Heat’s Background

The sun's rays pierced the curtains in a room, launching a photon barrage on the face of the blonde girl who slept in another person's bed. She slowly opened her eyes, but the sound of a running shower woke her up faster. The girl sat up on the bed and looked around—she recognized the room. The shower stopped and her savior walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. Instantly, her eyes were captured by his body; not its structure, but the scars and burn marks that decorated his dark skin.

"MEL!"

She jerked and switched her focus to him.

"I called your name like five times."

"I'm sorry," she said, unable to take her eyes off the scars. "The scars, are they connected to the ones in the basement?"

"You went down there?"

"Out of curiosity, before you forbade me."

"When I was younger, I got trapped in a fire down there."

"Who started it? And what of the other scars? The ones resembling cuts."

Heat hesitated to answer. "I guess you would've found out eventually anyway." He sighed. He raised his head and pointed to a thin, faint line on his neck. "It's not obvious anymore, but when it was, this scar was a daunting reminder of what my parents tried to do on several occasions—kill me."

"What?!"

"That's where most of these scars come from. My younger years were mostly hell. I skipped school often and constantly ran from home. For like a year, I pretty much lived in the forest."

"When did they start trying to kill you? You were just a kid. If they tried more than once, they should've succeeded at a point."

Heat took a step back and rested against a wall. "I remember it like it was yesterday, the argument they had after bringing me fresh from the hospital one day. Eventually, they sent me to the basement and slit my throat on a strange table. As I grew older, they took me down there and tried different things. Eventually, Dan came, and Debbie followed. As they grew older, Mr. and Mrs. Fury began to bring them downstairs. But, they weren't doing what they did to me to them. In my case, they consistently cut and bruised me, leaving me to die, only to come and find me gone or awake. For my siblings, they just bound them to pieces of wood, and poles. One day I decided to fight back. But of course, what can a kid do? So I tried to burn down the house. My parents packed their belongings and left, never to return. The strangest thing happened; it was long ago, but I could swear there was a strange light that covered the house. When it died out, the fire had gone."

"How old were you when they disappeared?"

"Nine."

"Wow. For nine years your parents tried to bleed you to death."

"Yeah, and no one could tell. We looked like a normal family on the outside. After they disappeared, I lied to authorities that they would return so for now, I'm an eternal babysitter. Supido is the only one who knows the truth. Well, now you and him are the only ones who do."

"Wow. I would've loved to hug you after hearing this, but you barely have any clothes on so bye-bye."

Heat chuckled as Mel ran out of the room.

When she was out, Mel walked towards the basement, ensuring Heat was not tracking her first. Her steps were light, making no sound as she walked down the round staircase into the center of a dark, dry, large room. Down in the basement, she leaked her eyes, seeing bright as day in the pitch darkness. Noticing a black substance on the staircase's pole, she passed her finger along the pole and sniffed the substance.

"After seven years," she said as she rubbed black dust between her fingers.

Mel threw her knives towards opposite corners of the room; they stopped halfway and suspended midair with their tips facing down. She put her hands together and took in a deep breath. Slowly, blue threads of spa emerged from the knives' handles and spread across the room, creating a web of spa. Behind Mel's head, gold and silver spa in the form of a dagger emerged, spinning fast.

"With the voice of the Yehoshua, I command, Sun reverse!" Mel spoke with the echo of a masculine voice.

After her command, the web rapidly transformed from blue to gold and silver and then burst into millions of extremely tiny pieces, lighting up the basement like fireflies trapped in a bottle. The tiny pieces of spa began to gather, playing out a scene from the past that occurred in the basement. A little boy stood before a man and a woman, holding a bottle of gasoline in his hands. The two adults were frightened at the sight of the boy and ran upstairs.

Mel chuckled. "So that's how they ran."

The pieces of spa suddenly grew brighter. Startled, Mel looked around—she wasn't doing this. The spa gathered in the center of the room; some of it moved along the staircase's pole to form a horizontal beam attached to it, while the rest formed a circle containing a Star of David, which had the pole at its center. Mel took steps backwards to see better what it had formed.

"No…no way."

Mel staggered backwards once she recognized the symbol.

"He ended up here?"

Her mind raced to find answers to questions.

"But how? Was the meadow that incompetent?"

Her heartrate elevated.

"Was it because it was the sixth time?"

Her eyes widened as a realization dawned on her.

"Can he even reconnect at all?"

Mel dropped to one knee, coughing uncontrollably. She covered her mouth with her hand and when she took it off, saw blood on her palm. She knew what it meant and why it happened. Silently, she took her knives and walked back up the stairs as the symbol faded into the darkness.