“Such a stupid boy,” said a booming voice. It was Steamspell. “I’d be astonished if he even knows which end to bite from.”
Several people in the audience laughed. Nathan’s face burned with rage and embarrassment. Being part of the show was bad enough without the likes of Steamspell ridiculing him.
He extended his thumb and pressed it against one of the spiders, crushing it.
Mongrel frowned. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
Nathan didn’t respond. He crushed two more of the spiders.
“What did I tell you?” asked Steamspell, letting out a hearty laugh. “He’s trying to eat them with his thumb! I have never been so amused by a display of idiocy!”
Nathan knew that he had the ability to come up with a suitably devastating retort, but instead he ignored the orphanage owner. He continued crushing spiders as quickly as he could.
“Fangboy,” said Mongrel, his voice strained, “it is time to eat one of the spiders now.”
“In a moment.”
“Not in a moment! Now!”
Nathan looked through the selection of spiders and crushed another one. “I’m almost ready.”
Mongrel chuckled nervously and turned his attention back to the audience. “When a boy eats spiders for a living, you can’t always expect him to behave in a rational manner.”
“He won’t do it!” Steamspell declared. “He’ll spill them all over the front of his shirt instead! Oh, how jolly I feel when I see such foolishness!”
Nathan stared into the box of spiders for a few seconds, making sure he hadn’t missed any that he wanted to squash, and then picked up the entire box. Mongrel glared at him with very, very angry eyes. The box was supposed to remain on the floor.
“Go on, eat the spiders!” said Steamspell.
“No,” said Nathan. “
To say that there was chaos would be an understatement.
Women screamed. Men screamed. People shoved. The entire audience became a flailing mass of panic. Nathan grinned, able to comfortably enjoy the frenzy knowing that he’d behaved in a responsible manner and crushed all of the poisonous spiders before throwing them at people.
Steamspell clawed at his face, which was covered in spiders, and let out a high-pitched scream that was far from demonstrative of the amount of dignity expected from a man of his stature. The cigar dropped from his mouth.
Unfortunately, when the theatre was being built, “fire safety” was not among Professor Mongrel’s top ten concerns. (In fact, had he taken the time to rank these concerns, fire safety would have ranked somewhere around forty-seven, right before “identifying the odd green stain on the ceiling” and right after “bolstering the rear wall in case large animals go on a rampage and repeatedly smash against it.”)
Most wooden floors, though not fireproof, do not burst into flames as soon as a lit cigar falls upon them. It remains unknown why the floor reacted in this matter. The most widely held theory is that the wood was saturated with gasoline, thus explaining its low cost, although those who argue against the theory counter with the fact that gasoline has a distinct smell and somebody should have noticed.
Regardless of the reason, the floor immediately caught fire. The level of panic increased accordingly.
Steamspell spun in a circle, batting away spiders and flames. “Help me!” he screamed. “Somebody take pity on a poor gentleman who is burning to death!”
The flames quickly spread. Nobody else seemed to be actively on fire, but the flames passed from seat to seat as if blown by a strong wind. Patrons were pouring out of the theatre’s four exits, which were providing an excellent means of escape even though they were designed to save wood instead of lives.
Steamspell was perhaps the lowest quality human being Nathan had ever known, yet he certainly couldn’t just stand here and let the man burn to death!
He rushed forward, but only made it two steps before Mongrel grabbed the back of his suit. “Where do you think you’re going, you miserable little bastard?”
“I have to save him!”
“Let his skin crack and blister! I care not!”
Nathan tried to tug away from him. His costume had been constructed with the same standards of durability as the floor, and the back tore off, freeing Nathan and leaving an enraged Mongrel with a handful of cloth that was of no use to him. Nathan leapt off the stage, thinking that cheap clothing had worked out very well for him in his various escape attempts, and that he would always wear low quality attire in the future.
“It burns! It burns!” Steamspell shouted.
“Drop to the floor and roll!”
“There is no spot that isn’t alight!”
“There’s a small one, right over there!”
“I’ll never reach it in time!”
“It’s right next to you!”
“There’s a spider in my mouth!”
“Just drop to the floor!”
“I swallowed it!”
Nathan sighed with frustration and then shoved Steamspell, aiming for a non-burning part of the orphanage owner. Steamspell was a large man and the shoving did no good, so Nathan kicked him in the ankle as hard as he could. Steamspell fell to the floor.
“Roll! Roll!”
Though there wasn’t much room for Steamspell to roll around between the rows of seats, he was able to roll without actually moving anywhere. Nathan kicked at him to help the process along, and soon the flames died out. Steamspell lay there, face-up, his skin severely burnt and smoke billowing from what little remained of his clothes.
Nathan wondered: would he be grateful to Nathan for saving his life, or would he immediately try to kill him?
The answer seemed obvious, and so Nathan ran.
“Oh no you don’t!” shouted Mongrel, grabbing Nathan’s arm as he rushed out into the aisle. “You’ll not be escaping that easily!”
The sleeve tore off, allowing Nathan to easily escape and deepening his resolve to always wear the cheapest clothes imaginable. He ran up the aisle, blinking back tears from all of the smoke. There were no charred corpses to step over, which was good. He ran out into the lobby, which hadn’t yet caught fire, wove through the screaming panicked theatergoers, and hurried into the long narrow hallway. The hallway seemed much shorter when taken at a full run, and soon he reached the exit and rushed outside.
Safe!
Now what? Though people were fleeing to their various means of transportation, Nathan didn’t think that any of them would offer a ride to the fang-toothed monster who’d caused the inferno. He could probably escape unnoticed in the pandemonium, but he wanted to quickly get as far from this place as possible.
And—what a stroke of luck!—there were the horses. They no longer had a coach to pull, and he could certainly ride them to safety.
Of course, everybody knows that riding a horse is not as easy as simply jumping upon its back and requesting a destination. It is also important to remember that Nathan was only seven years old, and thus rather short. So though he picked the smaller of the two horses, Nathan struggled and struggled but couldn’t climb up onto the animal.
“You stupid horse, let me up there!” he said (something he would later regret, for the horse’s height was not its fault). He desperately tried to imagine himself as a taller person, but that did no good. There was no time to seek out a ladder. No time to seek out a trampoline. No time to seek advice from a cowboy.
“I’ll have your head!”
Nathan glanced back over his shoulder. Steamspell, who was so badly burnt that Nathan would not have recognized him if he had not witnessed the actual burning process, lurched out of the theatre, arms extended.
