Ashes, Ashes

[Grand Moff Hissa]

((Misty Browder continued from Disc Rot))

Misty had not gotten over the thing in the library over the past week or so. Not at all. Not one bit. In fact, having time to turn the incident over and over in her head led her to stew in her anger and hurt, and that made her feel helpless over someone else having that much claim on her headspace and that in turn led her to take action.

The spark that set the flame was the discovery of an old copy of Firestarter on her brother's bookshelf. He didn't have a lot of messaged him on Facebook, he claimed no recollection of ever purchasing the novel, let alone reading it, and said he didn't care about it, she could have it and do whatever she wanted with it, burn it for all he cared.

"Perfect," Misty typed, "thanks."

She spent the rest of the night flipping through the book, scribbling frantically on the pages until each and every one held a sentence. These were things like "Fuck you, Ariana" and "You're a hypocrite, Ariana" and "Die in a fire, Ariana." Misty used a big black sharpie that bled through the pages, and she did front and back in huge text, so the result was that each page of the book became covered in a crisscrossed spiderwebbing of letters legible and not, fading and appearing as one flipped through the book. It took a good long while and the marker fumes gave her a headache and all the writing made her wrist cramp like she was doing a timed essay in English but that was part of the point. Proper reward required investment. She had to truly care, to put some of herself into her project to properly imbue it with resonance and power. Most of the words were somewhat illegible, but even then one was clear again and again: Ariana Ariana Ariana.

When midnight came, Misty snuck outside in one of her cloaks, a nice black flannel everyday sort of thing, hood up against the night, with the novel tucked under her left arm and a book of matches wedged between cover and first page. On the patio of their little apartment was a round black kettle grill that saw occasional use in the summer when her dad was actually in the right frame of mind to make steaks or burgers, but mostly sat unused. Misty flipped up the lid, cracked the spine of the book, laid it on the grill so its pages splayed out towards the night sky (the moon was a boring mostly-full instead of something more appropriate but if you waited for every little thing to be right you'd never get around to actually hexing anyone), and then took a deep breath.

It took her three attempts to get a match to light, because matchbooks were tricky and she was nervous about singeing her fingertips, but finally she managed and touched the match to an edge of the paper and the flame leapt to the book and began to greedily devour it, turning pages brown and then black, ink still standing out shiny against the ruin. Misty watched, enthralled, right up until a faint breeze lifted up some of the ashes and carried them, still smoldering, off away from the patio and towards the bushes over by the entrance.

Misty felt her eyes widen, and slowly, quietly closed the lid of the grill again, only resisting slamming it because that would definitely wake her parents and get her busted while she was currently only probably totally fucked. She closed her eyes and saw the whole apartment complex going up in flames, people screaming and jumping out of the windows, firetrucks and sirens and those giant hoses and it would be all Ariana's fault, but none of that happened. The stray embers didn't ignite anything, and when five minutes later she opened the grill to peek at the remains of the book, she found a heap of still ash. She closed the grill once more, made a promise to herself to figure out how to clean it in the morning, and then went to bed, able once more to sleep untroubled by that fucking bitch who'd gotten her so wound up.

((Misty Browder continued in SPLAT!))