Collin McGreevy never knew his parents growing up. It was the policy of the Mission Mountain Home for Troubled Boys not to divulge such information until the ward reached eighteen years of age and was no longer the institution''s responsibility.


    On his birthday, when he was to be ejected into the cold, hard world of reality, the director handed him his savings of twenty-five hundred dollars-earned from working on the ''ranch'' and a manila envelope containing the file on his mother and father. One hastily photocopied page, front and back, in a rather large and faded font, was all he would ever know about them.


    Lawrence McGreevy and Heather M. Keller, both of Buffalo, Missouri, were identified through DNA analysis as victims of a house fire in Pablo, Montana. They perished along with five other individuals. The reverse side of the page held a newspaper clipping.


    Escape Addicts Die in House Fire, Baby Left in Car


    A house fire in the early hours of Sunday morning claimed the lives of seven individuals. Police are still working to identify all of the bodies.


    Upon arriving at the scene, the fire department was unable to stop the blaze from consuming the structure. Lake County Sheriff Patrick Ryder was present and reported hearing an infant crying in one of the nearby cars. Ryder quickly extracted the baby from the car and rushed him to St. Luke Community Healthcare in nearby Ronan. A search of the vehicle identified the infant as Collin McGreevy. His parents have been positively identified as casualties of the blaze. Both were known to law enforcement agencies as heavy users of the L1 Escape drug, and the father was wanted in Flathead County for armed robbery.


    Donations for the baby can be sent to St. Luke Community Healthcare.


    Growing up on the ranch, McGreevy learned that bullies came in all shapes, sizes, shades, and hues, and they all had one common gift: learning the weaknesses in their victims and exploiting that to their own twisted ends.


    As a runt in stature and bearing a speech impediment, he had endured the worst of them, but he never lost hope. He studied hard and passed his high school equivalency exams with flying colors. Instead of going to college or enlisting in the military, he opted for the police academy in Helena, driven by a deep conviction to do what he could to protect the weak and vulnerable.


    Upon his graduation from the academy, the Lake County Sheriff''s Department hired him on as a full deputy, where he worked under the guidance of Sheriff Ryder, the very man who had rescued him from that car on that fateful and fiery night.


    During his short career, he gained a sobering view of human nature''s depravity. He was even the arresting officer of several of the men who had bullied him as boys. Lost in the system, they had gone on to lives of crime and addiction, fighting for scraps in the great depression that filled the wake of the artificial intelligence revolution. In a position of authority, he saw how men who were once so cruel now cowered. A few wept openly and begged for forgiveness when they recognized him. McGreevy, for his part, swore to follow the book, be fair yet firm, and use force only when necessary. And above all: to never use his position to enact revenge.


    Then the accident happened. Sheriff Ryder''s overweight heart had exploded in the middle of consuming an old-fashioned donut. Perhaps he could have been saved, but at the time, he was engaged in a high-speed police chase. The one-hundred-and-twenty-mile-per-hour impact with the mountain cut-through on Deadman''s Pass, and the resulting automobile fire, assured an impossibility of resuscitation.


    During the mourning period and the search for an acting sheriff to fill the big man''s shoes until Election Day, Gwen Wolf ran the department in a manner that would have made Sheriff Ryder proud. Despite her flawless execution of the job, which garnered praise from every office of law and justice, Comstock was brought in on a favor from one of the commissioners well-connected with the local High Mountain Rangers. It was a scandalous move that briefly made the local news channels but subsequently dwindled away; squashed, McGreevy suspected, by influential persons higher up the food chain. This confirmed what he had learned in his childhood: the bully virus could manifest anywhere.


    In Comstock, he recognized what he''d seen growing up: an individual with unquestionable authority using his power to prey on the weak. McGreevy should have quit long ago, but he stayed on, thinking he could make a difference. He could not. Or perhaps he wasn''t brave enough or didn''t try hard enough.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Comstock saw Gwen and him as unfortunate baggage from a past administration that had been too soft and too liberal. Gwen, it seemed, was fearless and ready to engage the new Acting Sheriff at every turn. But McGreevy felt a relapse of the fear that had haunted him during his days at the ranch. The taunting returned. Comstock and his militia buddies, whom he sporadically deputized for short-term assignments, had nicknamed him Mouse. He was often relegated to desk duty, and his sexual orientation had become the target of innuendo.


    But tonight, something special had occurred. A crowd of faithful followers, a mysterious fandom, materialized out of the late-autumn evening and swarmed the station. A mix from all walks of life: young, middle-aged, elderly, tattooed bikers, pierced anarchists, men and women in suits, kids in blue jeans and sneakers or boots and cowboy hats. From this multitude, he heard soft murmurings of a single word, Maji. And when the doors opened, they flowed like a religious procession through the lobby, past the booking station, and down the hall to the cell room, where several dropped to their knees and reached out their hands, just as the Greta had done. They were there for the music of that fragile child, Francis Builds A Fire.


    And then the crowd parted, and he remembered Dr. Smith carrying the blue guitar. The bars were just wide enough for it to fit through. He saw the boy play, saw him sing, and though he could not hear it at first, the reaction from the crowd was a murmur of awe at a song that defied description.


    The moment of sound shattered him. Simultaneously a wounding and healing, for the ears needed to be ripped off and the raw hurt laid bare for the salve. The music cut like laser shards through the wool that clouded his mind. Sound to sight; sight to heart.


    He saw things that should have been impossible. It was night. He was in a barn off a highway. A small fire burned in the center. A man, who must have been his father, danced around it, waving his arms frantically, casting his shadow onto the far wall and screaming unintelligible syllables at it. Soft, motherly hands lifted him from the gritty earth, dirt and bits of hay sticking to the blood, wax, and amniotic fluid of the womb.


    He inhaled the first breath of that smoky air. His wails mixed with his father''s, driving the man to a peak of enthusiastic madness. And then the warm clutch of his mother, her face like the moon, as she wiped the fluids from his nose and mouth, pressed him to her teat, and let him drink the sweet, thick, savory, creamy colostrum that simultaneously gagged him and whet him, filled him and lulled him.


    Then he was in his car seat, watching the strange house that had swallowed his parents. It was dark inside for the longest time, and there were glittering stars above the roof. He grew cold and hungry, and he cried his infantile tears until the flames began to lick out the windows, growing larger and larger, charming him into silence. And then other lights, red and blue, and the shadow and the shattering glass as he was taken into strong, manly arms and delivered to the ever-after, ever-lonesome white lights of the institution.


    The day in the forest when the bullies were hunting for him, calling his name, taunting, teasing, full of violent and vicious intent. He was hiding in a burned-out log beneath a sea of emerald flora. They drew nearer and nearer with their cruel laughter, and the fear rising higher and higher. Until his heart pounded louder and faster, and he couldn''t hold it anymore. The urine ran down his leg, soaking his blue jeans, and the boys pulling him up. Beating him, breaking his nose, breaking his teeth, and leaving him as callously as they had found him, promising a time would come again.


    Alone in his aching adolescence, he bled in the verdure of the forest. The blue sky had turned to gray, the mean clouds had tumbled in, the distant thunder rumbled from the strings of the guitar, and the lightning flashed from fragile fingers. And the rain, the branches, and leaves were the hiss of breath across his lips. The rain was warm and full of light that wet him to the core, got into his eyes, mingled with his cries, and washed away the agony in his heart and the terror in his mind.


    More than anything, he wanted to thank the boy. Wanted to tell him that he would do anything for him, he would help him continue his song so others who hid like mice from the cat could see what he saw, feel what he felt, and be changed the way he was changed.


    But the next thing he knew, Comstock was bursting in with his crew, madness and fury in his eyes, beating down innocent people with his club. Beating down Dr. Smith. Beating down Francis. Smashing his guitar.


    For his part, McGreevy had cowered yet again, hiding on the floor in the farthest corner behind everyone. At that instant, he was ashamed. He hadn''t changed after all. He was wet and drenched, people were stepping on him, and at any moment, one of the attackers would notice him and make him hurt before asking questions, because that was the way of bullies.


    But then a stillness settled over him. The tumult faded to a distant clamor. A path emerged between the legs and falling bodies, and at its end he saw Francis, his bloody and swollen face. Their eyes met, and his soul lurched, a flutter in his mind, and everything about him, his darkest fears, his deepest secrets, his sacred memories, were revealed. Francis smiled. He smiled at him and gave a little nod, and then, so gently, he touched the soundboard of the smashed guitar, and a blue light reached out to guide McGreevy.


    Suddenly, a jackbooted foot violently slammed into Francis''s stomach, throwing the boy across the cell.


    McGreevy crawled on his hands and knees like a little mouse through the legs, limbs, and stomping feet. He reached through the prison bars and pulled out the instrument. Holding it to his chest, he crawled unseen the length of the cell room floor, up the steps, and down the back hall to the emergency exit where his truck waited to take him home.