Natasha Polanski Likes Fire
Natasha Polanski had an ordinary childhood, despite the rumours and idle gossiping you'll recieve if you ask the right questions to the wrong people.
She grew up in Warsaw and, for the first twelve years of her life, she was happy and content. She enjoyed watering the roses that grew in planters just outside and The Polanski household was often filled with joy and laughter.
Then, one day, her father fell desperately ill and was briefly hospitalised before passing away two days later from an unknown illness.
Arthur Polanski's symptoms baffled the medical faculty at the Zelazna Medical Centre. His liver, spleen and kidneys had completely shut down prior to his death and had simply died of organ failure.
If there wasn't anything more to it, however, I would not be here telling this story to you.
After the death of Arthur, the Polanski household quickly fell into shambles. Arthur had not only been a kind, gentle and caring father, but had also been the only source of income in the family.
Natasha's widowed mother, Adela, seemed inconsolable at first.
Natasha would often feel lonely and would often go to find her mother in the family study. She would always shirk her.
The flowers, neglected, died slowly in their planters.
The washing stacked, as did the plates, until Natasha decided to take matters into her own hands.
A week later, her mother's mood changed altogether. The reflective and gloomy expression that Adela wore on a daily basis was replaced with one of irreverent happiness, which the local neighbours silently frowned upon.
But at least she was happy, Natasha thought.
So she tried to warm to her mother again. Unfortunately, she was still cold and aloof towards her.
No, Adela's newly found lease of life had nothing to do with her daughter or psychologically moving on from Arthur. Her happiness was from an altogether different source.
Another man in her life.
Six days after her husband's passing.
Just a hair short of a week.
His name was David Wilson and he reeked of aftershave and something that Natasha could never quite put a name to. Sometimes he even visited Natasha's room in the middle of the night. He would sit at the end of the bed and watch her, but only if he knew that she was asleep.
David was never nice to Natasha, repeatedly telling her that she was a waste of space, completely pathetic, and that it was entirely her fault that her biological father had died.
"It's not true! It isn't!" she had screamed and blubbered, running to her mother with a mixture of snot and tears dripping down her reddened face.
Her mother gave her a swift punch in the face for her trouble.
Natasha's vision swam as her mothers face and the living room ceiling sank back into view.
"It could be." Adela cooed softly. "Now don't you dare cause such a scene, young lady. David says he's put off by the way you act and I'm trying to make things work between the two of us."
No twelve year old girl should have to apologise for a most wicked deed that they certainly didn't do.
But Natasha Polanski just wanted her mum to love her.
So Natasha said the one thing she shouldn't have.
"I'm sorry."
It was around a fortnight after Arthur's death that the autopsy report came through.
It confirmed Natasha's worst fears. No foul play. He'd died of natural causes.
In the meantime, the homestead grew steadily worse.
David would continue with his strange nighttime visits, his breath smelling strange and his manner bizarre.
His eyes wouldn't focus and he often gave Natasha prolonged hugs that she never liked.
They never felt the friendly sort.
Her mother never listened to her and so she often retired to her room, night after night, sobbing mutedly into her pillow.
She didn't find any company, comfort or friends, not at first. Not until she looked in the corner of her room, concealed by dust and bedraggled with cobwebs.
It's a very weird thing, how in our most desperate times we pull something out of the deepest recesses of our life and they come to define us completely.
Natasha turned the matchbox over in her hand as the contents made a soothing "ka-chunk" sound.
Something about that sound just made everything seem a little bit better.
She looked the front over.
"LUCIFERS." proudly proclaimed the packet, in dull grey-green text that had faded with age.
The previous tenant of the house of the house had left the matches there, for what reason nobody knows. All Natasha knew, is that they offered justice, for an offence she didn't yet know about.
She started by taking a long, slender, match out from the pocket. She'd examine the head and the strike it across the side.
She'd let it burn for a couple of seconds, just to make sure it would keep going.
Then, she'd stretch her hand out and pull it slowly across the back of her own outstretched palm.
It left a darkened trail of soot and didn't hurt, not if she kept the flame moving.
It felt warm. It felt nice.
The steady warmth of a glowing match held under a forearm, leg or palm would send a light balm of agony which softly hissed through her nerves.
She supposed, in a way, that minor and acute self-immolation was much safer than cutting.
Cutting was dangerous. Bloodloss. Septicaemia. Too many things could go wrong and besides, cutting left ugly marks.
So, on occasion, a twelve year old girl from Warsaw would hold a match under herself, to burn away the pains inside.
In time, David and Adela were wed.
Natasha hoped that this meant the end of David's bi-weekly visits in the dead of night. Unfortunately, they grew ever more frequent.
The first time that it had happened was shortly after her thirteenth birthday.
Her mother had given her the birthday present of half a bottle of cheap vodka and told her flatly that she'd need it, laughing as she did so.
Later that night, her stepfather came into her room and raped her.
She didn't struggle or cry out. Even when it hurt.
She just lay quietly and silently, as hot tears ran down her unmoving face.
When it was all done, she lay there are she heard Richard climbing off of her, pulling up the flies on his trousers and heard the door banging closed.
It was in that deep and ark moment when she felt so alone, she felt outside of herself. She felt a sense of being so low, and feeling as if no human had ever felt this abandoned, that none of it felt real.
It was as if she was outside of her own body, entirely rejected by her own soul and her own feelings and thoughts as if the violation had pushed some deep and unexplainable part of her body out of her.
She'd never believed in the human soul before then.
She was crying again, the useless tears falling fast. She lay in bed, wondering when the mercy of sleep would come and take away the pain below. Wondering if.
Smoke rose from the bedsheets.
She got up and realised she'd left the box of matches underneath her bed and that they'd caught alight.
As the mattress became hotter and hotter, she realised the flames had caught on to the bedspread and were slowly tearing through the fabric of the bedspread. She climbed into bed and pulled the covers over herself as the springs and mattress burned and the smoke began to spill out like a grey upward waterfall.
She didn't move. Hell, she didn't want to.
The bed burned, and Natasha felt the flames all around her. She cast an eye over the corner of her room and felt a bleary puzzlement as she noticed the box of matches in the corner. She rose her hands and noticed with tired interest that they were engulfed completely in fire.
The matches hadn't started the fire under the bed. Looking back at the bed, she saw two smouldering holes where he immolation-soaked hands had melted through it.
The bed was a small inferno by now, the smoke pouring across the ceiling in thick lashes. Only the springs and frame were intact, the frame of the bed alight.
She heard a door smashing open and someone stumbling along the landing. She climbed up on the ruined bed, wrapping herself around a bedpost. He entire body was cloaked in the flame, but she felt nothing.
The door smashed open as David and Adela stood in the doorway, watching the girl burning.
She opened her mouth, and David could see inside where the fire licked the very insides of her. Her very veins seemed to be glowing with a ghostfire. When she spoke, you could hear the crackle of the fire endlessly roasting her bones.
"Have you come back for some more, daddy?"
Her hands erupted into conical flame, drenching the two of them in searing fire. They screamed as their bodies melted and Natasha Polanski screamed with merry laughter as her captors were reduced down to a crumbling heap or ash and char.
And she kept going sometime after that, burning a hole in the floor which the ashes crumbled through like sand in an hourglass.
She stepped over the hole onto the landing and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Her skin was turning coal-like before becoming translucent and finally skin began to thread over her body. She turned on the tap and poured herself a glass of water. As she did that, there was a knock at the door.
She crossed the living room carpet, entirely naked, and opened the front door.
Outside, standing on the front lawn next to a rusty gnome was a man dressed as some kind of medieval knight that recoiled with his hands in front of his face.
"Jesus!" he cried, turning to a woman on his left. "You didn't tell me she was going to be naked!"
Natasha snapped her fingers together and embers opened up at the tips of her fingers. The fingers slowly became ashen, burning like fleshy cigars. "Who are you?"
"Uh? We're government agents. I think. This is all relatively new, I've only been given a few updates recently, I-
Monty Carlos was cut short by a spout of fire that encircled his metal armour. He looked out of a glass viewfinder in the helm and sighed.
"-only had time to get this on. Totally rad, impervious to any kind of heat. Real neato. Anyway, you're what's called a pyro-kinetic. Government's had it's eyes on you for about six years.
Natasha turned her fire-coated arms towards the woman to his left.
"We're here to bring you in." said Monty.
"Why isn't she wearing a flame-proof metal suit?" Natasha said, an angry fire refusing to die in her eyes. Fire was wrapping in strands around her hands and parcelling itself together into thick fireballs that lay in the centre of her palms.
"She doesn't need one." Monty whispered.
"You want to hold that fireball against your own face." said Mary Sue.
Natasha felt her hand move towards her head. She struggled, but the bend in her elbow was unavoidable. It was as if she was possessed by an unseen force that commanded her. As her hand reached towards her face, Natasha shrieked. She felt the intense heat against her face as fear swept her entire body.
Closer. Closer. Closer still. She could feel her hair strands start to burn. And this time she felt pain. She let out a low terrified moan.
"Stop."
The hand remained still.
"Drop."
Her hand dropped to her side and she breathed a sigh of relief. Two two took her hands and guided her towards an armoured truck that was waiting on the road.
Some time later, she looked across at Gideon Carletan, Monty Carlos and Mary Sue and waited for The Director to speak.