* * *
I made my way out of the hospital where the rain had stopped and the clouds had begun to lighten and disperse. I trotted through the parking lot in a slight daze ruminating on what Katie had shared with me and then entered the car while I absently dug the keys out of my pocket. My hand was halfway to the ignition with the jingling keys and small flashlight when I noticed the message burned onto the steering wheel in small letters. It was a phrase with which I was well acquainted and in this case it also served as a reminder and a warning: “It was a pleasure to burn.”
Instead of causing fear, which is what I supposed it was intended to do, it made me angry. I resolved even further in that moment not to be intimidated by the torch-bearing dark man I had seen in the hospital painting. But the event also helped me realize something important. It told me I was going to need some kind of plan in the very near future and I was going to have to discover some way to fight back. “If it was a pleasure to burn,” I repeated to the message on the steering wheel, “then I’ll just have to see to it that you burn in Hell.”