Another Lifetime - Prologue. Prologue

Another Lifetime

Prologue

It was so dark, the shadows blended together to create one large black shape. It seemed to penetrate every corner, any and all spots where it could hide and wait unnoticed. It was the kind of dark that would give you chills if you were out in it for any extended period of time, even if it were a warm night. The kind of dark that if you looked into, you’d swear something was looking back out at you.

In the center of the dark was a figure, neither large nor small, but imposing nonetheless as it looked out on the scene before it. Anyone who would have seen such a figure would have been afraid, if only because it seemed to welcome the darkness. As if it were more at home in the darkness than in the light. And they would have been right to have been afraid, because on this night there was much to fear about this figure.

A sweet pungent smell fills the air, the unmistakable scent of gasoline. It’s all around, and if you got within twenty feet you’d feel light headed with the smell. It was enough to be nauseating.

A match is lit, and in the faint flicker of light you can almost make out a feature or two of the figure, before the match falls from its grasp. The tiny flame nearly winks out as it makes its fateful descent to the earth.

Time seems to stand still as the tiny flame falls, and yet the moment has passed before you’d even have time to register it. And as the tiny flame hits the gasoline soaked ground and the darkness is vanquished in a sea of burning light, the mysterious dark figure can be seen walking away into the distance, whistling a happy tune as it goes.

Flames dance over the gasoline in a uniform pattern of chaos, moving in a trail toward a large wooden deck connected to a house that was so old that it wouldn’t stand a chance of passing a fire inspection. A house who’s family had lived in it for years, generations even. Who’s family is sleeping soundly in their warm and cozy beds, without a care in the world.

The flames reach the rotten underbelly of the house, into the crawlspace and burning the wooden floorboards. It’s only a matter of time before this old house is nothing but a skeletal mass, charred and blackened in a pile of ash and soot. It all goes according to plan.

Off in the distance, faint laughter is heard from the depths of the shadowy darkness.