Flame-Thrower (sample)

"I'll be here if you need me." He said. He had said. She scoffed at it now whenever the statement played in her head. Was life all fun and games? Was it all comfort? Was it all solved by faith? Locked and loaded? Can anyone answer that? Anyone? He never told her the answer, and she wanted to know. But then he wasn't the type to comfort -- confront her - and he was a complicated one. He never cared for anyone, he seldom talked, he seldom blinked, dark eyes sunken. He never fell in love. Or if he did, he wouldn't care to remember it. Nor would he have mentioned it. "I'll be here if you need me." That was all. Leaning on the door-frame, smoking. That was all. And yet he wasn't there. Whenever she looked at that door-frame, with green chipped paint, she'd see nothing. But maybe if she tried hard enough, she could imagine him standing there in the afternoon, chewing tobacco under his teeth and arms folded over his chest, waiting for his turn. Waiting for his end. We were all waiting for our ends, weren't we? We just try to find something to do while waiting. That was it, a simple truth. So what was this sickness? This cancer in his bones? This plague that ate him inside out. She'd remember. he looked like a walking skeleton at the end of his days. Tell me, was this the fate of a killer? Was it the fate of he who fired at the innocent with not so much as a second glance? Couldn't care to remember their faces? Couldn't bear it? Even still, they all came around again, chasing him, screaming at him, it was as if she could hear it all in her head. All those young innocent souls he smothered, she could sometimes hear them. She didn't know why they were sputtering angry words at her, she hadn't done anything. No, but maybe... Maybe she had given comfort to him... was that why? Maybe she deserved it. Why would she be telling him it was okay when she should be pleading with him to stop? Yes, maybe she deserved it. Long before his condition worsened, she should have stopped him. Her brother. Sure she loved him, sure she didn't want to get in his way, but why didn't she do something?  Was life just a joke? Was it no coincidence that this was the type of death he had to have? He'd lay there on the stretcher, moaning and face sunken and dark, unshaven. She hadn't said a thing then. All the way, he just kept losing his health and losing it. Thinner and thinner. Darker and darker. And she was the only one at the funeral. Her, and all those little souls he burned. But of course, they followed him into the grave. Whether they tortured him there or not, she never knew. She had laughed then, in her black dress, and she never laughed since. And if he had one, may God have mercy on his soul. They later told me she disappeared and nobody ever saw her again.