It started when he was a teenager. He was always impressed by the twin trails of fire that were left behind the DeLorean in the Back To The Future movies. He used to watch the scene over and over, just to see the fire running down the street. He experimented with different ways of making his own version of it, like a hot version of the domino rallies that his friends would make. Petroleum jelly, despite its name, and the easy of spreading it along a straight line, simply didn’t burn. Rubbing alcohol evaporating too quickly, and he was too young to be able to buy petrol.

Obsessions stay with you as your circumstances change around you.

His family would have been more surprised than the psychologists who later evaluated him to find him in the science lab of his old school at midnight on his 32nd birthday, with a petrol can and the gas taps already connected to a Bunsen burner. This was going to be it. He had a line of petrol run along each bench and he was going to race them. It would be brilliant. It would be bright. It would look impressive. He was even going to video it on his phone.

When they arrested him, the phone was burned into a small plastic doughball, and was stuck to his hand, the one which had lit the match, the one which had gotten too close to the petrol. It was also the same hand that had first activated the motion sensor of the school’s alarm system. Although he hadn’t planned to be arrested, he hadn’t planned on needing to call the ambulance with a burned hand and phone. The arrival of the police probably saved his arm.

He’s still obsessed with the twin trails, but they don’t let him watch DVDs at the moment.