Michael: Pyro the Rising Son (Flash Fiction in the Sage Ritzkan Series)

"I'll burn this building down to the ground," said Michael through his teeth, seething.

There are a lot of abbreviated Mikes (serious sports types or bespectacled A students with great posture). And then there are the less common, though often more popular, Mikeys (pudgy and jovial with welcoming cheeks or red headed class clowns with scabbed knees that you can respect). But even rarer still are the male Mickeys. Foreign to most they were, the way they could carry on in the footsteps of two legends, one a heavy drinker with a free swinging wooden club, the other a squeaky cheese addict germaphobe propping up an empire. Even the poor souls named after tin cans of fermented chemical dregs have a way about themselves that exudes self-reliance in the face of a belt or a switch. 

But Michaels? They don't exist in the halls of elementary. You'll find them in bar exams, on trustee boards, or among "the faculty". Michaels are where the Mikes, Mikeys and Mickeys go to die, to develop dignified guts, wealthy double chins, and respectfully ginny checks. 

So why this child Michael, you may be asking? Because the innocence within him is long gone, like a chaise lounge in a hurricane. Teachers sense the pit of rotten guts solidified into a chrysalis reptilian shell, black like silverfish, pumping every couple of seconds as a normal heart might do, spitting up cauldronic bubbly waste that oozes into his veins and up to his brain, driving it like a banshee conductor on a runaway track, and they disengage fearfully. 

"I'll reduce this motherfucker down to black," he reiterates with satisfactory malaise.