BANG GUN, DISTRICT THREE

"Momma, what are you doing?" he asked, tone attempting to be soft and careful but unable to hide the fear that laced the question. The rope was cutting into his skin, making his fingers and toes tingle from lock of circulation.

She answered him with the same methodical lilt to her voice that she had given since she had ordered him to sit in the wooden chair. "I love you, do not forget," she said, dragging a can of something that smelled of chemicals towards where he was sitting.

(And he trusted her, but he always found it hard to remember when she got like this, he was only four years old and his Momma played odd games. He hoped that Dad would be home soon.)

He watched, unable to move as she opened the can and dipped her hands into the liquid. She cupped some of the clear stuff in her hands, almost tenderly and lifted it to her little boy's head. It smelled like when they would stop at the gas station to fill the car up with petrol. He wrinkled his nose as she worked it into his hair like she did with the shampoo at bath time. "Sit still, Gun. Be good for Mamma," she said, and he stopped trying to wriggle away. There was a frailty to his Mamma that he never wanted to add to. Her life was hard enough. He would be good for her, he always would.

The liquid dripped down the back of his neck, slipping down his shirt and making his eyes water from the fumes. He blinked back tears as he stared into his Mamma's concentrating face. She was beautiful, but might have been even more so if it weren't for the hues of yellows and purples that bruised her face and underneath her dress where no one could see. Gun didn't understand where the colours came from, but he thought that they made his Mamma even more beautiful. Her frailty was morbidly charming. For her it was maddening.

After she had finished with his hair, she rubbed the foul smelling liquid all down his arms and even wet his shirt. He didn't like it, but he stayed perfectly still to make his Mamma happy. In appreciation for his effort, she pressed her lips to his forehead, leaving a red stain there from her cherry lip stick. She smiled at him then in satisfaction and Gun was happy. She smiled like the sun. "Let's stay together forever Gun, you and me, together." He nodded quickly then, agreeing with her even though he didn't understand what she was meaning.

Then she stood and poured the rest of the can over her head. The motion was fluid, seemingly practiced. Gun let out a small cry, despite himself. The moment of self-destruction petrified him. "Mamma please, what are you doing?" He begged her for an answer, terror rampant, but all she did was smile softly and put a finger to her lips. Then she bent down and sat at his feet, her legs hooked around the front chair legs.

"Gun, please perform your magic trick for me?" she asked, voice sweet. Then she reached over and freed his hands from their constraints so that he could do what she desired. He wouldn't question her, not ever. He loved to do his magic trick and if she wanted it, she would have it. The setting made him uneasy, as she'd never doused them in the water that went in the car before the magic trick, but he was happy to ignore that for getting the chance to do it. His father hated the trick and never let him play with it.

He was glad to have a mother who loved it. So, with deep concentration, he focused on his fingertips, and with complete seriousness held them out to his Mamma to blow on them. She complied, as she had down hundreds of times before. His fingertips jumped into life, flames licking his nails and traveling up his arms.

With a sudden movement, she wrapped her hand around his arm and the fire leaped joyously from him to her, eagerly licking her up.

"Mamma," he shrieked.

He doesn't remember much from that moment. He remembers the way the flames licked up her skin, catching onto him quickly and igniting him too. He remembers the heat and how fear made his screams come out strangled and high. He remembers the smell of singed hair and the way his Mamma went into the flames, smiling peacefully. She folded in on herself like a tree that has stood tall for too long. Her arms fell into her lap first, her neck bowing down from weight. Her hair became like fireflies and the fabric of her sun dress made of like ravens. He rocked back and forth in the chair until it collapsed under him because all it was, was charred wood.

The house burnt around him and flames licked the world up and away. All he could hear was the high pitched sound of flesh burning and the sound of paper tearing. He thought he was going to become the same as the skeleton in front of him, a pile of embers and melted flesh. He could feel his clothes burning away and knew that he was covered in the flame too, but there was no pain.

When the firefighters pulled him out of the flame, he was naked and shivering but he did not bare a scratch.

When he woke up the scars along his arms and back itched and his mouth tasted like sand. Furiously, he itched at the skin that was still so red and puckered after all these years. It hurt sometimes, when his nails were too long and they dug a bit too far into his skin.

He hadn't had that particular dream in years. He wasn't sure how much of it was actual memory, how much of it was strange dreaming. He could rule out making it out of the fire unscathed. The horrendous burns all over his body that he had been recuperating from all of his life was hard evidence.

He just couldn't ever remember if he had been the one to light the match in the end or if his mother had been. Or was there a match at all? He wondered about that. Sometimes he blew on his finger or gave them a snap, wondering if he could light them up just like in his dreams.

He grimaced slightly as he rolled off of the bed, the scars on his back tight from a night spent restless. He landed on all fours, fingers and toes curling aware from the cold of the wooden floors in the morning. It was a wonder that his father allowed the wooden floors at all, everything else in the house was made from stone and metal. For some reason, Gun had insisted on it. He liked the delicacy of it, the danger of the floor burning away beneath his feet.

The scent of burning flesh refused to leave his nose this morning.

He'd have oatmeal for breakfast or a banana, never able to stomach bacon or any meat anymore. That was probably understandable, considering his history with meat in general. His father didn't eat meat either and sometimes people asked them about it but most people just left them to it because they knew the answer, it always made them uncomfortable.

Especially when they'd enter the Bang shop and find that Gun had gotten himself another bruised eye, another new burn. They pretended that they didn't see the same signs that led to the death of Mrs. Bang. They pretended that seeing a teenage boy with a black eye, sullen and unhappy in his own house was a regular thing.

To some people it was. They didn't live in the nicest part of town.

Sometimes Gun placed the vague memories he had of the trauma beside the recurring dream and he couldn't help wondering if his mother had been doing all that she could to rescue them from her husband. He wasn't sure if the broken bones and the bruises under her clothes were fact or fiction.

Had he been the one to light the match, or the one to blow it out?

Or was the match ever lit in the first place?

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