r/shortscarystories
1 day ago
Chemical-Elk-1299
My family died in a fire. I think it was my fault.
I only remember one thing from my childhood.
Fire.
I couldn’t remember how it happened, or why. Only the nagging
sensation that I had something to do with it. I remember the heat and
the horror, a yawning red mouth that swallowed everything in its path.
The humanity. The fear. The sound of groaning metal. Crawling out of
the flames while women screamed in a language I couldn’t understand.
Then nothing.
The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by white walls and doctors.
They told me it was a hospital. That I needed to be kept under
observation. Apparently I should have burnt to death, but I didn’t. In
fact, there wasn’t a scratch on me, apart from a lump on my head.
Concussion. After two months, I figured it out — I wasn’t just being
healed. I was being studied. This was no ordinary hospital.
But it wasn’t like I was going anywhere.
When I first awoke, I had to relearn everything. How to walk. How
to talk. After I’d recovered, one of the researchers explained — the
government wanted to know how I’d started the fire. How I’d survived
it. Apparently, I’d be of some use to them if I could only remember.
But I have an idea.
I’ve been here for a long time. The men studying me have grown worn
and grey, but my face hasn’t aged. They had me run tests where I
stared at other prisoners, told to think “hot thoughts”. And sure
enough, every so often — tender flames, smoldering weakly around
their feet. But it was never enough.
They wanted to know how I started the big one.
To counteract the amnesia, they’d put me through “hypnotherapy”.
Something about my subconscious. I’d get flashes.
We were flying to America. An airship. It was… a long time ago. I was
mad at my sister. Something about father loving her more than me.
How mother called me a freak. I was so angry. I wanted to hurt her, as
badly as she’d hurt me. So, I closed my eyes. I thought of my sister,
curling like bacon in the fire. A spark. Father’s skin sloughing off in
smoking ribbons. Mother plummeting to the ground, far below.
Flames against an endless sky.
The therapy ended there. Too painful.
Eventually, my captors resorted to drastic measures. They wanted my
power, needed it for their own. And they needed me to remember how
to use it.
So they brought in someone to jog my memory.
A survivor, they said. When they wheeled his decrepit old bones to my
isolation cell, I could see it in his eyes. He knew me. We’d met before,
in the sky long ago. He screamed, raged in a language so familiar and
yet so foreign. German, I think. I didn’t understand, but I knew that he
hated me. Would never forgive me.
One name was clear, howled in my face again and again.
“The Hindenburg”.