poured into my home while a brave few broke in the front door to find my parents and brother. Tears filled my eyes as those men came out carrying my family’s limp bodies. The firemen rushed them to another one of the ambulances. The EMTs slow movements told me everything I needed to know.
One of the EMTs came over to give me the news. He tried to soften it, to speak soothingly to me, but I knew what I’d done. I cried as the nice man tried to comfort me. He told me I’d done the right thing by getting out. That it wasn’t my fault. I knew better.
As he continued to speak softly, to try and help me, my hands began to tingle again. My crying stopped as panic washed over me. The EMT noticed the change in my mood and asked what was wrong. I yelled at him, told him he needed to get away, but he didn’t understand. He thought I just wanted to be left alone. I did, but not for the reasons he thought.
The tingle turned into pins and needles, which soon turned into a warm glow. The blanket I so tightly clutched around me began to blacken and smoke as the warm glow began to turn into heat. The EMT noticed this, puzzled at the little tendrils of smoke starting to pour off me.
As he watched the heat spilled out of me. An orange light surrounded me as flames erupted around my body. The worker stumbled backwards, falling in his haste to get away from me. To my horror I caused a second fire that night as the flames spread from me to the ambulance.
