Sometimes your eyes just don’t fit the rest of your family’s. My father’s were green. My mother’s were blue. Mine are a beautiful amber.

“Well maybe your just not my son,” says my father. He’s only joking. We know we’re related, I was born with the same overbite as everyone else on his side of the family. You wouldn’t be able to tell anymore though, I’ve had it corrected years ago.

“You’re a god-damned lizard person,” accuses my brother, Jeremy. He’s not being serious, but I wouldn’t call it a joke. He’s legitimately spiteful towards me and my bright yellow eyes are an easy target. I think he might be jealous of them. Which, honestly, makes me a little happy.

“There’s an old myth,” suggests my grandmother. “An old story about babies like you.” Unlike my other relatives, she wasn’t being facetious. She said everything with a deathly solemn glance. “New souls are born all the time, but most of us inherit our immaterial from the deceased. These are our past lives. The scars and memories from these former existences sometimes carry over into the next life. Especially grave events.” My grandmother intruded my space and pulled down on the skin around my right eye. She stared deeply into its iris. “Sometimes your eyes can be stained. Somebody in your past must have gazed deeply into a substantial amount of gold!”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I’m like a pirate or something...”

My grandmother frowned. She scolded me, “You should take this more seriously. It’s important that we know our bodies inside and out. Here, take this and go to the Whole Foods on Hillsboro Pike. There’s an expert manning register three.” My grandmother slipped a hundred dollar bill into my palm. “She’s my friend, but the money is a courtesy.”

I wouldn’t normally meet with my grandmother’s random acquaintances. Especially those she meets through gossiping at the grocery store. But I realized that the answer to my eyes has eluded me for so long that I wouldn’t mind a solid explanation, even from an unusual source.

The psychic working the register recognized me immediately. She waved me over to her lane. It was otherwise empty. She told me she knew my face from the pictures my grandmother showed her. “I knew those eyes would lead you here eventually,” she said with a sly smile. “Those things don’t come from your family, that's for sure. They’re so bright. It’s otherworldly.” The psychic introduced herself as Melissandra. She ripped a piece of blank receipt paper off her roll and began jotting down a shopping list. She took the hundred from me and replaced it with the list.

“Pick up these supplies, then meet me in the Eurovan parked behind the store. I’ll have the back door unlocked.”

I followed her orders and bought a small bottle of Pompeian olive oil, a shaker full of pink Himalayan salt, and some paper towels. I carried them out to the van and slid open its back door. Melissandra was waiting inside, picking Pringles out of a green lunch bag. “We’ve got to make this fast,” she said. “I’ve only got till the end of my lunch break.” Melissandra immediately dug into my supplies. 

She tore off a sheet from the paper towels, dipped it in the olive oil while whispering a few unintelligible words, then coated it with salt. She scratched the salt-crusted surface of the towel over her forehead till a little pink circle formed between her eyes. “This should exacerbate my esp.” She placed her palms over my ears and pulled me in close to her face.

“So if it turns out that I used to be a rich dude? Does that mean there’s a good chance I’ll end up that way again?”

“Yes. The eyes are just the tip of the iceberg, your past life will affect your every move,” explained Melissandra. “But why do you assume these come from treasure?”

“My grandma said something like that.”

“That’s just what I told her to keep her optimistic,” admitted Melissandra. “I’m not going to bad mouth somebody’s grandchildren. But you should know the truth. There’s so much amber in this world, it mustn’t only come from bars of gold. A trained iridologist can tell the source just by analysing the little freckles in your stromal melanin. Your’s could be from the sun, but I think it’s rather just… fire in general. Have you ever had any strong emotions when around a flame?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Well if it’s sadness, you might have shoveled coal. But if it’s excitement… then there’s a good chance you were some kind of firebug.”

“You mean an arsonist?”

Melissandra nodded. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a yellow lighter. She clicked it on and held it between us. “How’s this make you feel?” She grabbed a takeout menu laying on the floor of her car and held its corner up to the flame. The menu slowly ignited up its side.

“Not sad,” I sighed. “I suppose... intrigued.”

Melissandra nodded. Then she picked a water bottle out of her lunch bag and poured its contents overtop the flames. The fire went out, but the ensuing smoke filled up the back of the van. It burned my eyes, so I threw open the door and hurried outside.

“It’s time for you to leave anyways,” said Melissandra. “The second half of my shift is just about to begin.”

I went home feeling like I just received bad news from a doctor. I kept trying to remind myself it was, in fact, a quack in the back of a Eurovan, but it wasn’t very effective. I needed somebody to talk to that could smack some sense into me. I settled on my older brother.

“So he’s not a lizard person, he’s a pyro,” laughed Jeremy. “You know, if it bothers you that much, don’t take it so seriously. It’s just one of grandma’s hippie friends. They’ve probably slept together.”

I rolled my eyes. “I think she just sees her when she buys groceries… but yeah, I really should be more skeptical. But, in any case, have you seen me react strangely around a fire of some sort.”

Jeremy thought on it for a second. Then, surprisingly, nodded.

“Well… you were pretty shaken up when you were really little and our first house burned down. But you were only like four years old. How else would you react to that?”

“That… hadn’t crossed my mind,” I said with a look of concern. “But now I’ve some got terrible ideas.”

“What do you mean?”

“That fire… what if I started it?”

“Oh Jeremy, stop. You were four.”

“But do they know what caused it?”

Jeremy shrugged. “They never did have a good explanation for it. But I know it didn’t start in your room. You lived upstairs. It began in the basement, while you were fast asleep.”

Nothing Jeremy said had any effect on me. I was still nervous. He could tell.

“Maybe the best way to handle this is to prove it wrong,” suggested Jeremy. “How about we initiate some kind of test?”

“Like a psych eval?”

“Yeah… in a way.”

Jeremy grabbed some things from my bedroom and told me to follow him out to the backyard. He led me out to our firepit. He lit some tinder and started a roaring flame. Jeremy then reached down into the pile of my things and pulled out a t-shirt from Disney World. It didn’t fit me anymore, but I’d never thrown it out. It had too many good memories.

“The way I see it,” explained Jeremy. “If you’re truly a pyro, you shouldn’t have any problem watching me dump these keepsakes into the flame. Seeing them burn should outweigh the consequences of losing something sentimental.”

Jeremy held the t-shirt over the fire and watched my reaction. I waited for something to happen. For some feeling in my chest to force me to stop him. But nothing came up. It was like I didn’t have any attachment at all.

He dropped the shirt. Foof. The decals melted off the front. The tag turned to smoke. And the polyester began to shrink.

“Okay, so don’t freak out,” laughed my brother. “It’s probably just not all that important to you anymore. We all grow out of Mickey and the gang, eventually. Let’s try something else…”

My brother rummaged through the pile he collected and found my favorite Pez dispenser. It was a collectible with the head of my favorite movie monster, the Wolfman. My brother waved it over the fire like a wand, looking at me for some sign of panic. I let out no signs of distress, so he dropped it in. I tried to remember how much I liked that toy, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get my heart to sink. I stood calmly and let the plastic bubble.

I frowned. “Jeremy. I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

He gestured for me to stay calm. “Dude, don’t worry… it was sticky and kind of gross… you’re better off without it… let's find something better.”

He tossed in a hat from my trip to the UK. A drawing I made when I was three. And a sweater my grandma knit me. None of them seemed to phase me. Not even a little. I caught myself just gazing hypnotically into the fire. I felt chills as I saw it grow taller.

“Why are you burning the turtleneck I made you?!” suddenly interrupted by grandmother. She charged into the backyard with a terrified expression. “God Nick, did I do something wrong?”

“No… no grandma,” I told her. “It’s nothing you did. This is just… you see, that girl at the Whole Foods really fucked me up.”

“What?” Grandma suddenly looked angry. “What exactly did she say?” 

A few minutes later, myself, Jeremy, and my grandmother were back at the Whole Foods. We were headed straight for Melissandra’s aisle.

“Oh, Maggie!” exclaimed Melissandra after she saw us approaching. She looked embarrassed. She quickly looked at her reflection in her phone screen and adjusted her hair. “I wasn’t expecting you today. I would have worn makeup...”

I cringed. “Wait. Why would you have worn makeup?”

“Did you tell my grandson he comes from a long line of serial arsonists?”

“Yes,” sighed Melissandra. “I looked into his eyes and I honestly saw a fire, Maggie.”

“Okay… well... maybe he was an acolyte?”

“Those flames are waaay too big to be from a candle,” replied Melissandra. “I saw an inferno.”

“Well then he’s a fireman!” shouted my grandmother. “You can’t assume he’s a criminal based on a big flame. We need more context!”

“Fine! You want more proof?” exclaimed Melissandra. She ripped off another slip of paper from her roll. “Pick up these supplies and meet me back in the van.”

A few minutes later I found myself lying on the floor in the back of Melissandra’s car. She had me take off my shirt so she could draw a strange symbol on my chest with some organic aloe juice.

“This is going to go far beyond casual iridology,” she explained. “We’re about to slip this boy’s soul right out of his body. Then we’re gonna’ rewind it till we see what shapes it took before his own.”

“If you take out my soul, won’t that kill me?” I asked with a panicked expression.

“No. The body will keep it’s vitals. It just won’t have any conscious thought or actions.” Melissandra cracked open a bottle of wood-aged apple cider vinegar. She mixed it with some dried mushrooms and a little bit of maca powder. “Once you inhale this, the ritual will be complete and the process will begin.”

I nodded. I took the bottle from her hands and breathed in deeply. The next thing I knew, I was feeling sick. It felt like I’d just ridden on an extreme roller coaster. Everything was spinning and I felt close to vomiting. I gave into the feeling and let my body react. I convulsed for a second, then felt my body suddenly rise towards the ceiling of the van. 

I was floating. Just outside of my body. My soul was hovering a few feet in the air. I could feel everyone’s eyes watching it. I could hear them whispering something.

“Prepare the circle of pepitas… that should fixate the soul… now to rewind… we just turn this sapote pit… just like a clock hand… go slow… that’s right, just like that…”

I felt my soul beginning to shapeshift. It was like being pressed from all sides by a pair of giant hands. They squeezed me hard, changing my anatomy into something younger. I looked down at my soul and watched as it deaged. I was shrinking. Turning into a little boy. My thoughts grew cloudy as I lost mental maturity. Everything slowly faded away. My understanding of the world crumbled as I reached infancy. Then, I blacked out completely as my soul took on a shape from before I was ever born.

The next thing I remember is being strapped down into my bed back at home. My grandmother, my brother, and Melissandra all stood around me in a circle. Their expressions said everything. My grandmother and brother both looked worried for me. Melissandra looked nervous, she just kept shaking her head.

“Why am I… why am I tied up?” I mumbled through my haze.

My brother whispered. “Cause we didn’t know what else to do…”

“What else to do? Well don’t… don’t hurt me.”

My grandmother shook her head.

I looked down. There was a little white bottle in my grandmother's hand, and a dropper in the other.

I cringed and yanked against my restraints. “What… what happened? What did you see while I was gone?”

“He was terrible,” said my brother. “I’m not joking this time. He was a real life monster. He admitted to horrible things and he told us how happy he’d be to do them all again… in the next life. Your life.”

“What horrible things?” I begged.

“A homeless shelter. Then an orphanage. A preschool. Then a hospital,” listed Melissandra. She was sitting on the edge of the bed between my feet. “People got hurt. Sick people. And children.”

“But I don’t want to hurt anybody!” I called out. “You guys know me. I don’t want to watch somebody burn!”

“We know,” said my brother with a sullen glance. “Which is why we’re not gonna’ let him change you.”

“Don’t worry,” Melissandra turned around to face me. She had a confident smile. “I knew a girl with a bright blue birthmark on her neck. It was shaped like a little bone. She learned her past life had died from choking on their food. And so she feared the same was bound to happen. But it never came to be. to her. Just last year she died of a heart attack. ”

“...and how’d she swing that?” 

Melisandra snipped her fingers. “She cut off the mark, Nick.”

“No.” I pulled against my restraints. “No!”

“We don’t need to cut out your eyes. We just need… to change the pigment.” My grandmother unscrewed the little white bottle in her hand then stuck the top of her dropper inside. She sucked up a small dosage of an amber liquid.

“You’re gonna’ bleach my eyes?!”

“It’s not bleach you idiot,” said my brother. “It’s grandma’s glaucoma medication. One of the side effects is changing eye color.”

My grandmother intruded my space and pulled down on the skin around my right eye. She touched the tip of the dropper to my sclera and squeezed. As the liquid seeped into the inner layers of my eye, I felt a sharp pain. It was as though they’d dropped acid onto my face.

“Just calm down!” shouted my brother. “It shouldn’t hurt!”

“But it does!” I cringed. Tears rolled down my cheek as I felt the medication slowly burning away at the past life’s control over my body. That’s when a strange feeling suddenly filled my left side. It felt like adrenaline but worked like auto-pilot. The past life was taking control of what he still could. I lost feeling in my left arm and leg. The ropes around these two limbs suddenly snapped. My hand shot upwards and knocked my grandmother in the face. She was thrown backwards and fell into Melissandra’s arms. 

“I can’t sss-top it!” I slurred. I could only speak with the right side of my mouth. The left side of my body undid the rest of my ties. It then shoved me out of bed and started pulling me out into the hallway. 

My left leg lurched me down the stairs. It then dragged me into the kitchen. I tried to stop it by throwing down my right heel, but I couldn’t get enough friction.

My left arm reached the cabinets above my countertop and pulled out a bag of flour. I grabbed its wrist, but it was too strong. It managed to open the bag and toss it hard onto the floor. In a mere second, the air of the kitchen was filled with plumes of white particulate.

“No!” I shouted. I grabbed my left shoulder and tried to pop it out of place, but in retaliation my left hand started swatting at the right side of my head. Each blow paralyzed me long enough for my left side to make another step towards its final destination. The drawer under our microwave. Here, it found our grill lighter. “Everyone run!” I screamed. I grabbed the lighter with my right hand before my left could nab it. My left hand launched at my neck and shoved my whole body down to the kitchen floor. My wrist smacked against the tiles and the lighter fell from my grasp and slid into the corner of the room. 

That’s when my brother appeared, going against my commands to flee.

“I told you to go!” I shouted at him.

“Melissandra has grandma. They’re waiting outside.” Jeremy scooped up the lighter off of the floor and slowly backed away from my reach. “I figured you may need some help.”

“You’re just putting yourself in danger!”

“But I have the lighter?”

“He doesn’t need the lighter!” Suddenly, my left arm shot up towards our stove and twisted the knob along its top edge. It then yanked us off of the floor and slammed my left sleeve onto the hot burner. The shirt caught fire. I screamed. My brother tried to sprint away. My left arm swung the flame into the cloudy air. The flour ignited.

Foof.

The blast knocked me out momentarily. I would wake up ten minutes later to the sounds of sirens outside of my house and my brother crying in agony. He was still alive. That was good. That felt like a small victory, in an otherwise horrible loss.

My kitchen was an inferno. I imagined the rest of my house was equally engulfed. I was in excruciating pain. I knew I wouldn’t make it. My skin was charred and my organs had begun to fry. I could feel the bright fire and toxic fumes burning my eyes, I wanted them to shut, but only my right eye would cooperate.

He still had control of the left. And he wanted to see it. My left eye gaped open staring hypnotically into the fires swirling along my ceiling. I felt the pupil focus in and out taking in all the lovely features. The red hills. The bright orange peaks. And the waves of smoke encircling it all like a mountainous fog.

I died with one eye shut. 

Decades later, I’d find myself reborn yet again into the body of a young girl. In the winter, her mother likes to light their fireplace after a day of play out in the snow. This girl likes to stare into the flame for hours with a pair of heterochromatic eyes.

“Why do you look so intense?” asks her mother. The little girl shrugs. She feels so conflicted about the flame. One second she’s afraid of it. Scared it will consume her. The next, she wants to see it grow.