He watched as the remnants of Manhattan faded to ash, then looked at his hands in horror.  Max now knew of what he was capable--burning an entire city, and making people flee like scattered cinders in the wind.  Balling his fists into his eyes, he let the tears streak his ash-blackened face as his silent scream reverberated in the streets, only to return on lonely black wings.  

He wanted so badly to reverse time and undo what he had done.  He should have refused the Gift in the first place--at least then Mom would have been alive.  They had told him it was a Gift.  He laughed, and the sound of it was a rock plunging into a bottomless well.  

It was a Curse.

2 months before

“It’s not your decision, Karen,” the Carrier snapped, glaring at the woman he had once so admired.

12-year-old Max watched as his mom ignored his decision with her usual annoying aplomb.  Ever since Dad had died when he was four, she had been hovering around him like a queen bee, stinging him with her good intentions.  

The Carrier’s cheeks blazed. “You’re no longer part of this group, Karen.  You made that clear long ago.”

Mom’s face whitened. “Don’t you dare take Max away from me, Darren.  I already lost Caleb.”

Max could feel the tension in the room swirl like an approaching tsunami.  At Dad’s name, his ears had perked. Mom rarely mentioned Dad’s death and refused to say anything more than that he had died in a tragic accident. Max had always inferred that his dad died in a car crash, but now he was starting to have second thoughts.  Hearing Dad mentioned only made him more curious and eager to accept the Carrier’s offer.  He had to speak.

“I want to do it, Mom.  I don’t want to be ordinary anymore.  This is my one chance to escape being--just...you know, me.”

Mom sent him an exasperated look as she clutched the back of her chair.  

“Please don’t do this, Max.  You don’t understand what this will do to you,” Mom pleaded with eyes like two dying stars.

At that moment, two security guards burst into the room and dragged Mom out.  Mom fought them at first, but was quickly overpowered by the two men who looked like they could rip apart a building before breakfast.  

Max felt his heart clench as he saw what they were doing to Mom, but he wanted so badly to be special that he felt his heart harden and stared at the floor.  He would make it up to her later.  She would understand in time--of how much this meant to him, and then, she would realize he had been right all along.  

The Carrier preened in triumph, then gestured for Max to follow. Max stood and did so, his anticipation blooming with each step he took toward his bright and golden future.  

But then, he saw the boy-sized Tube in the room’s center, and something inside him froze. Wires were connected to the Tube, and Carriers were swarming over it like a swarm of bees. Max’s heart stuttered when he realized what they expected him to do. 

But then, as everyone’s attention swiveled to him, he felt fireworks of joy.  It was the first time anyone had given him a second glance.  Within a week, he thought, he would be getting all the attention he wanted that was way overdue.  As the Carrier guided him towards the Tube, a storm of thoughts rushed into Max’s mind. 

He had so many questions, yet he forced himself to shut his mouth and close his mind to his growing apprehension.  If he said something, all his dreams would disappear. He made no sound, even when the Carriers injected him with a liquid that made his whole body throb as he entered the Tube.

He cried out as the door closed and gas filled the enclosure.  He was suffocating.  He had to get out!  His knees buckled as he sank, but the straps held him up like limp puppet.  

Soon, all he knew was blackness.

* * * * * * *

He awoke in a dusty old room of his mind, sitting at a table with two Carriers.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” a young woman asked, her face a placid mask of indifference.  

Beside her, a man with cold eyes sat.  Max knew they were both Carriers.  They had The Mark on the backs of their starched white lab coats--the Eye of Horus.

Max lifted his arm and yelled out in surprise.  He was a hologram!  Max could see himself, but his body was fuzzy and could pass right through the table where they all sat.  The two Carriers gave no indication they were aware Max was with them. 

“Karen, this is what we’ve been waiting for all these years…this is what you dedicated your life to create.”  The young man’s eyes glittered with hope and eagerness.

Max was startled when he heard his mom’s name emerge from the man’s mouth.  It was then he noticed the young woman was in fact his mom--she had the same soft brown eyes and an echo of her warm smile.  The gears in Max’s head were turning--his mom was not only a Carrier but a vital part of the Tube experiment. He couldn’t mask the obvious surprise rippling across his face.  

Just then, a Carrier entered the room and led the man to the adjacent room. Max tried to conceal himself, then blushed when he remembered he was invisible to everyone but him.  He was in the memory of someone’s past.

Max’s vision swiveled out of sight, then refocused.  It appeared he was in the Tube room with Mom at the Lab under Times Square. The younger version of Mom  was fingering a locket that she never once took off.  He strained to hear voices, then saw men preparing to enter the Tube.   But for now, it was just her, staring blankly at the Tube with hollow eyes.

It wasn’t empty.

The sound of cracking glass emanated from the Tube; the man inside was thrashing in agony.  Panicked Carriers were scuttling to their stations to figure out what was going on. 

All of a sudden, the man cracked his way out of the Tube and collapsed onto the ground.  He was wheezing, beads of sweat trickling down his neck. 

“CALEB!” The younger version of his mother rushed to the man’s side.  She was bellowing for a medic’s aid, but none came.

* * * * * * *

Max’s vision blurred out of focus again and returned only to reveal the horrible truth.  The young man was now standing on the Main Street of a little town--caught in the midst of his own cocoon of winds. Everyone except Mom was scuttling to seek shelter. 

“CALEB!  Let go.  Stop battling your Element…it’ll kill you!” she sobbed as her whole body shuddered.  “I can’t lose you!  Max is on his way.  Think, Caleb--little Maxy needs his dad.”  

Max felt his heart wrench as he watched Mom break down in tears, crumpling to the dirt road with a thud.  Blood was gushing from her face from where she had been hit by flying debris.  She didn’t seem to notice it; the only thing that mattered to her was her husband. 

The winds slowed but didn’t stop.  The man was lurching forward, his arms outstretched towards his wife.  Mom’s eyes held the dying star look again--as if she had never seen her husband so vulnerable.

Every step Caleb took looked to be his last.  He didn’t stop until he reached Mom, who held out her arms to him, tears welling in her eyes.

“Karen, they didn’t tell us,” the man gasped, holding out his arms so he could touch his wife one last time.  “The Element can’t be controlled--and I can’t fight it anymore.  I’m sorry--”

Max watched in horror as his father let go and let himself be sucked into the swirl of winds.  He knew now what he had signed up for 

* * * * * * *

Max’s eyes snapped open from his horrifying vision.  The man’s words echoed inside his head. 

“The element can’t be controlled…” 

Max felt his body tingle, but his mind was a blur.  Max didn’t know what he was thinking of a second ago.  What was his name... where was he...what is going on?  Max tried grasping for a sign of who he was.  The only thing he could remember in the blank whiteboard of his mind was the vision he had had. Every time he squeezed his mind into trying, heat suffocated him. 

Max couldn’t take much longer; he tried screaming in frustration.  What escaped his mouth wasn’t a cry.  It was frustrated, irritated fire that sprang forth.  The Carriers stared in amazement at his fire, which only made him angrier.  He stoked the fire inside him until it snapped into fatal flame.

His anger wasn’t his own.  It was the Element’s, just like his father had said. The Element can’t be controlled--Max knew how much his father had been right.  A women staggered into view and called his name. 

 Even when she started sobbing she was his mom and that she wanted him to come back he didn’t recognize or care anymore. His hands unleashed fire and turned everyone in the room to ash.  

Something in Max’s mind was nagging in the back of his head--something about the people he had just killed.  Yet his Element took everything and locked it inside his mind until he didn’t care anymore.  He wasn’t Max Boring Exwell anymore--he was eternal fire.  Max’s fire spread throughout Manhattan until everything was gone.  

The fire, his fire, wouldn’t stop.  His memory was fuzzy, but it was enough to fuel the fire with his anger, guilt, loneliness, and loss. He was finally home.  Would he wake up and realize what he had done?

He didn’t care, not anymore.