Chapter 1
The Firethrower
It's not like I wanted any of it, but stuff always comes along anyway. Some days strange things happen, and they don't come stranger than what happened to me. You can ask for something exciting to happen in life, but you're just complaining - really, you're happy with life how it is. Often, you just complain because you can - and when something really strange happens, you wish it never did - then you start complaining about that.
Do you like your mum? Most people say they hate them, but they don't mean it. Me? I wouldn't say I like her. Don't get me wrong, I love her lots, but sometimes I just wish she'd shut up and leave me alone. She treats me like an incredibly delicate object, one that might just break into pieces if the come into contact with the outsite world. I caught cancer when I was little, see, and she's never been the same since - even though I'm much better. She takes me for check-ups every three months, and, to be honest, it's a bit much.
I didn't tell anyone at school about that. Sometimes I want to - it'd shut them up for a bit. They start whining about some stupid spot on their lip or their ears being too big, and I want to thrust a picture of my death's-door self in their face and say 'try having cancer'.
Do you ever get that feeling? Y'know, when everyone's picking on you and you want to fall backwards off your chair and crack your skull open just to make them feel sorry? I get that a lot, but I've never done it.
Anyway, my school situation went from bad to worse on the fifth of October. The school I don't go to anymore, not that I care too much. The thing I do care about is that I've got a criminal record for setting fire to the lower-school's girls' toilets.
A criminal record for something I never did.
It was one of those afternoons. You know the sort - the sun is blazing extra forcefully and bathing the school in a boiling white light that turns every face pink. The clouds were absent despite the odd stratos drift far and between, all fleeing from the great white dish that was the sun. It was the sort of atmosphere that makes your brain evaporate inside your head, so that any information that goes through an earhole just lingers, unstored. It was at the stage where even the girls who's lives revolved around getting a tan were complaining.
Maths and too-hot school days don't mix very well.
So I was listening to my dumbo teacher twittering on about something technical that probably wasn't technical at all, and I noticed something strange - a cat.
With violet eyes.
Stood on it's hind legs outside.
Waving.
At me.
So my mind wandered far away, no longer in the classroom, but over with the cat that was lacking skills in being a cat. Then I noticed something even stranger, something I wouldn't have spotted if the light hadn't been shining so brightly.
The cat...had wings.
Transparent, shiny, butterfly wings that reflected great patches of light like panels of glass.
I shot out of my seat, startled, shaking my head. My hair was wet with sweat - and the cause of it wasn't entirely heat.
"Can I go to the toilet?" I said, far too loudly. Everyone was staring at me with raised eyebrows.
Perhaps my pale, sweat-dappled face made me look ill enough for Mrs Darl to let me, she'd normally drink sick rather than let someone miss even three minutes of maths.
"Ok," she said slowly, nodding. "Be quick, ok?"
I didn't wait to hear the last three words properly. I bolted out of the room and thundered down the polished corridors and wrenched open the toilet door, sticking my whole head under the tap and soaking myself. It was only lukewarm but it felt freezing compared to the sweltering heat around me. It must have been why I was halucinating.
I must have been halucinating.
When my head was totally sodden, I looked up.
And saw a tiny creature, no bigger than my hand.
And all I thought was 'Wake me up, this is mean'.
It was like a scorpian, but with no pincers, just long flowing tendrils that twined round each other contantly. Its corkscrew tail was flaring softly, and its tiny fangs were as thin as paper but much sharper. Its eyes glowed like bulbs inside its marble-sized head, like gemstones.
They were violet.
So, suddenly, for some odd, unknown reason, I knew that the 'cat' outside...
...was the same creature as the one here.
"Who are you?" I whispered, barely speaking.
The creature opened its tiny mouth to speak, and then-
FIRE! Great, scortching whirls of fiery scarlet, whirls of burning orange and glowing gold filled the room. Heat seared my skin and flew inches past my face. I ducked just in time, though my hair was singed by this outburst. However, the toilets weren't to get off so lightly. The curtains were ingited, so were the rolls of toilet paper, and the flames persisted in creeping down all the walls.
I looked up just in time to see a message in the flames, a few twists of black smoke that withered after a second.
LOST.
