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                                   ZIGZAG'S PAST

"Come here Ricky, come here baby," she croons looking out toward the burning house. A little boy stands in the doorway holding a teddy bear to his chest and walking into the driveway. A beam from the roof falls sending sparks outward like a wave. He runs to the woman and hides his face in her skirt for comfort. He isn't a second too soon, just a few seconds later the house crumples to the ground like an empty garbage bag. Giving in to the flames and the smoke. The woman picks him up, holding him to her. "Ricky" is safe now. She tries to soothe the cries for his mother. She whispers sweetly to him and carries him to the ambulance. He clutches the teddy bear to his chest and she sits him down on the cot. "It's OK Ricky. I'm coming too. I'll follow in the car, I promise," she says as he stares at her mournfully. She closes the doors and the vehicle starts up, leaving her standing in the driveway amongst a dozen firemen and a lot of neighbors. Her eyes follow the vehicle until it has passed the curb, passed the place she can't see anymore.

That's the only thing Ricky took with him from the fire. That memory...the teddy bear has been long forgotten in the four years that have passed. He remembers hardly anything about March, 22nd 1986 but he knows that's when his parents died and left him with "Pretty Lady" Linda and her husband Frederick. Ricky is seven now. The doctors say it is amazing that he can still remember that scene so perfectly from 1986. He remembers the smell of smoke, the heat of flames, the terrified screams of the neighbors, and his parents. But he can't remember their faces. That he can't remember. Classmates call him strange, weird, crazy, but he isn't. He is just different.

Fire is feared by most people. Ricky feared fire too. He feared fire more than anything else in life. He burned things though, all of the time. He tried to tame the flames. But soon enough he learned that fire cannot be tamed. Ricky had never been burnt. He had, however, heard about his parents, and of course been there when they died at the swords of the flames and lost their home to them.

Every day when Linda comes home she sees Ricky, sitting on the couch, blanket pulled up around his shoulders for 'protection' (despite the hot summers) and eyes glued to the television. She believed in privacy, so she never went into his room. If she did she would find: used matches, armies of melted soldiers and blackened papers. Things that couldn't withstand the power of the fire. Like Ricky's life and his parents. Ricky had learned the concept of fire at an early age, something that would stay with him forever.

He didn't remember his parents much. People would tell him how nice they were, how sweet and helpful. Nice didn't help him now. They were dead, and dead is dead, no matter if you were a serial killer or a blonde three year old's parents when you died. His 'new' parents Linda and Fred were nice people. They bought him anything he wanted, but they were young and busy. They didn't have time for a kid. Ricky was left alone, day after day with just the television as his friend and fire as his enemy. Hours each day were spent on watching television and pretending that people on the other side of the screen were his family. Ricky watched TV every day, every day except March 22nd.

On March 22nd Ricky would skip school and go somewhere to be alone. Then as it got dark he would find something to burn, something nobody cared about. Something bigger than what he burned in his room. Most of the time he would buy something for himself too. Something to show that he had survived the flames another year, and the flames hadn't gotten him yet.

Ricky was sure that someday fire was going to get him, and as his fear for fire grew, he began to fear everything. He constantly heard someone over his shoulder. "Following him" and "watching him". More and more time he spent in front of the television and more and more his grades dropped.

When Ricky turned 10 he got a little sister, and a tutor. He couldn't spend time watching television as much. His paranoia got worse. Finally when he was 13 years old he was diagnosed with "acute paranoia." He was getting good grades but he had developed a mental disorder. He constantly pretended to watch TV in the absence of actually watching it. The more he worked on school, the worse his paranoia got, the worse it got, the more he burned. Finally on the anniversary of his parent's deaths in 1998 he cracked

He went into the school yard carrying a lighter and a few pieces of styrofoam and began to burn small pieces. In seconds the fire was burning out of control. Ricky stared at the portable classroom the fire was devouring and clutched the TV Guide that he bought for the anniversary to his chest like the teddy bear in his memory. He waited for the flames to take him but they never did. He was rescued by a fireman and taken to jail.

Now he is in Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility.