Your True Tales
July 2003 – Page 18

Firestarter
by S.H.

Before I start, I would just like to state that no names, ages and such will be stated. I will however tell you that this did take place in New York the summer of '02. It took me a while to finally get up enough nerve to post this message, but my friend gave me permission and his trust in me not to reveal his name is more than enough.

That summer, he and I were in his pool with some other kids from our neighborhood when suddenly he jumped out and began rubbing his arms. It was pretty warm that day, around 80-85 degrees, but still not hot enough to burn someone's skin. I jumped out thinking that something was wrong and checked his arms. He had handprints down his arm, like something had slapped him extremely hard. He ran up into his room and I followed him along with another friend (a girl). We got to his room and he fell flat onto the floor. The girl and I knelt on the floor to check his pulse. He was fine, alive and breathing, but the abnormal thing about all this was that his palms were extremely red, and when she and I reached over to lift him onto his bed, we touched his palm and our hands got burned. (Just rub your fingers across a hot rock for five minutes really hard and you'll get the effect.) We ignored the pain for a few seconds and managed to toss him onto the bed. We then ran downstairs to gets his parents. His parents and we two ran upstairs to find him burning up.

Two days later, I talked to him after his doctor's checkup. (I couldn't talk to him the day before because his parents wouldn't pick up the phone.) I was allowed to come over, and as I walked into his room, it got hard to breath. The air was so hot it was almost unbearable. I went up and felt his forehead. It felt like a fiery blaze on my backhand. I left the room and went downstairs. I asked his parents what was wrong with him. They ignored me and told me to go home for dinner because it was getting late.

The day after that, he came over after school. He seemed in perfect health and when I asked him what was wrong, he told me this: He confessed that he and his parents had kept him under lock and key most of the time because he wasn't like other kids. He wasn't an alien or anything, but since he was 13 he had been able to burn things with his hand and create tiny spark molecules that combine with his burning hands to created fire. He also told me that when in a cool place for too long, like the pool, his body tends to react in a weird way and burn up just to maintain the life force left in him.

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