Status: done.
Sixteen's Unsafe
signs that caution.
She’s having the dream again. Her body spins, arches, adjusts and relaxes. She used to sleep so peacefully; she used to sleep so silently.
She supposes it must be a nightmare, but she can’t deny the satisfaction it gives her, the times she revisits it nor the desires it has awakened.
It starts the same every time. She’s running through the forest as the fire chases her. With every glance behind her, she is filled with the joy of triumph that comes with knowing the wildfire is of her creation.
It ends in variation, but always with her consummation. Tonight is a night she doesn’t outrun the blaze. Her hair catches first, it ignites the back of her dress, and the tulle catches like paper. She is the vision of a deity sheathed in flame. She is Hestia incarnate. She is, in a word, beautiful.
In her favorite ending she escapes the flame. She stands on a cliff while below her California’s burning, burning to the ground. Just before she wakes up, she dives into the pool of flame that was California.
When she awakes there is the throb of lust in both the pit of her stomach and the place below her navel, accompanied by the yearning for it not to be a dream.
She figures this should worry her, that she should tell someone, but it’s not as if she wants to kill herself; she just likes the idea of fire. She’s simply fascinated by the cleansing power of fire; she just wants to be pure, reborn.
Her fascination lies only in dreams, she has no other access to feed her fantasy, nothing else to hold her obsession.
Her mother hasn’t realized how loudly she sleeps; the pills drown that out. If her father notices he forgets by morning. She sometimes wonders why they even had a child. They look doting from the outside; they put her in a big fancy school with the best educators. They give her anything she could want, nice clothes, a car on her sixteenth birthday, lavish parties, but they never give her much attention, they never remember her friends’ names.
It was always, “How’s you little friend, dear? Oh, what was her name? It was Alice, wasn’t it? Or Angela?” from her mother, and “Where were you this weekend?” or, “I’m glad you’re making new friends.” from her father. It didn’t matter if she’d known the girl for two days or ten years.
When she’d started dating, there was no in-depth mother or father-daughter discussion. The morning after her first date, she found a box of condoms and various Planned Parenthood pamphlets left outside her door, with a typed note on her mother’s stationary that said ‘Your father and I just want you to be safe. – Mom’
She knew if she told them about her dream, they’d just shove her and her problems off on some overpaid, overstuffed therapist, and say they’d ‘handled it.’ And it really wasn’t like she was suicidal; she didn’t need help.
When her parents were off to some formal event or fancy dinner, she’d sit in her room, lighting matches and watching the flame devour the wood, watching till it almost burnt her fingertips, leaving them pink and shiny with pain.
She sometimes hated California, and all the important people, with their important problems, that swallowed up her parents’ time. She sometimes thought the world would be a better place with out it. She sometimes thought about how she had the power to get rid of it, that it would just take one little match, and she had so many.
She supposes it must be a nightmare, but she can’t deny the satisfaction it gives her, the times she revisits it nor the desires it has awakened.
It starts the same every time. She’s running through the forest as the fire chases her. With every glance behind her, she is filled with the joy of triumph that comes with knowing the wildfire is of her creation.
It ends in variation, but always with her consummation. Tonight is a night she doesn’t outrun the blaze. Her hair catches first, it ignites the back of her dress, and the tulle catches like paper. She is the vision of a deity sheathed in flame. She is Hestia incarnate. She is, in a word, beautiful.
In her favorite ending she escapes the flame. She stands on a cliff while below her California’s burning, burning to the ground. Just before she wakes up, she dives into the pool of flame that was California.
When she awakes there is the throb of lust in both the pit of her stomach and the place below her navel, accompanied by the yearning for it not to be a dream.
She figures this should worry her, that she should tell someone, but it’s not as if she wants to kill herself; she just likes the idea of fire. She’s simply fascinated by the cleansing power of fire; she just wants to be pure, reborn.
Her fascination lies only in dreams, she has no other access to feed her fantasy, nothing else to hold her obsession.
Her mother hasn’t realized how loudly she sleeps; the pills drown that out. If her father notices he forgets by morning. She sometimes wonders why they even had a child. They look doting from the outside; they put her in a big fancy school with the best educators. They give her anything she could want, nice clothes, a car on her sixteenth birthday, lavish parties, but they never give her much attention, they never remember her friends’ names.
It was always, “How’s you little friend, dear? Oh, what was her name? It was Alice, wasn’t it? Or Angela?” from her mother, and “Where were you this weekend?” or, “I’m glad you’re making new friends.” from her father. It didn’t matter if she’d known the girl for two days or ten years.
When she’d started dating, there was no in-depth mother or father-daughter discussion. The morning after her first date, she found a box of condoms and various Planned Parenthood pamphlets left outside her door, with a typed note on her mother’s stationary that said ‘Your father and I just want you to be safe. – Mom’
She knew if she told them about her dream, they’d just shove her and her problems off on some overpaid, overstuffed therapist, and say they’d ‘handled it.’ And it really wasn’t like she was suicidal; she didn’t need help.
When her parents were off to some formal event or fancy dinner, she’d sit in her room, lighting matches and watching the flame devour the wood, watching till it almost burnt her fingertips, leaving them pink and shiny with pain.
She sometimes hated California, and all the important people, with their important problems, that swallowed up her parents’ time. She sometimes thought the world would be a better place with out it. She sometimes thought about how she had the power to get rid of it, that it would just take one little match, and she had so many.