Dear diary,
If there's one thing I remember from the night of August the eighth, it's the smell of the house. The heavy plume of melted paint and scorched wood.
I can't sleep with the sheets anymore. Memories have turned my room into it's own private nursery, with a toddler of flames clinging onto me for dear life when I'm under the covers to the point I break into a sweat. It feels so real I don't even know if I'm dreaming or if I'm not.
Ever since, I find myself waking up in the middle of the night, choking on clean air when it actually feels like the same thick smoke trying to clutch onto my throat with mindless fingers. I end up having to go down for a glass of water because of the taste of soot soaked on my tongue.
It was so easy. I heard from Dad that nearly half the house burned down within a matter of nine minutes.
That's it. Nine minutes.
Was the kid bored? All alone in his nursery, with nothing to do but trash the pretty dollhouse? Was it all just a harmless game?
But I have to admit, I don't miss the house. Isn't that weird? The place I've proudly called home the past sixteen and a half years of my life, where I grew up and forged my earliest memories and good times, yet, my heart doesn't even twitch at the thought of it.
Imagine that. Shelves of old photo albums and homemade videos, scars and scratches and stains marked on the furniture and the wall - a familiar place where I found comfort and love.
All lit and blazed by fire, with a single fiddle of the child's fingers, his play time with a shiny toy.
Nine minutes.
That's all it took.
.
.
.
Ryan wasn't even nine.
— Zara
