He plodded down the crowded hall, listening to the sirens blaring above the frenzied cries of the crowd. In ripped jeans and a baggy striped shirt, he stared blankly at the people running around him, not paying much attention to them. He held a pink stuffed rabbit close to his beating heart—a heart thrown away. A burnt match fell out of his pocket. He noticed a warped smile on the face of a man sitting at a coffee, and turned to watch the man. The man put his coffee down and acknowledged the boy without looking at him.
“Boy, where are your parents in this time of crisis?” The man contrasted vividly with the crowd around him. While everyone ran for the doors of the Toluca Mall, he sipped his coffee placidly, gazing at the spectacle around him with interest.
The boy stopped, clutching his rabbit tightly. “Why aren’t you running? Aren’t you afraid of getting burned?”
The man smiled, looking apathetic to the distress surrounding him. “I am not the one who set the forest surrounding this mall. The one who did so should worry, for the Red Devil will come to take them away to a very bad place.”
Fear grazed the boy’s expression, but he refused to give in to the man’s claims. “Of course the devil’s red!” he spat, stomping his foot. “And don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!”
The man took another sip of his coffee, not looking at him. “It’s too late for the sinner…the fog consumes the bad…tell me, boy, your name.”
“…I don’t have a name,” the boy muttered, awkwardly noting the topic change. “I named myself James.”
“Who are you to name yourself?” the man asked. “In fact, why should we have names in the first place? Do humans need names? Did God intend for us to label each other with a name? Does it divide us further? You are James and I am Walter. Does that make us different?”
“I suppose so, ‘cuz we don’t look alike or anything. Plus you’re a big man and I’m a little boy. I bet you had parents. I didn’t.” James shoved the blond hair from his dull blue eyes.
Walter smirked and handed him his coffee. “I hate my father, but my mother is very special to me. Maybe you can see her one day. I could take you to her.”
“Like you care about me! No one does.” James held his rabbit close, its cotton neck bent against his chest.
Walter noticed the rabbit’s painful position. “Careful there, boy. If you break its neck, then no one is left to love you.” He stood up, walking through the crowd of people and holding out his hand. “Do you want to know the truth about your parents, boy?”
James took a wary step back. “H-How would you know who my parents were? We’ve just met!”
Walter’s damaged smile pervaded his mind. It clung to the walls of his eyes and remained there, festering in his childlike paranoia. James quivered and looked away from him, noticing Walter still wasn’t looking him in the eye.
“James, I know everything about everyone. It’s because humans are the same. Once you figure one out, you figure out all the rest.”
The boy harrumphed, disregarding his hand, but still followed Walter as he began to walk away from his table. As they moved in the opposite direction of the crowd, smoke began pouring into the building. James kicked the match he dropped out of the way; Walter noticed but said nothing.
“You know,” James began in realization, “you never paid for your stuff back there. Now my parents would have never done that.” Despite the man’s prior warnings, his arm was still firmly latched around the rabbit’s neck.
Walter laughed. “You’re right. They wouldn’t, but every human being hates spending money. I acted on a human instinct. Does that not make me more human than your parents?”
James stopped, the crowd far behind them. “Don’t talk about them like that! They were good people!”
The older man’s messy hair fell in front of his face. “I’m sure they were. But being good doesn’t mean being human. Perhaps they were angels...or maybe devils.”
“They weren’t devils! Mommy and daddy loved me! I just never met them, that’s all. That’s why I’m not with them.”
James continued to follow Walter, though he wasn’t sure where he was going. The window exploded by them, and fire crawled through the broken glass, shooting at them in crackles. James shrieked and Walter pulled him through a doorway, shutting it behind them. It was unbearably hot, and while James started panting heavily, Walter seemed unaffected.
“W-Walter,” James moaned, “why aren’t we leaving? I don’t wanna die...”
“Die?” Walter asked, as if death was unheard of. “Why on earth would you die? You’re the one who started the fire for attention. I can hear it in your voice, boy. You take pleasure in hurting others, but what you really like is being caught. You want to be punished, so you know you can feel pain, so you can think you’re human.”
“I am human!” James insisted. “If I’m not, then what am I?”
“I don’t know, boy. A gum-head, perhaps? Someone who thinks they know more than they do? Something who believes they are too good for others?”
James went for the door, tearing up at the man’s harsh words. When grasping the door handle, he felt fire on the other side. It traveled through the metal of the handle and burnt his hand. He screamed and fell, tripping over himself in fear and dropping his rabbit.
Walter stood over him, long coat obscuring his figure. “I’ve already told you. The Red Devil will execute his punishment on any sinner who thinks that they can undermine the rules of humanity.”
Flames spread throughout the ceiling, an infectious disease waiting to consume everything without regard for screaming and pain. It was an enemy James couldn’t make merciful, not like the grocers. Fire wasn’t nice.
The boy scrambled up and took off, screaming. He rushed to every door he could find, pounding on them despite the burning sensation spreading through his fists. Tears blurred his vision as he tried to bust through a window, Walter watching him with amusement.
His vision clearing, he saw a terrifying spectacle. The forest around the mall was ablaze, turning the verdant scenery into an inferno of crimson that licked at the air, heavily ridden with smoke. There was nothing left of the green that had once been there, only the hungry flames, which crawled up the building, looking to swallow anything during its insatiable journey.
“I...I made this,” James whispered, shaking in fear. “I...I...made Hell.”
The flames trapped him in their curls, surrounding him with inescapable heat. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he cried, trying to find some desperate way to leave. He saw Walter still standing there.
“PLEASE HELP ME!” he begged, sobbing. “I DIDN’T MEAN TO SET THE FOREST ON FIRE...I JUST WANTED SOMEONE TO NOTICE ME!”
Walter didn’t answer him. He merely looked upon the boy’s misery with relish. It was then that he looked straight into James’ eyes for the first time.
They were icy, chiseled into his gaunt face clumsily but effectively. They cast a gray judgment on James, pupils ringed with laughter and malice. The eyes judged. The eyes saw all. The eyes knew, by just one glance, that he was a bad boy. He was a sinner. Hell had been forged to take him, to burn his invisible wings that the eyes saw. It was a gaze that bore into him, ripping his heart out and scrutinizing it with tainted vision.
Oh, God, James thought, before the fire consumed him. I...I found the Red Devil.
It was the next day when the flames were dead. The forest was charred black and nothing alive was anything more than dust. The police had kept everyone away from the area, hoping to clean up the mess as quickly as possible.
One police officer watched as someone was taken out on a stretcher, hidden underneath the white blanket. Funny, how white meant purity, yet the blanket always told of death.
“Who?” the officer asked a paramedic, dismally surveying the mall ruins.
“A little boy. We haven’t IDed him yet, but...poor thing. He was in the back part of the mall, where the offices are. We don’t know how he got there, though...every door was locked. Plus, the room he was in was completely normal. The fire hadn’t reached that room.”
The cop cocked an eyebrow. “That’s not something I’d call normal. We’ll check it out.”
He headed towards the mall doors. A flash of pink caught his eye and he paused, looking over at the remains of the forest. A man was standing beside a tree’s skeleton, in a long coat, with shaggy blonde hair. He held a pink stuffed rabbit lovingly in his arms, as if it were a baby.
The officer stared at him. The man’s head turned to look at him, slowly casting his eyes on the man in blue. A shock went through the cop’s mind when his eyes locked with the stranger’s. Coldness spread through his veins, and pure terror filled him, thinking for a wild second that the fire would start again and he’d die. He shook his head, unfocused, and when he looked back, the man was gone.
“I’m seeing things now. See what this job does to me?” The officer asked his friend coming up next to him.
“You’ve always been crazy.”
The cop laughed. “I guess you’re right,” he said, and entered the mall.

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