Kindler is not the protagonist nor narrator of this story; I am, insofar as there is an “I” to be. Well, to call me the protagonist is slightly disingenuous. This story is about Kindler, this is my record of everything that befalls him and what he causes to befall to others, sometimes violently sometimes not. He’s not a violent person, or at least he doesn’t want to be. This is a story about him, because I love him. This is also a story about a lot of other people who I have decided variously to love or hate.

My name is... my own private business, and I will not tell you. It may be easiest to refer to me as the Narrator, and eventually I will possess the names of others, but none of these are the name I was born with or that most of the people in my life call me by. Kindler is an exception, and will call me whatever I wish. The gift of self-determination is rare in this world, and my only desire is that it is a universal right. This is what the story is about, ultimately.

Where I live, where I’m from... that’s also my own private business, and you have no right to know. I will tell you anyway, for the ease of telling this story I do not otherwise want to tell. I will be annoyingly vague. I do not live in any of the six realms, instead on a planet called Earth (different from the realm of Earth, confusingly) which Tsulluts discovered in her many travels, insofar as they can be called travels. There are many planets like Earth, but the rest of them are irrelevant, too different to provide a suitable habitat for the inhabitants of the realms, who are somewhat similar to humans, but with animal characteristics of varying degrees. The inhabitants of the Realm of Fire are all somewhere on a spectrum between lizard and human, and an individual may look more lizard or more human, and still be fully sapient. I was born entirely human, with no magical meddling. I will not tell you any aspects of my appearance beyond that.

I suppose I have to give you some background information on my life, but I will spare all but the most necessary details. My life is my own, and I will not share it with you. My personality, my interests, my hobbies... those are all private. I hate you, whoever you are, or maybe I’m afraid of you. I don’t want to tell you anything. Perhaps this passion for anonymity is a “personality trait” but I will choose to pretend it’s not so that I don’t contradict myself. It’s easy to shape reality to my whim when I can define the meanings of the words I use. A personality trait is, definitionally, something other people have. There, see how easy it is to lie or defy conventional definitions? Here’s another: the “sky” is defined as wherever worms make their burrows when the rains don’t come. Or perhaps the “sky” is merely anything underneath a fine layer of dust. I don’t have a sense of humor.

And yet I must tell you some things so that you may better understand my actions. My house is devoured by kudzu, a hungry vine that consumes everything in its path and coats it in smothering green, keeping houses rooted where they are. Keeping people rooted where they are. I am an older brother, and my parents love my younger brother more, because he is smarter and straighter and more social. I have a wide friend circle of people I don’t care for and who hate me in turn, but I remain in their relative good graces due to the providence of my best friend and benefactor, Genevieve West. I call her Ginny to her face and lots of terrible names behind her back, when I’m muttering to myself alone in my room trying not to go insane. She always wanted a gay best friend, and so here I am, ready to give unqualified fashion advice or snarky comments about the appearances or habits of strangers. Most of all, I am a willing (captive) ear for all her romantic secrets, a safe boy she can talk to to get perspective on how to deal with the myriad boys who do and don’t enter her life. Mostly they don’t, and she simply has plans for them, a new crush each week. But this one, she tells me, this one, this time, it’s real. I think she’s looking for a way out.

I’m also looking for a way out of my life, but I have no sympathy for someone so beautiful, smart, well-off, and well-loved. I know why she would want a method of exit, and I know how mentally unstable she is, but the vindictive part of me wants her to stew forever in her own misery and never realize that other people are also just as miserable as she is, if not far worse. Not to be trite, but there are starving children in the world, under every proverbial stone. She may not be filthy rich, but she has a roof over her head and her stomach. She has plenty of luxuries many people don't. She could get a grip if she was feeling up to it.

The day of the first vivid dream she confided in me (publicly, not much of a confidence) that she had a crush on this guy named Ty. She told me she thought he liked her, because she saw him looking at her in English class, and I nodded as if that was a qualification for someone liking you. She told me his name wasn’t even short for Tyler, it was just Ty. I nodded like that wasn’t the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, and then she told me that it must be nice to be unattached like that, and that maybe she should legally change her name to just be Ginny and not be short for anything. She also told me that she was going to go flirt with him after seventh period, before he left school in his car. He has a car. That was the other reason she liked him, though she didn’t say as much.

Her friend Kelsey (whose name I include not because of her importance but as a sign of disrespect) commented about how she thought Ginny had a thing for me, and why would she bother with Ty unless she was trying to make me jealous? Ginny of course denied this as ridiculous, and I was obligated to laugh awkwardly and pretend I cared if Ginny is in love with me. The truth is it doesn’t matter what flavor of relationship we have, as long as she gets to hold me close and suck my soul out of me as slowly and painfully as possible. I don’t think Ginny knows how to feel about me either. She decided I was gay, something I would never say myself, and whenever she introduces me as her “gay friend” to someone else, I have to roll my eyes - in as heterosexual a fashion I can muster - to imply that she just thinks that. That is has no basis in reality. That I’m in this con for the long haul, and trying to get with her. If her interlocutor is smart (but not too smart) they’ll pick up on this signal. Honestly, I kind of like that she introduces me this way, because it leaves out my name. If the person asks, which they won’t because they only care about Ginny, I’ll give Ginny a look and she’ll say that I’m her friend, nothing more. It’s her one redeeming quality.

I do have sex dreams about her sometimes. She’s the only person I’ve ever had sex dreams about. Well, to call them sex dreams is misleading. They’re dreams in which she rapes me, and sometimes I get off on it and sometimes I kill her.

That was too candid. I’ll have to remember to strike that from the final draft. Kindler says it’s an important detail but I don’t care. You don’t need to know anything about my sexuality. You don’t need to know anything at all about anything about me, and I hate you for reading this very private journal of mine. Stop reading.

I should really quit writing, I never should have begun. But I find myself unable to stop, the story is just begging to be told, and be told in this way. You - whoever you are, you detestable creep - need to know what happened. Not because of anything you did or are. I’ll simply go insane otherwise.

Anyway, later that day, Ginny didn’t go out to flirt with Ty, or even attempt to. She yelled at me after school about it. I should have reminded her, I should have convinced her, I should’ve made her conquer her fear. Really, what use was keeping me around if I wasn’t going to set her up for success? He was going to be the one, and now she’d missed her chance forever. Or at least until tomorrow. I didn’t tell her that this was not my fault, or that if she wanted to be cajoled into talking to him, she should’ve asked, or that she clearly had other opportunities to secure his elusive opening for girlfriend. I didn’t speak except to tell her that I was sorry, which I wasn’t, and to tell her that I’d do better next time, which I wouldn’t. I promised too, because promises aren’t sacred and I break them as easily as a camel’s back.

So as to not make a scene while chewing me out for my insubordination, she did it when we were alone in her room. We weren’t supposed to be, because her parents thought we were hooking up (they didn’t believe in homosexuality) and thus had forbidden closed doors, but her parents weren’t home for whatever reason. My presence was another secret that I’d have to bear to my grave, or write down in this journal for the world to hear. She expected me to keep this secret and also to keep my promise. Tacitly, implicitly, ironically, and completely unconvinced of my sincerity.

We lived near each other, unfortunately. It was probably why she chose me as her punching bag. We live in a subdivision mired in that kudzu I mentioned earlier, a plant that has more prominence than asphalt. It crawls along each wall and tree and lamppost, obscuring everything underneath it in a vast dense green. It chokes out the other plants. All the trees are dead. No one is going to cut them down. No one is going to clear away the kudzu. Some think it looks nice. Most think it looks abandoned. It would feel abandoned too, if it weren’t for all the people living here, mowing their lawns and destroying native biodiversity and completely ignoring the invasive that crawls along their walls and into their lungs.

Our neighborhood is near the school, so we can walk, but she’s always so embarrassed to be seen walking. I’m her only protection, her male benefactor, maybe to ward off cat calls, but probably to ward off loneliness. We usually spend a couple of hours at her house, while her parents are still gone, and her younger brother (a nemesis to my younger brother) is off vandalizing something. Sometimes I leave before her parents get home, and sometimes I don’t and have to make pleasant conversation with a man who thinks I’m fucking his daughter. He sets his gun on the table, to let me know he has one, which I already know. What I don’t know is why he thinks I’d still be intimidated by that after all this time, especially when I could just as easily grab the gun and shoot him. Maybe my aim is too limp-wristed.

I’ve never shot a gun before, but I’ve held them plenty.

After Ginny thought I had enough, and I apologized profusely enough, she let me go home, before her parents could arrive and threaten me. She didn’t like it when they did that, because apparently it was so different than when she did it. I wandered towards her front door, and placed my hand on the knob, tasting the freedom. But Ginny stopped me, pulled on my shoulder, said “Remind me tomorrow, okay?” This was a rare gesture from her: she was admitting that the future was real, and that she had failed to acknowledge it earlier. Ty was no longer lost to her forever.

“I promise.” I lied.

The real reason she wasn’t going off to spend time with Ty or the millions of guys like him was that so she could spend more time with me. No matter how badly she wanted a boyfriend, she could never get one, because he’d take up her time and jeopardize our relationship. I don’t know or care if she thought about me romantically, but I was her confidant, the person she could entrust her secrets to. I wouldn’t tell anyone anything about her (except for what I treasonously divulge here), but not out of any loyalty, just out of fear and general quietness. I’m not sure if she knew that was the reason I could be trusted, but I don’t think that, if she knew, she wouldn't care. I was too important to her for her to worry that I hate her.

“I bet he could drive us home.” She said. “In his car.”

“Maybe we could share him.” I joked. She liked it when I acted gay. Made me seem more attractive as a friend, maybe.

She laughed obligingly. It was genuine, probably. “Don’t get any ideas.” She said, even though she clearly wanted me to.

“Have you seen that man?” I said, absently wondering if I’d seen him before. Probably, but I wouldn’t have stored him in my memory. Just another faceless asshole in the throng of the school.

“I know, right? But I’m serious! You’ve got to set me up with him!”

She wasn’t serious, but she put all her emotion into it anyway. I hated how she expected me to like him, to want him, and still just let her have him and ignore my own feelings on the matter. Her feelings could come first because he was straight - that’s the justification she’d use - but really I am just an accessory to her. I have no more personality than a computer, and words and stereotypes can be programmed into me to suit her whims. I am obnoxiously gay but only when I open my mouth, which is rarely. I am deferential. I am a doormat.

“I promise I will!” I said, and then, to save my ass: “Or I’ll do my best.” She didn’t buy it. Or care that she didn’t buy it.

She told me to leave before her parents got there, and then proceeded to waste a great deal of precious time complaining about how they thought gay people were just deluding themselves, and why couldn’t they just let me exist? “Not every man is out there, chasing after pussy like it's as vital as oxygen. You’re one of the good ones.” Because I was presumably chasing after cock like it's as vital as oxygen. Right.

I didn’t want to be one of the good ones. I didn’t want to be one at all. I have never wanted to be anything.

I spent the next few hours wandering through the dead forest. I planned to tell my parents that I ate dinner at Ginny’s house, but they never asked, or noticed I got home well after dark.