This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/1000andonenites on 2024-11-02 18:25:59+00:00.
The scars have faded with the passage of years and clever plastic surgery. With proper make-up and lighting, you can barely tell they’re there.
But in the full direct light of my bedroom, I can see them clearly in the mirror, spread across my face and body, bumpy and crimson and just plain weird.
I am the lucky one who survived that horrific school fire. Or maybe the creature remembered that it was I, after all, who saved it from the nasty muddy wetness that was dragging it down, and a possible horrible death from being stomped by some random kid, and somehow engineered my escape. I don’t know- I was unconscious from the smoke at the time. Oh yes, I still have permanent lung damage, wheezing like an eighty-year old if I even slightly exert myself.
Let me tell you the story from the beginning, and you can decide.
It began on a gleaming wet fall morning, over twenty years ago, as I walked miserably to school.
There was no real reason I was miserable. I hated school with a passion that made my heart ache- but there was no reason. I wasn’t bullied, I had some friends, my grades were fine. I didn’t have the words to explain the loathing I felt for the building, the smell, the sounds, the actions, and so I didn’t try.
Everyone else seemed cheerful enough. It had rained heavily overnight, but now the sun was shining, making the puddles gorgeously dazzle. Kids jumped noisily into the puddles, shrieking with excitement. I skirted them carefully.
And that’s when I saw it, almost completely buried in a pile of soggy leaves, tinted all the hues of late autumn. Only its head was poking out, its eyes shining right at me, a damp puff of smoke hanging around its delicate snout.
Instinctively, I knelt and scooped it up in my arms. It was as big as a pigeon.
It flapped its wings irritably. Its mouth opened and I heard it right in my brain, very clearly.
“I did not give you permission to pick me up.”
I was not in the mood to take shit from a telepathic pigeon-sized creature. A gaggle of loud smaller children passed by, hooting, stomping around in big rubbery gleaming wellies, and jumping aggressively in the puddles and the pile of leaves, scattering them everywhere.
I said “Would you like me to put you back down on the pavement?”
The wet Creature clearly couldn’t fly, nor could it breathe fire. It contented itself by glaring angrily at me from its orange-red eyes.
I said, ”Why don’t you spend the day at our place, I’ll keep you safe. Once you are dry, you can fly off. I’m not going to try and imprison you.”
It thought a moment. “And what do you want in return?”
The words came out by themselves- I swear I have no conscious recollection of forming them.
“Burn the school down. Please.”
It nodded solemnly.
I ran home, and carefully laid the Creature on my bed, where I knew it would be undisturbed for the rest of the day.
I still blame myself for not specifying the time it should burn the school down. But then, how could I have predicted the exact moment that it would be ready to breathe flames and fly? I had left it that next morning looking still quite miserable and ill, with no apparent desire to leave. How could I have known that around 10am, it would take wing and soar out of my room?
The first I heard of it was the fire alarms going off during second period.
The I saw the flames, hearing the crackles before I even heard the screaming and the heat slammed into me.
I had had no idea how thoroughly such a Creature, even a small one the size of pigeon, could burn things.
I remember the smoke, the crashes and the screams. And then, almost before the time I had time to feel fully afraid, I passed out.
I revived in hospital, with third degree burns down my face and body. I was so lucky, I was told solemnly, the only survivor of that horrific school fire which no-one ever figured out how it got started.
Except me.