I have been terrified of fire for as long as I can remember.
Not normal caution. Real fear. As a child, I would scream if candles were lit in the room. I could not stand fireplaces, birthday candles, or even the sound of matches.
My parents had no explanation. Nothing bad had happened to me.
When I was six, I told my mother, “I do not want the roof to fall again.”
She asked what I meant.
I said, “The smoke was everywhere, and I could not open the door.”
I do not remember saying this, but my mother wrote it down because it frightened her.
Years later, I found an old newspaper article about a house fire in a nearby town from decades before I was born. A child had died inside.
The child’s bedroom was described as being at the back of the house, behind a door that had swollen shut from the heat.
I know it could be coincidence.
But I still cannot light a candle without feeling like I have done it before, and it ended badly.