The Fire Ignites

Copyright © 2014 by Caprice Rose.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4931-3393-2

                  eBook   978-1-4931-3394-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 04/12/2014

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CONTENTS

Dedications

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

DEDICATIONS

To all my special friends, you know who you are. And you too, FPITW. :) And to my family. I hate you all. Nah, I love you, and can’t thank you enough, for without you, this adventure would never have started.

PROLOGUE

Wake up.

No, I don’t want to. Sleep sounds good. My body is exhausted, sleep is nice. The dark confines of sleep reach out to take me back, and I willingly go to step into her arms.

Wake up Rose.

I blink the sleepiness out of my eyes. Woah. Everything is freaking white; The bed I’m lying in is white, the sheets are white, the walls are white, and I am wearing a white robe.

Where am I? What is this?

My breath comes quicker. I start to panic. It’s natural when I have NO IDEA WHERE I AM.

Mum walks in. I being to relax at the familiar sight of her. Her brunette hair is pulled back into a sloppy bun and she’s wearing her trademark red open-collared blouse. Her profession—artist—is obvious in the paint stains splattered across the hem of her shirt.

Both her and the man behind her look serious. Fear flutters in my stomach like butterflies. It makes me feel queasy. Mum’s eyes are puffy and red. I assume she’s been crying. But why?

Mum? I ask. My voice comes out scratchy and hoarse. I clear my throat and try again. Mum? It’s still the same. It’s not right, my voice doesn’t sound normal, but everything feels fine. Except for a dull ache and an insistent throbbing where my pulse beats in my throat.

Like I said, fine.

Alla. My mum says—that’s my pet name for ‘Allarose’—and sits down on the—white, mind you—chair next to my bed. She takes hold of my hand. You don’t know how worried I was, darling.. You nearly died Rose, nobody thought you were going to live. It’s a miracle that you’re awake. She hugs me tight.

I stare at her. What?

Lovely news to wake up to.

The guys who followed her in starts to explain. "You were bitten by a sort of creature, still unknown, but by the bite marks, it may be some sort of dog. The creature aimed for your throat, which I deem as peculiar, as animals tend to attack the face, arms and legs. The way it attacked suggests a sort of knowledge higher than that of an average domesticated pet, and also a sort of feral, wildness. Neighbours spotted you after you called for help.

The ambulance arrived just in time. A few seconds later and you would have died of blood loss. You were very weak when aid arrived. You kept slipping in and out of consciousness, though you probably won’t remember that.

The guy’s right—all I can remember is a swift, dark shape coming towards me, and then—the hospital? I survey my room and it all clicks into place. This isn’t a room—it’s a ward. The guy who’s talking to me is a doctor I suppose, and I’m wearing a robe because… Uhm, I’m not sure. I peek under the robe in horror—What happened to my clothes?

I don’t remember anything between the flash of movement I can recall and here, the hospital. I turn my head to look at my mum, and feel a strange tightness on the right side of my neck that stops me. That’s never happened before. Curiously, I lift my hand to feel it. There’s a rough bumpy scar going from my jaw bone all the way down to my collarbone.

Fear flutters in my chest this time, forcing my mouth open in a soft whimper. I curse myself for being weak; what’s wrong with me? Even worse, mum notices. She tightens her grip on my hand and I feel a little better.

Ah yes. I’m afraid there will be a permanent scar there, the doctor says.

He says it like it’s no big deal, like this won’t ruin my life.

Maybe it won’t.

Maybe it will.

You had twenty-two stitches, mum interrupts. To speak out of turn is so unlike her. She’s usually calm and quiet. I turn my whole body around and look at her. She stares back with wide eyes. I shoot a questioning glance at this doctor guy. A little explanation would be nice.

The doctor obliges. While you were recovering, we operated. We weren’t sure whether you would awaken during the surgery so we drugged you to make sure. That put you into a coma-like state. You’ve been asleep for nearly a month.

A whole month?! I think to myself. The fear that fluttered like a butterfly in my chest before becomes more pronounced and I struggle to breathe through a sharp knot that has risen in my throat.

The doctor sees the look on my face. He looks apologetic. I don’t want his sympathy. You are lucky it was just a month, Rose. There was every chance that you weren’t going to pull through. Actually, it was nearly a four in a hundred chance that you were going to wake up. At first, an unidentifiable acid in your body dissolved the stitches. The same substance rejected our medicine at first, so you had to have an overdose. Then all of a sudden you just conked out and didn’t wake up. Thankfully though, while you were sleeping, the acidic substance remained dormant and we could operate.

I stare at him. Aren’t doctors supposed to keep that from you? Like, tell you that everything’s going to be okay? Thanks for the information Doctor Optimistic. You’ll have to stay here a little longer for final scans, but then you’re free to go home if everything checks out.

If everything checks out.

The doctor smiles at me. I glare at him. He looks a little offended and nods to mum. I wait for him to disappear through the door at the end of the ward to take another look around. I’m not the only patient in here. Another kid—I can’t tell if it is a boy or a girl, but they look about the same age as me—is lying in the bed diagonal to mine. They look to be sleeping—or unconscious, I think to myself.

A large bandage wraps around their left leg; the white edges are turning red from what looks like blood.

A nurse in a pale blue uniform—Finally, something other than white—comes in and goes over to the person I’m looking at. I strain to hear what they’re talking about. For once, my body responds. My hearing sharpens. It’s like I’m standing next to them.

Alex, it’s alright, you’ve done nothing wrong. The nurse assures the person in the bed. ‘Alex’ is a unisex name. That doesn’t help me much.

No, I have, I have. I’m going to say it’s a boy. His voice is deep, but still youthful. He’s crying. A girl, I attacked a girl.

The nurse sounds distressed. She says, I’m sorry Alex, but this is for your own good.

No! Not the needle, please don’t—

My hearing suddenly goes back to normal and I wince. I wish I hadn’t been so curious.

Alla… Mum whispers. I snap my attention back to her. She looks ashamed. I’m sorry, I should’ve been there.

I shrug my left shoulder. Shrugging the right one is uncomfortable and sore, so lets avoid that.

Mum opens her mouth to say something else just as another nurse comes in to do what I presume are the ‘final checks.’ She whispers to the other nurse for a moment. They nod to each other. I glare at them both. I don’t like nurses much at the moment. The one with the choppy blonde hair and plump face comes over to me.

If these scans go okay, then you can go home. She says in a high voice. Like I didn’t already know that. She rolls my bed out of the ward and into a yellow-painted corridor. Not a nice yellow, a sickly yellow. Figures.

Doctor Cayne is a good guy, he has a knack for dealing with problems like yours, she says. She rolls me down the hallway.

Oh. I don’t smile at her. Why is she telling me this? Is she hinting at something? Problems like yours . . . Dog bites? The nurse turns to mum. Maybe you should wait—

No! I interrupt. I grip mums hand tightly. It’s childish to want her to stay. I know that. I’m still dazed from just waking up after a month, and I’m being pushed towards who-knows-where to do who-knows-what.

Yeah, nice excuses. A young male voice says in my mind. I sigh. I wish I was strong like the people in books. If this happened to them, they would just act brave and go on with their totally awesome lives with their totally awesome families in a totally awesome and selfless way. Maybe even with a backflip thrown in there somewhere.

I’ve always wanted to be like them. But my life is too mainstream for that. Mainstream and boring. Nothing ever changes.

The nurse hesitates a moment. She shrugs so I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. Okay, you can come.

The nurse pushes me into an eerie-blue glowing room. The light blinds me for a moment. My eyes adjust just in time to see the skinny young nurse coming towards me. I resist the urge to wiggle away. She approaches my bed with a syringe full of clearish liquid. How am I ever going to get a tattoo if I’m afraid of needles? I grit my teeth and my eyes get blurry trying to follow the path of the needle and look away from it at the same time. I tense up, and the nurse gently scolds me. Apparently I can break the needle if I do that.

Oh, what a shame that would be.

I relax rather reluctantly, and almost straight away the nurse plunges the needle into my upper arm. I feel the sharp stinging jab and I immediately feel sleepy. I’m still aware of holding tightly to mum’s hand though. It feels like the only thing that tethers me to the ground as I float, drifting in the space between sleep and awakeness.

*     *     *

CHAPTER ONE

I’m falling. My head hits the window of my mum’s cherry red four-wheel drive. Ow. I rub it and yawn. We just went over a speed bump.

Sorry, mum apologizes. She quickly glances at me and turns her attention back to the road. I was going to let you sleep until we got back home.

Home? I think.

Home? I repeat out loud.

Yes. You slept all night. You’re going home, getting changed, then I am taking you to school.

You have got to be kidding me. I wake up from a month-long coma, find out that I had a permanent—and ugly—scar on my neck, and she’s sending me to school?

This is so unfair. Like, really. School?!

My mum can easily read people. She takes one look at my face and says, Yes, school. You’ve already missed a lot of it.

I gape at her. A little sympathy would be nice.

But do you need it? The same voice again: A boys’. I shake my head to clear it.

But— I start to protest.

No buts, mum says firmly. The doctor confirmed that you are okay enough to go back to school, and that is exactly where you’re going.

Time for a different approach.

What about my scar?

I try for that sympathy.

Nobody will see it.

Unfortunately, she’s on my right. I can’t turn and look at her properly.

"Mum. It’s like five inches!" I argue. I lean backwards instead, and look at my reflection in the passenger side mirror. A pale girl stares back. I shudder.

The other kids won’t care. They’ll probably think it’s cool or something.

"Mum!’

What? She glances over at me again. You’re going back to school and that’s final.

I huff and cross my arms. I stare angrily out the window. Once my mum has decided on something, you usually can’t get her to change her mind. She’s very stubborn. In that way, we’re alike.

I stare dejectedly out the window and mutter about the unfairness of the world under my breath until we reach home. I live on Sarah Road in Glenwood, Queensland. We’re close to a state forest, but I never go in there. It’s the creepiest thing ever. There have been rumours, and sometimes, I can swear I hear things. All the roads around here are made of dirt, and we have to rely on the rain to be our water supply.

The first rays of sunlight are just beginning to show over the horizon. Although thick grey rain-clouds are fast covering them.

Great, I think. I open the car door as far as it goes and get out. Now it’s gonna rain. At least it matches my mood.

I’m right, like usual. In the short time it takes me to get from the car and halfway up the stairs, it starts bucketing down. Drenching me in a matter of seconds. Great.

The worst thing about this is my house has a lot of stairs. They wind around the front white wall, then around the side of the house and you enter there. Eugh. It looks awesome, but it’s a pain in the butt in the rain because it’s not covered.

I storm up the remaining steps as loud as I can, cross the balcony—it has all these cute little flowers in pots, it’s very pretty when it isn’t raining—and slam the door behind me. When I’m angry, I like to make big bangs.

I’m pretty sure my mum says something as she follows me inside. Only with a slight twinge of guilt, I ignore her.

It’s quite hard to get lost in my house. The first thing you see when you come inside is the weirdly long hallway. The only hallway. It has those embarrassing photos of when I was younger you see in every household. Along with framed squiggles I did in kindergarten and various artworks mum has painted. Practically everything except a photo of my father.

Directly to the left is our living room. It has really comfy brown couches that nearly swallow you when you sit in them, and an awesome flat-screen TV. The window looks out over the driveway and the mango tree in the front yard which is great for climbing on. Although since I broke my arm doing just that, mum has forbidden me to climb it.

Like that stops me.

Directly to the right is our kitchen. Mum heads there straight away. She sits down on a bar stool at the little marble island that occupies the middle of it. She opens her mouth as if she’s going to say something. I don’t want to talk to her. Not now, anyway.

I stomp across the polished wooden floors. It’s hard not to slip on these, especially when your feet are wet. Two steps in the direction of my room, I slip and fall to my hands and knees. I straighten up. I can literally feel mum smirking at my back. A growl escapes my lips. I realise what I’m doing and stop. Where did that come from?

Blushing red in my face, I smooth out the red shirt I’m wearing—wait, so where did this come from?—and stomp down the rest of the hallway just to keep a little of my dignity.

Down the hallway is my room. It’s situated right at the end of the hall to the left, so, like the loungeroom, it gives me a perfect view of the happenings of our driveway. I like that. Nothing gets past me this way.

I quite like my room, too. Actually, that’s an understatement. I love my room. When we first moved in, mum said I could do anything to the room to make it feel mine. So I painted the walls black, even though she said it would look horrible. I like it dark, like a bat. Or a vampire. It turned out pretty well. On the right wall, I hung an antiquely beautiful gilded mirror. Around that, I—all by myself—painted a—pretty good, I must admit—picture of my favourite animal: the sleek wolf.

I painted the wolf completely silver, which has been my favourite colour since I was like, really young. The only thing that isn’t silver is the eye. Where the eye’s supposed to be, I put in a fake ruby. It made it look kind of evil, but I like it anyway.

The colour scheme is supposed to be black and silver. It makes my room look sophisticated and mysterious.

Ha.

Against the wall with the window, my desk lays in a pool of dark light. It’s made out of some kind of shiny dark wood. On it there’s a clay pencil-holder that I made in art class in grade eight, some statuettes of running wolves, a flashing silver alarm clock, and my leather-bound diary… which is getting soaked by the rain coming through the window.

I make a pathetic little squeak of terror, hastily sprint over to my window, and pull it shut. I pick up my diary and cradle it against my chest. It’s the one place I can write all my feelings and not feel exposed. Sometimes I act like my diary is a real person, and I’m sending a letter to them. Stupid, maybe, but it makes me feel less alone.

The cover is made if several different scraps of leather that I’ve collected over the years and stuck on with glue. I plonk down on my double bed. It’s situated right in the middle of my room like an island which means I can roll off it in any direction. Fun. I flip my diary carefully open.

The pages are made to look yellow and old, and they crinkle when I turn them. I like that sound. As I flip to a blank page to write in, snippets of previous entries catch my eye: My father is gone; He is actually gone; I don’t know what to do, what I’ve done to make him go; Got a new dog; called him Dingo cause he looks like one; school started again; nobody knows I exist; teacher didn’t call my name in form today; my bag was stolen; found hanging from the rafters; nobody wished me happy birthday; I want my daddy back Diary; I am alone.

Emotions threaten to strangle me. They often pull me under, like a riptide in an ocean. I glance down at the cuts spanning a few centimetres across the underside of my right arm. Once, I nearly drowned in my emotions. I still have the scars. Now, I keep my head stubbornly above the water. I finally find a blank page. I quickly grab a blue pen off my desk and begin to write:

Dear Diary.

Got home from the hospital today. I’ve been in a coma for a month! It’s true, my alarm clock says June 3rd. The last entry in here says May 6th. I’m trying not to show it, but that really freaked me Diary. Imagine, lying stone cold, unmoving in a hospital bed for a month. I feel so helpless. Apparently I was bitten. Bitten by some sort of dog.

My eyes helplessly fall to the small bookshelf next to my desk, which is filled with stories of Lycanthropes; Werewolves.

You know, like in those books I read? I know it’s not real though. Like my chances of finding someone I can call a friend. One month away from school and nobody probably even noticed I was gone, including the teachers. Oh wait. I’m probably being too hard on them. They didn’t even notice when I was there.

Sigh. I have this ugly scar that is five inches long and permanent.

I scribble a thick, black line under the word, ‘permanent.’

If the others didn’t notice me before, they sure will now. Well, I better go prepare for my death.

Bye Diary.

I close the book with a small thump and slip it under my pillows. I sigh, suddenly depressed.

I dramatically drag my feet as I walk over to my closet (it’s opposite to my desk) and fling open the double doors. Right in front of me is my school uniform, hanging on maroon coat hangers. I take them down. The t-shirt has a massive hole in the middle of it. I groan. How did that happen? And why did it happen now?

Mum! I call, even though I’m going to her, not the other way around.

Yes dear? You haven’t come to argue about going back to school have you? She looks up from her magazine, spread over the little marble island, and sips something from a cracked white mug.

No, I say grumpily. I hold up the t-shirt for her inspection.

What have you done? She sets the mug down and takes the t-shirt off me for further inspection.

What have I done? Yes, because I chewed a massive hole in my shirt so I won’t have to go to school.

Actually, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Do t-shirts give you indigestion?

Hmm. I’ll just write you a note. Go have a shower and put something else on. You’re still going to school

Great. Another thing that would get the other people’s attention. It would probably be good if I got a little attention, like, just enough that the teachers knew I was there, and I made some friends, but I had gotten used to being ignored, avoided, and forgotten. Like when you hiss at sunlight after being safe in the dark. I’ve done that a few times. Like that time when mum turned on my light in the morning to wake me up. I hissed at her. Now every time she comes in in the morning, she carries one of those spray bottles, and if I hiss at her, she squirts me and says, bad cat.

That’s my mum’s sense of humour.

Go have a shower! She repeats, picking her mug back up and flipping the page of her magazine.

I sigh, turn on my heel, and head back to my room, hunching over to show mum that I’m sad. Dingo follows me. Dingo. He looks exactly like one. He couldn’t be more different in personality.

I stop when I reach my room. I bend down on one knee to pat his head. His tongue lolls out and he stares at me with his huge brown puppy dog eyes.

Hey, I whisper. I scratch behind his ears where he likes it. Well, I guess all dogs do.

Dingo responds to my greeting with a loud bark and sprints back down the hallway, skidding on the wooden floors. He runs into the frame of the loungeroom door and stumbles into the kitchen.

I shake my head. Dummy. I go into my room to grab my school skirt—yeah, they make us wear these grey and red and white checkered skirts—off the bed where I threw them before. I sling it over my arm and turn back to my closet.

I don’t actually have many clothes. I know all girls say that, but I really don’t. A few pairs of old jeans, a few t-shirts, a couple of hoodies, a scuffed pair of old sneakers, and a pair of black leather school shoes.

Notice there are no other skirts in that description.

I grab a plain white button-up shirt off its coat hanger. It also has a hole, near the bottom, but it’s tiny, and all my shirts probably have one, so eh.

I walk out of my room. I close the door behind me as I go. I feel weird leaving it open. I head to the bathroom. It isn’t that far from my room. Across the hall and two doors to the right.

My bathroom’s pretty modern-looking. Emphasis on ‘looking.’ The lock on the door? It’s gold, but like the front door, it takes a certain push-and-twist manoeuvre to open it.

And the sink, the ceramic sink under the glass mirror?

Sounds pretty, right?

Wrong.

The sink has this massive crack in it that you can’t see because it’s underneath. It leaks all over the pearl-sheen tiled floor. And I’m pretty sure this mirror is lopsided.

Oh, and the shower? The water pipes make this high screeching sound every time you turn on the hot water, which makes the neighbours complain.

A lot.

Which is funny, because the closest neighbours we have are miles away.

I struggle with the lock on the door for a moment. When I am sure the stupid thing is locked, I glance at the mirror.

I do a double-take. I lean over the sink to get as close to the mirror as possible, my breath fogging up the glass.

I was right. It hadn’t been the little ray of sunshine from the open window glinting off the reflective glass. There was actually a thin, gold ring around my blue iris…

My heart leaps. It settles back into its place when my brain kicks in and says, it’s not real.

I relax, and laugh. No, it can’t be real. It’s unnatural. Things like that don’t happen in real life.

Only in books.

I keep laughing. It sounds too fake, too forced. I sling my clothes over the towel rack and get undressed. After being stuck motionless at a hospital for a month, running water sounds like the best thing right now.

I slide the glass door open and step into the shower. I turn the hot tap on first, and the pipes squeal. It makes me wince and pray Mr and Mrs next door neighbour are out doing their grocery shopping.

The squealing stops after a bit. That makes it easier for me to relax under the hot water. The feel of soap is totally awesome. I’m never taking soap for granted ever again.

I quickly wash my hair—which was probably a bad idea since my hair is curly and goes into stubborn-knot-mode when wet therefore making it hard to brush, but really, I couldn’t not have—and I step out of the shower. I drip water all over the tiles. Honestly, I don’t really care right now. It will dry. Sometime.

I grab a towel off the white towel rack in the corner and dry myself. I wrap it around my hair on top of my head like only girls know how to do, and pull on my clothes.

I feel completely refreshed. Better than I have in a month.

Ha.

I take the towel off my head and start running a brush through my hair. Although I avoid looking at the mirror in case I start hallucinating again.

Allarose! Did you hear me?

No?

I hear my mum sigh on the other side of the door. We have a guest.

Oh, okay. I’ll be out in a minute.

No, now!

This time, I sigh. I guess mum takes that as a yes, because I hear her footsteps receding away from the door.

I finish brushing my hair and let the barely-dry curls hang down my back. I’m pretty sure it reaches my midsection. I’m not sure though, and I don’t want to look in the mirror, so I can’t check.

I don’t bother taking the time to put my hair up. After all, nobody is going to notice it.

I do the little push-and-twist manoeuvre to let myself out of the bathroom and quickly dodge into my bedroom to grab my school shoes. After a cursory sniff, I pull on a pair of white ankle socks, and slip the shoes on over the top. I pause at the door of my bedroom, and look at myself sideways in the mirror.

From here, I can’t see my eyes that well, so I relax a little and allow myself to scrutinise the rest of my body. I’m medium-sized, neither short nor tall. The skirt hides the shape of my legs, but the button-up shirt doesn’t hide the curves there. I don’t look that bad. In fact, I might actually look decent.

I give myself a ‘not bad’ look in the mirror.

I wonder who’s here, I think to myself. I slowly creep down the hallway. We don’t usually have people over, unless it’s someone looking at mums’ artworks. The ones that are for sale lean against the wall looking out over the driveway in the loungeroom. Whenever people come to look at them, I hole up in my room and refuse to come out until I’ve watched them leave through my window. I’m shy like that. I lean against the doorframe to said loungeroom and peer into the room.

Mum has her back to the door, and therefore, to