Through the Fire

[:::: Authors Note ::::]

As a species we are genetically dispositioned to be looking for the partners that are the best match to us. We look for the healthiest, fittest, best-looking mate that we can find. The concept is that health and vitality are linked to looks, which when it comes to mating, has the greatest chance of producing the best offspring, ...or something like that.

Now, I am not the greatest looking man in the world. If you met me, you would think I am fit, tall and slim, but not someone you would look at twice. My wife on the other hand, well I think I am punching well above my weight. She is as beautiful today as the day we met over twenty-four years ago and she is ten times more talented than I am. I know that when it comes to us, I am the lucky one.

The concept of this story is a melding of the drive to find good genetics and the pain of not being the best-looking person (or the least good-looking person in the room). Much like a beauty and the beast style tale, I created this story as a bit of a look into the emotions of how one with low self-worth view's 'self'.

This story is broken into four parts, so keep an eye out for each as they get posted.

Last, a big shout out to my editing team, you guys rock!

I hope you enjoy, 'Through the Fire'.

[:::: Through the Fire - Part 1 ::::]

[:::: 1 ::::]

Everything was in darkness, the swirling clouds billowed around us with menacing promise. Our surrounds were hard, but it was better than the alternative. From above us water cascaded over our prone forms as we huddled, hiding. While we waited, the two of us tried to contain our emotions. While it wasn't said, neither of us thought we would survive this night.

I don't think I had ever been so scared, and knowing there was nothing we could do, I pulled his arm around me and tried to hold in my tears. I wanted to be brave until the end.

For long moments, we stayed still, hardly moving, hardly breathing, the falling water the dominant sound around us as we tried to hide from the danger.

Then the light appeared, at first it was fleeting, flicking in and out, casting long shadows before it disappeared, and we were again plunged into darkness. I dared to open my eyes and through the dimness that now permeated the room, I could see his arm was wrapped around me, strong and firm. I could see it was smudged with grime caused in our mad dash to try and find safety, however, each hair on his arm stood on end in alert as we knew we could not escape.

Later I cried out a moment, then I felt him pull me closer and again tell me it was going to be alright.

Once again, the light came, this time stronger, illuminating the room and we both tightened our grips on each other. This time we looked at the light source as it flickered through the gloom, its orange glow illuminating towels and shampoo, bath toys and toothbrushes.

"Dad?" I sobbed.

"Shhh Theo," he told me pulling me even tighter against him as again the light entered the room, this time forcefully. "It's going to be alright, let me protect you."

This time the light stayed with us, and within moments the room was brilliantly lit, despite no power in the house. The room was illuminated as if every light was on throughout the house and focused on us. The two of us huddled down into the bathtub filled with water as he tried to cover me, and the light began to dance on the bathroom vanity in front of us.

The crackle of flames quickly surrounded us, and the heat, which moments ago was annoying suddenly became unbearable. The scream when it came was loud in my ears and I quickly came to understand it was me screaming, not Dad. The water, which had initially offered us its protection, had quickly evaporated in the heat of the flame, now turning to steam as the bath cracked and liquid spilled onto the floor evaporating almost instantly. The steam was now causing almost as much trouble to our bodies as the flames themselves.

Once the water had evaporated, my clothes ignited, and my skin was blistering as the light in the room around us grew. But even as I burned Dad tried to protect me. I could smell us cooking and Dad was groaning. He cried out my mother's name. He prayed that he could save me, using his body to try and shelter mine even as we both were burned like we were inside an oven.

Everything in my world was pain, everything hurt and there was not a shadow left in the room as everything began to come apart and drown us in the light of flame that would forever change not just us, but so many lives by those we left behind.

[:::: 2 ::::]

For long moments, we stood there looking at each other, wondering why, but for different reasons.

"Seriously Brian. How could you not tell we were just keeping time," Ava scolded me like I was the dumbest person on the planet. Then, in retrospect, I wondered if perhaps I was that dumb.

I shrugged, "I thought we were moving towards something."

"Stupid," she scolded me. "If we were doing that, wouldn't you think we would have slept together? I mean four months Brian; four months, I've been putting up with your shit."

"My shit..." I stopped, suddenly tired and feeling very over being taken for granted. "Ava, why are you here?"

I had thought that Ava and I had been in a relationship. We'd now known each other four months and she had been my girlfriend for the past three; we met through one of my workmates girlfriends at a weekend get together. We had been out a number of times, she had managed to bring me out of my shell a little, and while we hadn't slept together yet, there had been some make out sessions. I thought it would have only been a matter of time before progressing to the next level. This breakup conversation was not what I was expecting.

"I came to get my stuff," she told me, arms now crossed over her chest as she looked up at me with scorn.

"What stuff," I replied gruffly, now getting pissed at her. She had ghosted me for the past week, and I was already annoyed at her when she sent me a text earlier explaining she would come to my place tonight but offering no other information.

Again, in retrospect, stupidly, I thought we would have dinner together, talk about our weeks and she would explain why she had been avoiding me when I thought we had been building a relationship.

My riposte about her 'stuff' at least had her blushing at my response, though there was more menace in her stance than regret. At twenty-four, Ava was a slightly overweight blonde, with brown eyes and pudgy hands. She had an attractive face and I will admit her cleavage drew my gaze more than once. I had thought she was attractive. I had also assumed we got along well enough, and that would grow into something more, or so I thought until a few minutes earlier when I opened the door to see a look of disdain on her face.

"My bag and things, that stuff," she said cryptically. She wanted something I had, but even in the process of breaking up with me was trying to hide her intention to get what she wanted without telling me what it was. Then the light bulb went off in my head.

"Wait here," I told her and without another word, I turned and walked into my bedroom.

I came back a moment later, throwing a pink bag at her feet. It was a bag she brought around a few weeks earlier when she talked about staying the night but never did.

"Go now," I ordered her tersely as she opened the zip of her bag, rummaging through it as if looking for something in particular.

"Where is it?" she said sharply, gazing at me with a look that was a single facial muscle short of a sneer.

"Where is what?" I responded playing ignorant.

"The bangle," she said simply.

"Oh, you mean this," I replied, displaying an ornate bangle, that I bought her last month, twirling it around my middle finger. It was worth about a hundred and fifty dollars. Ava saw it and fell in love with it, so trying to impress my new girlfriend I bought it for her. She left it here last time she visited and now she obviously wanted it back but not me.

"That's it, give it to me Brian and I will be out of your life," she told me with a grimace, knowing that I had what she wanted.

"Nope," I said snidely. "This was for my girlfriend, which you are not. So go, leave my life, but the bangle stays with me."

"Fuck you Brian, its mine," she snarled back. "Seriously I don't know why I agreed to go out with you. You're a freak Brian, you hear that, a fucking freak and everyone told me I was a fool to go on one date with you, let alone several. The only thing that made it bearable was that you bought me things. Give me the bracelet, Crispy."

While it annoyed me to hear her say everyone called me a fool, which I knew was a lie, the sudden use of that nickname enraged me. It was a nasty taunt from my childhood that had dogged my heels for years, thanks to the disfigurement that covered over half my large six-foot-four burly body. Ava had never called me that before, but it told me she had been talking to people I didn't like.

"Get out," I hissed in a low and menacing voice. "Get out of my house, and never, ever, speak to me ever again."

She did the opposite of what I wanted, putting her hands on her wide hips and laughed as she looked up at me. "Why Crispy? Did I hit a sore spot?" she snarled at me. "Or how about the fact that for the past two weeks, I have been in bed with Brian DuMont. He's so into laughing about everything he takes from you Crispy. Your women, and even your pride. He's everything you're not. He's handsome, has a body like a Greek god and his endowment, it..."

She didn't get to finish her statement.

Brian DuMont and I met back in primary school. He was a French transfer student who joined our school in third grade, his father having moved to Australia for work. He had an accent and spoke multiple languages including English, French and German. His family had money and he had the 'popular' gene.

By contrast, I was everything he wasn't. I was not a small kid, actually I was one of the largest in the school, while Brian DuMont was the smallest boy in his class. He hated me from the first moment he laid eyes on me. He coined the name 'Crispy' within a week of joining school. The nickname coming from the hideous burn scars that even still today cover most of my body. That includes both my arms and a good portion of the left side of my face that can be easily seen by anyone.

Brian DuMont hated that he shared the same first name as someone who looked like me and was constantly making it his mission in life to humiliate me as much as possible, taking any opportunity he could to screw me over. Stealing my chubby girlfriend, wasn't above him. Ava didn't know it, but she'd be out of his bed and single within hours of leaving here today. Once she told him how I'd thrown her out, her usefulness to the French prick would be complete.

Now I am against violence, but before Ava could finish her sentence, I grabbed her by the arm and forcibly moved her out the front door of my house. That was followed a moment later by her pink bag which thumped heavily against her pink Nissan Micra parked on my driveway. While she was standing there in shock, I slammed the front door shut, not caring what she did next and walked into the kitchen, dumping the desired bracelet into the bin and then in a moment of inspiration, scraped my raw, left over chicken scraps over the top of it.

Stalking the few steps to the fridge, I grabbed and cracked a beer, drinking the thing in almost a single pull. Then let out an angry belch to which of course no one replied.

With the steam I was sure was pouring out my ears right now, I likely could have cooked dinner there and then had the human body the capability to turn emotion into energy. It wasn't just that I was annoyed that I had been preparing dinner for two or that Ava was being a bitch. I knew she could be, so that hadn't really surprised me. It wasn't even that fucking Brian DuMont had again caused me grief. No, it was my life in general and the way the world treated me.

Never one to waste good food, I cooked while I fumed, and then ate dinner. I have to admit though, I almost pushed my knife and fork through my food and into the ceramic of the plate several times. I drank another beer before stomping up my hallway to the shower like a little kid being told off by a parent. I knew I was acting childish, but I could easily justify my behaviour to myself. As I raged, I stopped myself just short of damaging my house. I stripped, and entering the shower noticed I was still a little dirty from the day's work.

I worked as a labourer for a local landscaping company. It was good honest work and being a bigger guy, I had the strength to do it well. For the most part the guys I worked with ignored my scars and disfigurement, and when my looks did come up, they were about the only group of people that never used it as an excuse to treat me like a freak. This was how I knew that Ava was bullshitting me about the 'fool' comment, since I met her through these guys and I knew they had my back.

One time, my boss had hired a guy that must have known DuMont and he kept calling me Crispy all day, laughing and trying to get everyone else to join in. He didn't return the next day. I learnt he was let go when the team took their complaints to the boss.

After a few minutes of just letting the hot water pour over me as I continued to fume, I grabbed my shower gel and almost twisted the safety cap off the bottle along with the plastic neck I was still so annoyed. I learnt in the years after my skin grafts that failure to keep myself clean resulted in skin infections. I was much more susceptible to infections than normal people, so soap, shower gel and keeping clean was a must.

Stepping out of the shower and drying off, I paused to inspect myself in the mirror. Overall, I was a tall barrel-chested guy. I had long brown hair that came down past my shoulders. On the job site I tied my hair into a ponytail, however outside of work I used it to cover my face. The first of my patchwork of scars, was visible a little to the left side of my forehead and then covered two thirds of my left eye, cutting down over my cheek and over the left side of my mouth in a fairly straight line before finally moving down over my chin and neck. My left ear had been reconstructed, but was a mockery of my original ear, so I kept my hair over it most of the time.

My chest and torso were the least scarred, only my left pectoral was marked by the discoloration that comes with skin grafts. However over ninety percent of my back was a patchwork of scars, skin grafts and burn discolorations where my skin never properly healed itself.

My left arm, from shoulder to wrist looked like it was from a horror movie; as I grew and hit puberty, the skin couldn't stretch like that of a usual adolescent and as such my left arm was more purple veins through translucent skin than a normal looking healthy arm. My right arm, with much lighter scarring, still showed the ordeal I had been through.

Even my backside had not been spared, following the hideous pattern of my back and continuing down both of my legs. Though I was fit and muscled, anyone who saw me naked outside of a medical setting would likely run screaming from the room. Once I became a teenager, for a time, I refused to be seen by anyone, including my family without a long-sleeved shirt or long pants on.

By now you're wondering, how did the scarring happen, how was it that I ended up with such massive burns to the majority of my body that Brian DuMont used to bully me, women like Ava to taunt me and more than one child to run screaming in tears when they saw me?

Well, when I was five years old, my parents had been out for dinner with friends and the sixteen-year-old girl next door, Tilly, was charged with looking after my three-year-old sister, Harper, and me.

The fire started out in the kitchen, apparently a faulty oven that hadn't shut off correctly and by the time that the smoke alarm went off, Tilly who was watching TV, could do almost nothing.

She managed to get to my room and drag my sleeping body out the door, while coughing and wheezing from the smoke. But by the time she turned to go back in and get Harper the house was well ablaze. Still half asleep and worried for my little sister, I ran back into the house to get Harper, ignoring Tillys cries, not truly understanding the danger I was in.

When the firefighters arrived and got into the house with a sobbing Tilly being held back from running in after us by neighbours, they found me hunched over Harper in the corner of her room with flames crawling up the walls. My clothes were on fire as was over half my body as I wrapped myself around my sister to try and protect her from the flames. Harpers arm that wasn't covered by my body was also on fire and we were both screaming despite smoke choking our lungs.

To this day I cannot praise those firefighters enough, brave men that risked their lives to save us. If they would have been a few minutes later, neither Harper nor I would have made it. Both of us were carried out and rushed to a hospital where after immediate emergency burns treatment to stop further damage, I was kept in an induced coma for almost ten days while they worked to save my life. When I woke up, I had no idea what had happened, only that I was a child whose body itched, and I couldn't move. As it was, I spent almost ten months inside a sterile burns tent, as they worked to keep my skin alive. My only contact with other people were my doctors and my parents, all who had to wear outfits that looked a lot like hazmat suits from the movies, because they were so worried about infection.

Harper had third degree burns along her right arm along with significant scarring. However, fortunately, she wouldn't have to endure the painful skin grafts that I required for the areas of my body where the skin was too damaged to survive. To this day, Harper is my most adamant supporter. To her I am her hero, the one that saved her from the burning house using my body to protect her. Throughout school, she was suspended five times due to starting fights with anyone she heard call me that dreaded nickname. Three times she was sent home for getting physical with Brian DuMont.

As for me, the surgeons did an amazing job with what they had to work with. After seven surgeries I had an almost normal looking face, even if I looked a little more like Frankenstein's monster than your average person.

For the first year after they released me from hospital I refused to go anywhere outside the house, throwing a tantrum any time Mum or Dad told me we were going out. But eventually with Harper's assistance they got me to go to places. I struggled, being openly gawked at. Parents gasped and I am sure I made my share of babies' cry as they saw the child with horrific burns.

I started school a couple of years late. In fact, I started the same year that Harper did and until high school we were in the same class. She was my best friend, my confidant and protector even though I was easily twice as large as the rest of the kids in my grade and as big as the kids' years ahead of us. Looking back, I know, if it wasn't for my little sister, I think I would have just stayed home and never learnt to read or write.

As I moved into high-school and puberty, I grew, to be the biggest of the kids in any grade. Dad's family had a long line of men who were big, fit, physical men, and very manly looking. Yes, the women were tall, but were very graceful. I had the genetics, so without any effort I started bulking up. As I grew, I quickly overtook most of my bullies who were years ahead of me, so they started teasing me behind my back. However, once they realised that I was a gentle giant it started again. I took it week after week. I knew I was an ugly beast, so I expected it. I kept to myself, did my schoolwork, and rarely spoke to anyone outside of Harper.