Free The Fire-Eaters by David Almond

to heat and cold, the way it reddens and whitens, the way it trembles and creeps, the way it keeps the outside out and the inside in, but how the barrier is broken time and again by germs and sweat and biting insects and how easy it is to pierce, how easy it is to draw blood. I wrote a couple of pages. I drew a few diagrams. Then I stopped. I got my blazer and searched the seams. I found Mam's tacking pin. I sat in front of the Lourdes light and started touching the needle point to my skin. In the places where I felt nothing, I pressed harder until I could feel something. In one or two places, I drew tiny bulbs of blood. I pushed the needle into the hard skin at the edge of my thumbnail and found I could push it all the way through and feel nopain. I tried other places, but could tell that I'd quickly be in agony. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine being McNulty. I held an imaginary skewer and mimed pushing it from cheek to cheek. How could he do such a thing? I went downstairs. Mam and Dad were watching telly. I told them I was getting a drink of water. I found a box of matches and took them upstairs. I opened my window to let the smell out. I lit a match. I touched the flame with my fingertip and gasped with pain. But I found I could run my finger through the flame and feel next to nothing. I practiced doing it slowly and more slowly. I tried to imagine being McNulty. I held a lighted match before my open mouth and drew it closer, closer. I flinched from its heat. I imagined taking a great blazing torch into my mouth. How could he do such a thing? I went to the little bookshelf on the landing. I found a picture of St. Sebastian with a dozen arrows in him and his eyes turned toward heaven. I read about saints who fasted and whipped themselves and went mad and spent years in wild places. Why did they do such things? What was the point of all that pain? I thought of Jesus writhing on his cross. What did it mean, that his pain had helped to save us? I went back to my room and watched night falling over the sea. The light turned, the sea turned, the stars came out. I breathed the night air. I wanted to stop being me, just for a moment, a second. I wanted to break free of my skin, to be the sea, the sky, a stone, the lighthouse light,to be out there in the gathering darkness, to be nothing, unconscious, wild and free.
    “Bobby! Bobby!”
    “Yes, Mam?”
    “Howay, son. Leave them books. I've put some cocoa on.”

A nother Sunday morning. I went to the quayside again with Mam but McNulty was nowhere to be seen. We drank hot mugs of tea. We watched the seagulls plunging from their nests on the underside of the bridge. We inspected the rainbow patterns on the surface of the river. Mam bought some scarves for the coming winter and as she passed the money over, she said, “There's often a man here. He breathes fire and…”
    The stall holder had a thick woollen coat on and thick gloves.
    “Oh, him,” she said. “The nutter. He's not been seen. Just as well, if you ask me. You call that entertainment? Should be strung up, if you ask me.”
    We took the lift up to the bridge again. The man inside remembered us. He giggled and showed us the entry in his notebook.
    “See,” he said. “You're written down. You really do exist.”
    He ushered us out.
    “Goodbye, madam,” he said. “Farewell, young sir.” He dictated our new entry to himself. “The return visit from a lady and her son …”
    We looked down from the bridge, but still no sign of McNulty. We walked back up into the city. We headed homeward in the bus. I looked out at the streets and then the fields and lanes, hoping that I'd see him. Mam hummed “Bobby Shafto” at my side.
    At home, Dad was roaring with laughter as we went in.
    “Come and see!” he said. “Quick! Come and see!”
    He had the TV on. There was a man in a sports jacket smoking a pipe. A Labrador lay peacefully at his side. There was a deep hole in the ground. It had a concrete floor and it