The Time Travel memoirs: Lost And So Alone

Nightingale Orphanage, London, December 19th, 1985 8:40pm

I had Zach drop me off to this time period, I told him it was important to me and not to ask questions, he obliged patting me on the back.
I stepped from the ship and my eyes locked onto the old building. The fire in my heart pulsed, ensnared by the sight.
The old orphanage was now left abandoned and boarded up. It was forgotten.
I could see the black scorch marks on the red brick.
I had left the orphanage in 1982 when I was only sixteen.
I had ran.
I had no home and no arrangements to go anywhere, I had kept even myself in the dark.
I couldn't stay, the people I was imprisoned with there... they were psychopaths.

Well some of them, I don't mean to sound judgmental or anything but some were absolutely despicably loony.
I visited the public library and fished out a newspaper, the courier.
The courier told me that the orphanage had burned down in 1983, oddly enough about a year after I left.
It was a boy, 18 years of age, his name was Tommy Steel.
This boy, I knew him, he was nothing more than a mental case.
I had once awoken from a deeply disturbing dream, to find Tommy standing over me, at that time he had towered over me, he had a lighter and he intended to burn me.
He only managed to singe my hair before I kicked him off me.

His profound love of fire was his demise. He had woken up in the dead of night and covered his room with lighter fluid he had stolen off a gentleman who had come to adopt with his wife. It was a bad habit he thought anyway as he soaked the hallways with the lighter fluid. Then the kitchens
Then the door frames
Then the cars outside
He had giggled to himself while imagining the harsh heat erupting out of the orphanage.
He had also flooded the kitchens with gas, which he thought to be pure genius.

Everyone was dead in the orphanage before the firemen managed to break through the smoking debris.
The dead were nothing more than bones now, some people, one or two, were still recognizable but not enough.
Dental records were used to identify the bones, there was nothing to work with, the bodies of the orphans and the carers were almost a mere shadow of their former selves.

Tommy Steel hadn't taken the incentive to do what I do before he escaped.
I crossed my name off the records, he had left the list alone, therefore his body wasn't found and no trace of unidentifiable bones, so the police looked for him.
I was glad the police found the records in a drawer, unsinged, made me think they were useful after all.
The records, not the police.

They managed to find Tommy and arrested him only a day later.
He didn't hide, his mind didn't tell him to, his mind told him he was free.
The flames in his heart warmed him, without guilt or remorse, his life was warm.
The police found him napping on a park bench, an old woman had seen him and called the police.
They had surrounded him, they had told him his rights and they took him, he just stared at the sky smiling.

They interviewed Tommy Steel conclusively.
It only took half an hour.
The psychiatrists talked to him as if he was a child, they told him everything was going to be okay.
Sergent Miller the deputy Sergent of the police head quarters silently disagreed.
He was asked questions in bulk, two of which he answered.
His only words were; "the burning was beautiful, and, the devil told me to do it."
His life had reached a conclusion as he rested his head on the walls of the padded cell that night.