Page 1 of Fires of the Forsaken
Prologue
PORK CHOPS
Burnt human flesh smelled like cooked pork fat.
Well, at least I thought so.
I was five years old the night my parents died in a house fire. The night I first caught a whiff of burning flesh.
My bedroom had been next to my parents’. We lived in a tiny rancher with paper-thin walls—my poor parents literally couldn’t have sex without me hearing them. And, as a kid, I didn’t realize it was inappropriate to ask why mommy sometimes sounded like she was grunting in pain.
Anyway, those thin walls also meant I had to listen to them die.
I was awake when the fire started. Awake and crying and spitting mad.
I’d been grounded earlier that day because Mom had asked me to clean my room and I’d refused. Actually, I’d told Mom my room could “go fuck itself.”
I started young, okay?
And Mom, at her wit’s end with my ever-running mouth, had snapped, “That’sit!Go straight to your room, Adelaide. If it’s not clean in the morning, you’ve lost your Kandy Kakes for a week.”
So what did I do when at risk of losing my all-time favorite snack?
I trashed the rest of my room.
Look, to kid me, this somehow made sense. Like I was exacting vengeance against Mom’s cruel and unusual punishment. And after my parents went to bed, I’d flopped onto my unmade mattress and bawled like…well, like a baby.
I didn’t even notice the fire until Mom started screaming.
I’d never heard a sound like that before; a long, agonized wail, almost too animalistic to be human.
By then, the flames were climbing up my walls and stretching across my ceiling. I remembered calling out for my parents, figuring they’d know what to do. Because I used to think they were superheroes (or supervillains, depending on my mood). Faster than speeding bullets, stronger than locomotives—nothing hurt them, right?
Yeah, well, everyone has to grow out of their silly fantasies eventually.
My parents couldn’t help me. They were too busy being burned alive.
And I was helpless. My skin itched, my muscles twitched, and every instinct screamed at me torun.But I didn’t.
I stared at the flames, hypnotized by their flickering light.
The scent of pork chops wafted into my room. Which had my muddled, terror-stricken brain thinking,it’s past Dad’s bedtime. Why’s he grilling pork chops?
I didn’t realize he was the one being flame broiled.
He pounded on the wall that divided our rooms, trying to bust it down to get to me. Or maybe he was lashing out in pain.
The fire grew and grew, scaling the walls and roaring across my bedroom floor, devouring everything it touched. My Barbies? Gone. The drawings I’d done in kindergarten? Didn’t stand a chance.
The flames would eat me next. I cried but didn’t move.
Or, at least, I didn’tremembermoving.
The next thing I knew, I was outside, the sky above me gray as the sun rose. A firefighter sat on the curb next to me, stroking my back. “You’re a lucky girl,” he kept saying. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”
Dissociative amnesia, one of my (many) psychologists had called it; the human brain’s ability to forget traumatic events. I’d escaped—likely by jumping out a window—and I didn’t remember.
It made sense. But it wasn’t the truth.
