Combust Part III: Sanctuary

I burn, I blaze wildly out of control. And I’d hoped, I’d hoped that the fire was your way of directing anger, hatred against me. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’m still on fire, though, and in need of sanctuary.
I need, I need help, freedom in the water as the sea surges against my body, steam rising into the black air that cuts against me, kissing my lips as the wind tears by.
I need to extinguish the flames, soak my feelings dry until I can combust no more.
But still, I can’t make it, I can’t make it. It’s too hot, burning in the blaze, red ice as it all crawls up my arms, into my pores and enters the bloodstream.
Sit. Sit down before you collapse, before you disintegrate. I want the ocean, and it’s within sight, over the railing, past your barriers of fire. And I need it. I need it now. Yet I can’t move.
The bench is wooden, flammable and soft to the touch as the fire slowly spreads from my body, clothes, and mind.
I’m almost there, though. Just over the railing, one jump, one hoist over this barrier that’s keeping me from the sea.
I’m on fire as I fall.

Combust Part II: Ring of Fire

I jumped the ring of fire on Tuesday. It was a Tuesday because we had ham sandwiches for lunch, like we always do on Tuesday. The whipped and trod-upon lettuce mournfully added between the meat and the bread, no dressing, in an attempt to cheer the meal up. It never quite works, though.
But still, I know I’m not lying, not crazy, not mad even though none of you have ever listened to me. Not even during the dead of the black night, when the flames curl round my heart and squeeze, the room ablaze in red, orange, yellow, and gold as the fire is fanned and fed by the fuel of nightmares. I die and I scream of a death by fire, over and over, and yet you cannot hear. You’re deaf, you’re deaf. You’re always deaf to my screams.
So I jumped, scrambled, scaled the scalding chains that you’d attached to me while I wasn’t looking, blinded by the fire in the corner of my eyes. I now no longer wear the gasoline that coated each inch of my skin.
Because the flames were coming, coming strong, without warning, without cause, as they creep, crawl, singe my body to black ashes. I’m turning into black ashes, gray sand, white smoke and charred bones. 
I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, and you don’t listen, don’t listen to my pleas for help.
So I jumped and somehow managed to make it out of the blaze.

Combust Part I: Flammable Trigger

I’m still in heat, caught in fire as the flames dance, dance upon the edge of the skin, tracing my name as one of the mad, over and over until it leaves scars dug deep into the flesh.
You can’t read it, though. You can’t read those words in fire, smell the smoke rising from the sunken craters my body is becoming, taste the fire that haunts me through the night.
I can read between the lines, almost dancing around the sparks and ashes that flare up from the ground. You think I’m lying, you think I’m crazy, while I know that you’re the one who’s gone over. You wander the house after the lights are turned down. All residents are locked in their rooms to verify our safety at night. I can hear you, though, as you clink, clank, clunk around the kitchen, muttering as you go about damned children, stuck-up brats, and all the liars you have to deal with in order to make a living.
I’m not a liar, though. I’m not a liar and I can see the flames, taste the fire as it grows and grows and grows, crawling along the surface and the edges of my room, my body, my mind as it tries to kill me with one giant spectacle of combustion.