There’s no feeling like breathing fresh air on your first day out of prison.  Carl had never been so happy to be strolling on the sidewalks of his street before.  All that time spent in prison had made him forget about what the trees in the wind and the singing birds sounded like, what the breeze in your face felt like, and even what the blue sky with scattered clouds looked like.  The taste of freedom was so sweet, and to finally lay eyes on his own house again was even sweeter.  Carl walked up the path through his front yard and smiled as he turned the knob on the door to his home-sweet-home.
“Welcome back, Carl.” 
Mere seconds after he walked through the front door, Carl stood and stared with shock in his eyes at a man sitting in his armchair.  The man, oddly, wore a hospital gown and was covered in bandages.  The parts of his body that were not covered revealed patches of burned skin on his arms and legs, but his face was the most disturbing.  It was terribly burned and he had a missing eye.  The single eye that he had was blood-red.  It stared back at Carl like a fiery laser burning straight through his head.  As strange as he was, this man was no stranger to Carl.  
“I was wondering when you’d get back,” the man said in a very raspy voice.   Carl didn’t say a word.  He just continued to stare. 
“What’s wrong, Carl?  Haven’t you missed your old partner in crime?”  The man chuckled and stood up from the chair.
“How the hell did you get out of there and how did you get in my house?” asked Carl. 
“What, you thought that you’d just leave me behind in that hell hole?  You thought that your cell mate wouldn’t get lonely?  You thought you were done with me, didn’t you.  You thought you had gotten rid of me.”
“Why won’t you just leave me alone, Jack!?” Carl asked again. 
“After all the quality time you and I have spent together burning buildings and rotting in prison?”
“I never wanted to take part in any of your crimes!  You know that!”
“And yet you still did.”
“No!  You’re the maniac, not me!  YOU burned down those buildings!”
“Those fires were just as much your doing as they were mine, and you know it.”
“You’re insane!” Carl shouted.  “I want absolutely nothing to do with you, Jack, so get out of my house now and go back to the looney bin where you belong before I...”  Just then, a shine coming from Jack’s hand caught his eye.  He looked down at it and saw that he was holding a lighter.  Had he been holding onto that the whole time they had been talking? 
“What are you doing?” asked Carl.
“We live by the fire, we die by the fire,” said Jack with an evil glare.  Carl looked down at the carpet he was standing on and back up at Jack in horror. 
“Are you mad?!” asked Carl, stunned.  Jack smiled back at Carl as he flicked the lighter with his thumb to spark the tiny flame.
“You have no idea,” said Jack before he dropped the lighter to the floor.
As the fire quickly spread, Carl looked around, desperate to find something to put out the fire.  He looked across to the kitchen and spotted a fire extinguisher.  He hurried across the room to grab it, but was intercepted by Jack who tackled him to the ground and wrapped his arm tightly around Carl’s neck.  Carl struggled to escape, but Jack’s grip was strong.  Carl’s face started to turn red and his veins started to bulge.  He could feel his consciousness slipping away.  He could feel the heat of the fire growing behind him.  As Jack continued to choke Carl, he said again into his ear, “We live by the fire, we die by the fire!” 
With one last burst of strength, Carl pushed himself off the ground and rolled himself over so that Jack was underneath him, but his arm was still wrapped tightly around Carl’s throat.  Now having mobility of his arms, Carl thrust his elbow into Jack’s chest several times before he finally let go.  Coughing and gasping for air, Carl crawled on his hands and knees to the fire extinguisher.  Jack got up and lunged again at Carl, but Carl reached the fire extinguisher first.  With one swift move, he turned around and nailed Jack in the side of the head with it. 
With Jack incapacitated, Carl went to the living room, now engulfed in flames, and frantically sprayed the fire.  He sprayed until there was nothing left in the canister, but the inferno was too big and too wide for the extinguisher to be effective.  Carl realized that he had to get out of there.  He turned and looked at the open window across the burning room.  He started towards it, but he had only managed to take a single step before he felt something hard slam the back of his head.  He fell to the floor dazed.  Jack had come to and stood over Carl holding a frying pan.  Carl tried to focus, but his head spun and his vision was blurred.  Jack crouched down next to him.  “We live by the fire, we die by the fire,” he said once more, with a grim smile on his face, as he watched the fire spread closer and closer.
All around him fire filled Carl’s view.  The fire covered him like a blanket and searing pain pierced his entire body.  He screamed as his body burned until the pain became too much and he slowly faded into unconsciousness.  As he faded, the sound of burning wood all around him became fainter and he thought he could hear a distant siren.  The pain started to fade as well and his body went numb.  Soon everything went dark, until he saw a bright light shining in the distance.
The light came closer and closer and the sound that was a distant siren gradually turned into a distinct beeping sound.  Suddenly, the light was very close and almost blinding, but his eye slowly adjusted.  He couldn’t see out his other eye for some reason.  He found that he was looking up at a light on a ceiling.  He was in a hospital bed.  It took him a moment to realize that he was breathing through an oxygen tube.  He looked up to his right and saw the heart monitor hooked up to him that was making the beeping noise.  He looked down at his body to see it completely wrapped in bandages.  He couldn’t see out his left eye because the bandages covered it.  He was startled by the doctor who opened the door to his room. 
“Ah, welcome back,” said the doctor with a cheerful smile.  “I knew you’d pull through.  Had us a little worried at first, but our nurses patched you up alright.  I’m Dr. Stevens.  How are you feeling?”
“Everything… burns…”  The words stung as they came out.  His throat felt as if it were filled with lava rocks.  Each breath of air resembled the sound of a clogged vacuum and burned his throat.
“Yeah, you sound pretty nasty.  Try not to speak too much,” said Dr. Stevens.  “Your throat and lungs are in pretty bad shape.  They’ll recover, but it’ll take a while.  As for the rest of you… well… I’m afraid you’re gonna live with some pretty nasty permanent scars.”
“My… house,” Carl choked, ignoring both the pain and the doctor’s orders.
“I know, I’m sorry for what happened to your house.  But do try to rest your voice, please.”
“And… the other man.  Where… is he?”
“Other man?” Dr. Stevens asked, confused.  “As far as I know, you were the only body they fished out of that inferno.  Was there someone else in that house with you?” 
“Yes… there was…  a man… he… attacked me.”
“Did you know this man?”
“His name… was Jack.”
“Did he have a last name?”
“I… only knew him… by his nickname.”
“And what was his nickname?”
“The Ripper.”
“The Ripper?”  Dr. Stevens looked extremely puzzled.  “Can you describe Jack for me, Carl?”
“He wore a…  hospital gown… he was… wrapped in…  bandages.”
“A hospital gown and bandages?” Dr. Stevens asked.  “Can you remember any other features this man had?”
“He had… burnt skin… and one eye… one red eye.”
The doctor continued to look at Carl with total confusion and curiosity.
“I’m telling the truth,” Carl choked again.  “He was really there!”
The doctor slowly and carefully unwrapped the bandages on Carl’s head.  The bandage was removed from his left eye, but he was still half blind.  It wasn’t the bandage that had prevented him from seeing out that eye.  There was no eye!  It was gone!  The doctor grabbed a mirror sitting nearby and brought it to Carl.  “Did the man happen to look anything like… ”  Dr. Stevens was interrupted by another doctor who entered the room.
“Dr. Stevens, I have the files on the patient.  You’ll want to come take a look at this.”
“Excuse me,”  Dr. Stevens said to Carl as he put the mirror down next to him and exited the room with the other doctor. 
“There are several police reports on the patient,” The doctor said.  “He’s an escaped patient from the insane asylum.  Responsible for seven building fires, five deaths, and roughly twenty injuries.”
“He was an arsonist?” Dr. Stevens asked.
“Arsonist and schizophrenic.  Police reports say that while he was in custody, he would be seen talking to himself in his cell as if he were two different people, and when being questioned by the police he would always say, ‘It wasn’t me, it was Jack!’ and point to someone invisible to everyone but him.”
“Jack?” Dr. Stevens asked.  “That’s funny.  The patient just mentioned that he wasn’t alone in the fire.  He said he was accompanied by…”
“Jack the Ripper?  The famed murderer who died in fire over a century ago?”  Dr. Stevens nodded in shock.  “The reports also say that the patient claims to be possessed by the ghost of Jack the Ripper.” 
Carl, still lying in his bed, reached over to grab the mirror.  He looked at his reflection and to his horror, there staring back at him with the blood-red eye was Jack the Ripper, smiling.  The man in the mirror spoke.  “We live by the fire…”  He held the lighter up to be seen in the mirror.  “We die by the fire.”  Carl turned his head and saw the lighter in his own hand.  Without thinking, Carl flicked it.