PYROMANIAC

The walls were white, too white in fact, almost mocking me. The comatose pastiness challenged me, daring me to add colour to it. The milky bare sheets, the crisp eggshell curtains, the marbled floor; all drove me to the rearmost extent of sanity. I needed colour, I needed to see the evocative shade of red and shrill oranges. The colour of raw, seared wood; the deepest shade of asphalt-grey, and the lightest shade of the cloud after a torrent, yes those are colours. I needed to inhale the musky scent of smoke, throttling my lungs yet vitalizing them. 

I needed fire. 

The new ward nurse has hair clad in the deepest shade of crimson locks, the colour reminding me of an escape I hadn't experienced in ages. The blood-red waves swaying so eloquently ignited such fervent allure upon me, so tantalising, I knew I'd fail the tiny shred of lucidity I was grasping onto if I hadn't seen flames soon. I had to see the scarlet waves, raging with ardent ferocity and thriving to scorch in piercing crimson and orange flames. I needed to see it surge and cascade and vivify the lot. I needed to breathe in the musky redolence of smoke as it soars dramatically through the raging blazes and engulfing me in its warmth. I needed to breathe again.

The ward cleaner was a smoker, I could tell. His pudgy lips were brownish at the edges, slightly burnt fingers from cigarettes burns. I wanted to tell him how stunning his features were, how he always smelled so beautifully of raw smoke.

Sixty four days, that's how long it has been since I've inhaled the entrancing smoke of raw fire, since I've breathed life. I saw the opportunity at snatched it. I reached into his pocket, the cleaner's.

They say it's an illness, I call it escape. As I stand alone, accompanied by pallor, the thin matches tucked in my clammy hand, an irrepressible grin lift the edges of my chapped lips and my palpebral plummet in pleasure. I flick the match and imbibe the red. I drop it and watch it disperse. I see colour, I see it all around. I take in the bliss and watch it invigorate and illuminate everything in its trail, including myself. The passionate heat embraces me. The adrenaline through my bloodstream escalates, as the murky smoke intoxicates me. I haven't felt such pure euphoria since sixty four days earlier. An unadulterated ecstasy dawns over me. I welcome the bliss I had hankered for so long. The piercing shrieks around me don't matter, nothing else matters. All I see is red. All I hear is the raging of flames. All I smell is sizzles of vigour. All I taste, is fire.

Mother said I'd go to hell for what I did.
So forgive me lord for I have sinned.
But hell is a burning pit of fire they say,
Me, I wouldn't have it any other way.