Many times, these things end badly.
They usually end with a dead body and a broken heart. I’ve read too many times about a young teen being beat up by his peers because of his choices. Or a teen hanging himself or committing suicide because his peers put him against the wall far too many times.
I wasn’t going to let it happen again.
My name is John Joseph Aries, and I’m gay. I’m not out there just yet. I’m sixteen, and I know I could really hurt people with my mutative abilities.
See, I am electric.
But I’m not really good at it, and it happens a lot of time all of a sudden on its own. Other kids get hard ons; I feel a part of my body suddenly turn into electricity and ZAP. But not only do I shock them, I set them on fire, too.
I’m working on the control.
It so happened that I knew about these two kids, Louis and Gerry, both from Montreal who lived here in Troy. They were cute, and they were cute together. They were older than me, seniors, and the rumor had it that they were gay. No big deal, right? They weren’t open about it, but it was just a rumor.
One night, I happened to be walking in the woods heading home when I saw this bonfire. I looked around, but nobody was near it. In fact, I heard someone yelling in the distance. I walked around the bonfire, and walked toward where I could hear the yelling. It was getting louder as I walked, and realized that it was someone screaming in terror.
I jumped into gear, and smelled something smoking – my shirt. I tore off my hoodie so it wouldn’t catch fire, but my shirt was already smoldering, the electricity crackling along my torso. Well, there went that shirt.
There was cracking as I heard someone or something getting dragged through the grass. I stepped off the path and into the woods, flinging my hoodie into the brush. They were making so much noise they didn’t hear me. The electricity flowed through my torso, down my arms and up my head – my hair was fireproof for some reason. I could see through a haze of white light and crackles, and saw about eight kids pulling someone else behind them.
“No, no, please–”
They walked past me in silence, the other kids, while I saw Louie being dragged behind a pair of kids. I blinked. No. No, they were not going to do what I suspected they were going to do…Electricity filled me, flowed to the ground, setting the leaves at my feet on fire. The fire spiraled up, flowing back onto me, so now I was a walking electric torch.
I came out from behind the tree. The rest of my clothes were going up in flames, and I walked out onto the path, lighting my footsteps with smoldering patches on the beaten-down grass. I followed them, my hands clenched at my sides, and fury like nothing else flowing through me like the fire.
I walked out of the path, toward the fire. One of the kids’ masks had slipped – it was Eric, the linebacker from school. Eric was shoving a box at Louie, who shook his head and said, “No.”
Then Eric threw the box on the fire, and punched Louie in the side of the head.
Louie went down, and that’s when I moved. I ran through the field, grass going up at my footsteps, and ran toward them. I reached with my hand and my will, and pulled at the bonfire.
With a roar, it sent a column of fire to the sky, as the kids stopped beating and kicking Louie. Then, the column exploded down, and all the wood shards, all the burning flame came down with it, like a rain of fire.
Kids screamed as the fire caught on their clothes, in their hair, and all around them. Louie lay still on the ground. I had never done that before, and was shocked and terrified at what I had done. Kids ran into the woods, on fire – some dropped and rolled in the grass. Eric, the linebacker was one of them; however once the fire was out, he took one look at me and took off into the woods.
I didn’t care about the kids at this point, I cared about Louie. My electricity was dying down, and, naked, I knelt next to Louie, brushing the fire off of him. None had hit his beautiful face, thankfully, and most of his clothes caught the fiery bits. He had smoking holes in his shirt and pants.
“Louie!” yelled Gerry, from out of nowhere, and ran up to us. “Oh, my God, Louie!”
He moaned. Oh, thank God, he moaned.
(Alternative ending for Take Me To Church)
Not canon