Fire

A huge, lone figure sat in a near-empty locker room, unmoving. He is a 7 feet tall, 350 pound behemoth, but even that glaring irregularity is not what people first notice about him when they see him. What's most extraordinary about this man was that he wore a leather mask that totally concealed his face wherever he went.

People, most notably his co-workers, complain that he is too quiet for his own good. Not that his line of work needed much talking. He is a professional wrestler, after all, known to fans worldwide as the inconquerable Armada, who finishes off his sorry opponents with relative ease and calculated coldness. In the background, a radio was playing the Jerry Lee Lewis classic "Great Balls Of Fire", which triggered a part of his memory best left forgotten. A sordid incident that happened many moons ago, which literally forced him to wear the expressionless mask until his dying day.

To say that he had a miserable childhood would be an understatement. Being a child with an abnormal, sometimes unimaginable growth rate, he towered over his peers. That probably kept the bullies off his back, but still did not stop the teases from smacking his face from all sides, all the time. The cruelness of children became painfully evident when, instead of calling him by his name, Shawn Harlan, they would hurl morale-crushing names like "freak", "big daddy" and "Gigantor" at him. What was even worse was that they talked about him behind his back and spread rumours about him, as if his pride needed any more damaging. A "last straw" incident occurred when a scrawny 12-year-old suggested what his parents might look like to hoards of laughter. Shawn punched out the vigilante and got suspended for it.

Shawn had another abnormal condition that many people would readily want, and that abnormality really made his career choice all the more obvious. The pain receptors beneath his exterior is not fully developed. So to him, a punch felt just like a tap. He was well aware of this, but never shared this knowledge with anybody, since he deemed it not important. All his life the pain inflicted upon him was by unkind words, and he would often be left wondering where certain bruises came from because he never felt it coming.

The bitter story unfolded itself on the night of June 5th, 1976. Shawn, ten years old then, was sitting at the counter of the kitchen in his home, listening to the soothing sounds of the radio, his "unanswering friend". He intentionally cranked up the volume because he knew his favourite songs were going to be played. His parents, meanwhile, were about their business in the living room. Eventually, the familiar song was heard, along with everything that played out, eerily, throughout the length of the song.

"You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain..."

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the gas tank metres away from Shawn exploded. Boom. He only had time to look back towards the sound before feeling the sweltering heat all around him. He had seen huge bonfires before, but never imagined to be so near one. He never thought that fire could be do fearsome, so dominant, so... suffocating.

"Too much love drives a man insane..."

The raging hellfire from the explosion spread everywhere, from the sink, to the counter, to the curtains, to the windows, to the walls. There were no means of escape. Shawn clambered down to the floor, gasping for air, and crawled towards the corner furthest from the former gas tank. He did not know why, he just knew he had to. He was not thinking about the welfare of his parents nor what was happening outside the kitchen. He just prayed, hoped and wished that he would soon be rescued and this would all be over. The kitchen was gradually turning to mere shades of red, orange and yellow, all colours seemingly enraged at something.

"You broke my will, I want a thrill..."

The inferno continued and engulfed almost the entire kitchen. The ceiling was beginning to give way following several loud cracks above. Everything in the kitchen, the stove, the oven, even the radio, seemed on the verge of spontaneously combusting. Acting on pure instinct and out of tremendous fear, Shawn scrambled towards the refrigerator and pryed its doors open with his bare hands. A whiff of cool air seemed to welcome him. He wanted to shut himself inside the fridge, but blaming his enormous physique for the first time in his life, he could only envelope himself as much as he could within the fridge door.

"Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!"

The fire was merciless, burning down everything still within its line of sight. In no time at all, the ceiling caved in and huge chunks of wood rained down towards the kitchen floor. The walls, coated with fire, were closing in, ever so quickly. The debris all around Shawn made it hard for him to see anything at all. He looked down, and to both his dismay and shock, his arms were on fire, literally. There and then he could not decide whether his inability to feel pain was a blessing or a curse, while the fire tore into his flesh. He started to scream, but silence was his only response. What else was he to do? Nothing. He shut his eyes tight, and a flurry of random thoughts raced to his mind.
"The walls are closing in."
"Where is help?"
"I cannot breathe."
Darkness.

Shawn opened his eyes to find himself staring at a narrow white ceiling. Miraculously, he had survived the fire. He sat up slowly, only to see other people with different plights, each with their own agonising pain, and their own story to forget. Burn victims. It dawned on him that he was in a hospital, but nobody was there at his bedside. "So what else is new?" he thought. He had become accustomed with loneliness anyway. He reached for his own face, but could only feel the coldness of cotton. His face was in bandages, and soon he came to realise that his arms, too, were heavily bandaged. What went on while he was unconscious?

He called for the nurse, who in turn called for the doctor. Dr Vond, with a solemn expression, explained that his parents perished in the fire, and that it was a miracle that he survived after being trapped for hours in the kitchen before the firemen found him in a foetal position just in front of the refrigerator. Shawn could care less about the cause of the fire, and declined the explanation for it.

In a matter of weeks, Shawn had an astonishing rate of recovery, although he has been told that his face was far too disfigured to even consider any plastic surgery. When the hospital felt that they did all they could with him, he was transferred to the town orphanage under the care of a strict traditionalist. He refused to have the bandage wrapped around his face removed, and for the first few months in the orphanage, he was given herbal medicine to speed up his skin tissue recovery. How ironic and grotesquely poetic it was, that the fire that permanently warped his face, reshaped his reality and forever diminished his chances of leading a normal life, was used to boil the medicine probably needed to sustain his life.

"Armada, showtime, big guy."

Shawn's manager snapped him back to reality. It was time to put on his costume and revel in the cheers of his fans as he pounded the stuffing, figuratively, out of his next opponent. This was where he felt he found solace, and more importantly, where he belonged. No one questioned his past, not his co-workers nor his fans, who took in his enigmatic silent hunter in-ring persona as if it was yesteray's news. His antisocial behaviour and aura of mystery contributed to that as well. But then again, for the first time in his life, he felt content with his life, being able to fully utilise his physical abilities and entertain millions along the way, where prejudice is virtually non-existant. The only thing he could do about his past was wish it away until it finally vanishes like a fading memory.

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