Mason McDougal/23/Open

Years at Marion: 16

Pyromania

“People do it everyday, they talk to themselves… they see themselves as they’d like to be, they don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.”-Fight Club

FC: Chris Evans

Mason McDougal was always a different kid since the minute he was born; his parents knew he wasn’t normal. He always cried as a baby, screaming and thrashing around. His mother never bonded with him and his father was an alcoholic. By the age of three, he had spent days by himself with no babysitter. His life wasn’t the easiest but he learned to raise himself by the age of five. Breakfast, lunch and dinner usually consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But spending time alone meant he had to find ways to entertain himself and very quickly he found out what that was. Fire. When his mother would leave in the kitchen he spent the rest of the day at the stove playing with the knobs, turning the fire on and off. Watching the colors melt into each other became like a therapy for him. Soon, just watching the first wasn’t enough. He would stick papers or paper plates into the flame to watch them catch on fire. At first, his parents didn’t notice. And why would they? They never noticed anything else about him. They didn’t notice the time when he was three and fell from a stool and broke his arm. While they were sitting in the living room, watching T.V. oblivious to their young son screaming in the kitchen, a neighbor was the one who came over to see what was wrong. But the first they noticed was when Mason accidentally lit his fingertip on fire when he was trying to touch the fire. After that, they put tape over the nozzles but he would just untape them. His parents underestimated his intelligence far too many times.

            With many minor incidents starting to pile up, you would think his parents would start to notice something was wrong. Mason was starving for attention and they were providing none of it. One day when Mason was seven, one of his fire explorations went too far. He was standing in front of the stove and instead of shutting the fire off, turned it up higher and in his haste to run from the kitchen he knocked over the paper towel rack. The flames soon were licking at the ceiling and wrapping themselves around the walls. Mason was scared and couldn’t figure out how to get out. A neighbor called 9-1-1 and Mason just made it out. He was in the hospital a week but he came out remarkably lucky, he avoided any burns. But his house wasn’t as lucky, it burnt to the ground. Anything and everything attributed to his childhood was gone in an instant. His parents signed over custody to Marion immediately after he got out of the hospital. He’s been at Marion since he can remember but does have some memories of his home life. Truth be told, they aren’t the best memories. Usually they are filled with his mother ignoring him or his father drinking but it’s better than nothing.

            Life at Marion for Mason isn’t half bad. The way he looks at it, he gets free room and board and all the food he wants. Mason can usually be found in the art studio, painting or doing anything art related. He loves to paint pictures of fire, seeing as how he can’t actually play with it anymore. Overall he’s a nice guy and is always there to talk to people when they need it. He’s one of the nicer guys at Marion House and always tries to look out for the younger patients. Mason is closer with more of the older patients, considering his age. Sometimes he wonders what life would be like now if he didn’t go to Marion. Would he have a girlfriend and kids? Maybe have gone to college and pursued something worth talking about? Maybe his parents would have come around and he would have a normal life. But there’s not point on dwelling on what could have been. He prides himself on being who he really is, he’s not one of the patients who fakes it and tries to trick the workers into thinking he is okay. He talks about fire like it’s his best friend and doesn’t try to hide his obsession. He takes pride in who he is and so should others.