[Water. Running in streams and in slurries of rainwater, coursing down windows and filling his lungs. Dark and black and all-encompassing as the thing behind it, behind all of it.]
[The thing watching.]
[Coughing like water bubbling out from his lungs, and when he was smaller he put a light to hospital bedsheets and watch them erupt in sheeting curtains of red-orange. Watched it all dissolve into ash and charred wood, the paint mottling the walls as flakes of it peeled and fell away.]
[There's blood rushing in his ears, swooping in his gut with a sickening tingle.]
[He's on his hands and knees, and the lighter, the lighter - ]
no subject
[The thing watching.]
[Coughing like water bubbling out from his lungs, and when he was smaller he put a light to hospital bedsheets and watch them erupt in sheeting curtains of red-orange. Watched it all dissolve into ash and charred wood, the paint mottling the walls as flakes of it peeled and fell away.]
[There's blood rushing in his ears, swooping in his gut with a sickening tingle.]
[He's on his hands and knees, and the lighter, the lighter - ]
[He puts flame to wood.]
[And he watches the tree catch alight.]