Fevered

Chapter 1: Up in flames
A trickle of water dripped down her face and for some peculiar reason, she had a blood stigma smeared on her fair shirt. *
Police sirens circled the air on the 25th of December.
Let me start from the beginning. I am Detective Bader, in the middle of a crime scene..on Christmas Day.
A girl called Aaliyah Johnson had a group of friends, all of them quite rebellious in most human opinions and with Johnson being born into a draconian family, it is quite obvious she felt tempted to rebel against their rules.
They had a plan, being ended with arson, murder and a scene under the mistletoe.
Aaliyah and her friends decided to burn down Avon Cherish Bank, to have funds to pay for college, hoping that they would find the code to the vault falling with the ashes. It was approximately 3 AM after midnight, also known as the witching hour, and they crept with the bottle of flammable chemicals. Aaliyah slowly cascaded the liquid onto the tiled floor. Frantically, she bolted out of the building without a trace of her friends ensuing behind her....she searched around, carefully not being in contact with the flames. As she turned, a row of bodies lay about with burn marks patched around their skin.
Tears dashed down her blanched face. The girl never knew that she could cause multiple deaths in one day. The alarm went off, and then the sound of sirens blocked out the mayday alert. Did I mention it's the ' best time of the year? The blaze caused the glass of the window to shatter and hit her shoulder, creating seas of blood. She sat on the hard concrete with gushes of wind drying her face. She let out a bloodcurdling blare. The law enforcement arrived, aggressively handcuffing her wrists tightly. She resisted. Yellow tape surrounded the area. And pain struck the arsonist as they dragged her friends into a body bag. Whilst she was shoved into the vehicle, she had an agonising thought. How long would she be in prison? How long would she survive? Or how would the families of the dead teens survive? "How are you today? I'm Detective Bader'," I awkwardly mumbled as I glared at the young adolescent with a cheesy smile. "Not exactly the best Christmas for ya, eh," I chuckled while trying to make conversation on my way to arresting a 17-year-old.

26th of December. (Boxing Day)
𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 2: Behind Bars
I was situated in a small corner on an oxidised, harsh recliner. Ashes smeared across my face and down my slashed, ill-fitting garments. And as the coppers were speaking, I could hear the echo bounce off the walls and glide into my ears. With all these fire thoughts tiptoeing in the back of my mind, I screeched, " How long will I be in prison..., and in those very seconds, I heard two words that changed my life forever.
Life sentence.
Hours after...
So many questions surrounded me. " Why were you there!" " What was going through your mind!" "What time did you and your friends break in!" " Did anyone pour the liquid with you?!". I know I was a criminal, but I'd just lost my friends, family and home and even some blood. I just needed time to think. My life has been thrown away in one day and I couldn't change it. All I could think was, what was even the point of being born. Being in a cramped and enclosed space for the rest of your life without any decent food or a bathroom, not even a real bed! I know that not all people live a lavish life and this was my fault, but I couldn't help but think that I would've had a life if it wasn't for me cascading flammable liquids onto a tiled floor of a bank that I would be out with my friends and living my life as a teen. But my friends are dead and I'm trapped forever with real shoplifters and murderers.

P.O.V Martha Johnson (Aaliyah's Mum)
Chapter 3: Dear Johnson
My child is practically dead. I can't see her and I will never see her again. And I will never understand why she did what she did. I almost resorted to blaming my parenting. Was I too harsh on my children? Some questions shall be left mysterious and unanswered. But you still need to find your answers to those questions. Maybe I should've worked more to pay for my daughter to go to college. Or maybe I should've asked where she was going and talked to my daughter properly. Unknown questions will always be running through my head. Possibly for the rest of my life. I don't even feel bad that she's being punished for the crimes she committed. I just feel like I've failed my daughter. Failed parenting. I guess I never understand what made her think it's fine doing this. Those poor families must deeply hate and resent this family. I wish that time machines were real. So I could go back and tell my daughter to stop and we wouldn't be here. But she wouldn't have ever learned her lesson.