Firebrand

 Fire took hold of the last, highest floor of the office building, bringing the inferno to its crescendo. Watching my latest masterpiece lighting up the night sky brought such a joyous smile to my face. Ah, the beauty of fire! Another triumph for the great serial arsonist, Firebrand. The media may have given me the name, but I can’t complain. At least this fantastic string of incendiary feats are all attributed to a single identity. I can hardly believe this is my life now though.

Upon reflection, a single, quite simple moment in a relatively mundane existence was the catalyst for everything that I have become. I was an office worker at some corporate firm, indistinguishable from any other. We were paid just barely enough where quitting would be a hassle, yet living was hard. A simple nine-to-five doing work no one was passionate about to the bare minimum degree for the corporation to run. 

Only, it was not really nine-to-five, as the firm was too cheap to pay us for lunch. So instead of eight hour work days, they were eight-and-a-half hour days, with an unpaid lunch break. But the office was a decent drive away from my crap, overpriced apartment, so for me you could add an extra hour in total for commute time. Some crazy bastards would drive an hour one-way. But that also neglects all the prep I do in the morning to get ready for work, so just go ahead and add another thirty minutes. We're up to ten hours a day now dedicated to a soulless job, leaving eight for sleep, and six for the things I actually want to do in life. Somehow, this is just the average working adult experience.

I never really questioned the fact that I lived this way. I was not happy by any means, but I drove off the weariness with empty platitudes about how so many other people must have it worse than me, and that mundanity was just a first-world problem anyways. Besides, surely things would only be this way for a little bit while I worked on pursuing my true passion: pyrotechnics! Yes, ironically enough I always enjoyed fire and explosions and the like. But there are, quite surprisingly, some incredibly high standards for such a career. So while I tried to get all the proper credentials and find any way possible to get experience, I spent years trapped in the modern purgatory of corporate life.

Then it happened. Quite honestly, I am not sure what ‘it’ actually was. Perhaps the culmination of all the little annoyances that are generally spread out from each other in one day. Bad traffic made me late to work, and an unsympathetic boss told me I should have planned ahead. Our office coffee machine had broken again because management was too cheap to get a proper replacement, leaving me tired and drowsy. That one annoying coworker (yes, you know the one, THAT one) was doing their best to make me want to bury my head in sand. A long, pointless meeting that only delayed my time-sensitive work. Then every other god damn middle manager coming by to bug me with this and that every few minutes. Finally, my actual, direct boss called me into his office.

No, by all accounts I was not a model employee. Who could be in such a sordid place? But in the middle of my boss going over my metrics and showing me how I was seen as performing below-average and all that crap, I thought, ‘Am I about to lose my job?’ And I realized that I didn’t actually care if I did. If anything it would be liberating! I remember so clearly, more than anything else, the exact thought that went through my head. ‘Something has to change.’

I was not fired, unfortunately, and withdrew to the break room to clear my head. While I was pacing around the room, I passed by a table and noticed that there was just a random lighter left out on one of the tables. Could have belonged to anyone, but I like to think that it was my manager’s. He always reeked of smoke, his facial hair stained yellowed and teeth rotten. I picked up that lighter and played with it for a good minute or two. And a curious, self-destructive idea wormed its way into my head, just as I was in such a state of mind to be vulnerable to it. There was a trash can in the corner that was on the border of being full with the corner of a piece of paper just barely cresting the lip. 

A fuse begging to be lit. 

Maybe that was ‘it’, the moment I took the flame to the paper and watched the fire work its way into the proverbial keg. Of course I knew it was wrong and dangerous and all that crap, but there was such a deep sense of glee I got out of that moment. I wanted to do it again, but to something more important. I didn’t even bother to put out that trash fire as I took the lighter with me out of the break room. Straight down the hall I headed, right towards that cramped storage room lined with filing cabinets stuffed with decades of paperwork. Oh how many times I have stuffed something away in there never again to see the light! Time to change all that.

I barely remember the specifics of what I did there beyond ripping open drawers and setting the folders within aflame. There was such an intense euphoria within me that I lost myself in it. Even the blaring alarms did not stop me, nor the sprinklers that ran for all of five seconds before malfunctioning from a lack of upkeep. Only the smoke was able to do that, finally driving me from the room in a fit of coughing. I emerged to a flow of my fellow employees all rushing for the exit, taking me away in their current and outside into the street.

There I turned back with everyone else to stare at the building, smoke pouring out of multiple windows and the distant roar of sirens growing louder by the moment. I was starting to realize then what I had done. In all likelihood someone had seen me burning things, or at least one of several cameras in our office had. I had no idea at the time what the charges for arson were, and I was beginning to panic about how my whole life might be thrown into disarray. But then amidst all the noise outside, I just barely overheard one of my co-workers muttering under their breath: ‘At least I won’t have to come to work tomorrow.’

If nothing else was ‘it’, then hearing them say that was. All that panic and fear swirling around inside of me just calmed down in an instant. I still knew that my life was going to change, but now I felt like I had a measure of control. A direction to guide myself in. How many others out there are mired in the same miasma as I? Who else can I aid by freeing them from the corporation their life is chained to? And most importantly: What is the gift that I can bring them? Fire, of course. In fire, I can burn away the many monuments to mundanity that dot this city. I can lift away that fog clouding the way for the average person and give them back their life.

But most of all, I can be happy. I love the way a flame dances. The way it consumes all that it touches. I love how, despite all the deserved condemnation I’ve received, I still see looks of joyous relief from those I free from their corporate prisons. I love the name, Firebrand, and all that it now stands for. I love what my life is now, and never once have I felt regret. Whatever ‘it’ was that day, it lives in me now. The ember that lit the spark. The spark that will burn it all down.