The plastic recoils like it can feel the heat, wrinkling into a ruche around the burn. Ricky watches with motionless eyes and brings the flame in again. This time he holds it on until a black wisp of smoke curls upwards, eddying in the late fall air like the perfect strokes of an artist. In seconds a yellow flame consumes it entirely. He flies to open the window as the acridness of the fumes stings his eyes into motion and makes him cough. When he turns back it is simply black and fragile, its flexibility lost. Then his face cracks into a sly grin. Already his mind is searching his home and school for more things to burn. With one strike of his match they would never be the same again, it was a similar thrill to the one he had when he made his first maze in woodwork, but so very much easier.