While watching and dreaming were passive, cathartic kicks, I required more stimulation. I had to try fire for myself. Feel it with the skin of my own hands. See it living with my own eyes. So I decided to experiment, play with fire.
It was not easy to evade my housekeepers, my house’s security detail. But I could sometimes escape off into the edges of our estate, dash through the hedges and topiaries and find my way to the far end of our property, past the pool, where there was a cut between the perimeter fence and the pool house.
There, I would play controlled burns with matches I swiped from the kitchen and burn old school textbooks and books I had stolen from Mother’s library. I would stand still, wide-eyed, feeling all happy and mesmerized as the serrated teeth of small flames ate away at the crackling pages.
But I was caught on surveillance camera, and Father stalked and chased me through our house’s winding hallways, up the double staircase.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Panting heavily, Father kicked and punched me, dragged me by the leg and picked me up and flung me like a sack of potatoes into my room and lashed me several times with his snakeskin belt. His bright blue eyes like gentian petals in a moonlit pool. His upper lip staying stiff as bone as he beseeched, cursed and beat me.