Mallory's Melody

Chapter 57

BY THE TIME THEY made it to the stairway, it had already been completely engulfed by fire. Fiery flames jutted out from every conceivable corner, and common oxygen was as scarce as their hope to make it out of here alive.

Mallory's optimism was non-existent when they made their way to the fifth fire escape. It too, like the other escapes, was completely ravished by flames, and to walk through it, would definitely be an escape out of the fire, but one into the infinite beyond, the afterlife, where all things that followed death resided. Where Cole now resided. She thought of him as her lungs contracted in an abortive attempt to draw in oxygen. She wondered if he'd found his peace, imagined him in heaven, clothed in a blindingly white gown, and treading paths that were made of gold.

It still hunted her that he was gone, even more so than her chances of making it out of this fire alive. A cracking sound rippled from above, and in the blink of an eye, it began to rain wooden planks.

"Mallory, duck!" Jason yelled, pulling her and himself down to the knee-scorching floors. A charred plank of wood fell just right in front of them a millisecond after, and it dawned on her then, how close death was to her in this place. It both traumatised and thrilled her, traumatised because deep down in her was that basic, human fear of dying, but thrilled, because she secretly wanted to die. There was no meaning, no sense of purpose, no incentive to live again now that Cole, her reason for life, was gone. She was assaulted by a whiplash of emotions, fear, anger, sadness, but ultimately, grief. She wanted to die in this fire, a preferably less painful death though. She wanted to just shut her eyes and be nothing, be—

"Mallory! Get a move on!" Diana screamed. They were at the rear of the hallway, where the last and only fire escape remained, but Mallory had stopped halfway through, to just kneel on the floor and cry. She didn't care if an avalanche of flames was coming for her. She didn't care to burn to ashes. She didn't want to walk through that fire escape and have to go through life, alone, without Cole. A life glum and full of loneliness was not worth fighting for. Death was more appealing.

She could feel the heat of the flames behind her, the odoriferous scent of sulphur and fuel. Death was coming closer to her.

"Mallory!" Ava yelled out to her. She was on the front step of the staircase. She made a move to approach Mallory, but a wall of fire had spread across the floor, separating her from reaching Mallory. "What the hell are you doing? We need to leave. Now!"

But Mallory was on deaf ears. Her senses were blurred out, and she was more attuned to that voice that told her to die, than their screams for her to walk through the fire and grab her only chance at escape.

Die, die, die

Her almost hypnotic attachment to that voice was disrupted when the most horrific thing happened. She saw a shadow behind the curtain of flames in front of her, and at first, she thought it was death coming her way, but she found out, as the shadow came closer to her view, as it forced its way through the fire so that it would be nearer to her, that it was Jason. He cursed and rolled on the floor, drowning out the fire that spread through his clothes. She was horrified. She heard the screams of Diana and Ava from a distance. 

Jason had just quite literally walked through fire.

"Mal." Jason coughed where he lay. "You need to—" he groaned—"you need to come with me."

Mallory could see the burns on his body through the hot brazen light of the flames. She was dumbstruck, scared, confounded by how stupid he'd been to do what he'd done, to risk burning himself for her. Therein lied the problem: she didn't want to be saved.

"You shouldn't have done that Jason!" She said, the tears on her face hot against her cheeks. "I want to die. I just want to—"

Jason groaned on the floor. "You're speaking through—"Groan"—through grief Mallory. You don't want to die. Trust me." He reached out to touch her, but retracted in the utter pain of stretching his arm out to her.

"I'm not leaving Jason, so leave while you have the chance," She rocked back and forth. "Cole is dead. Cole—"

"—would want you to live," Jason finished. "Cole would want you to live Mal. If he were here right now, he would want you to move on without him. To continue life fully and be happy. To grow. Have children. Get married. Experience the fullness of life. Dying is everything Cole wouldn't want for you, so pay him the last tribute by keeping your damn self alive. You hear me?"

Mallory looked out at him, and although she didn't respond. She heard him quite clearly. Her grief melted into something more profound, into a desire to please Cole wherever he might be, to fight for her life, to walk through that fire and be living proof that she was a survivor. But then fear wrapped its coils around her. There was no way she could make it out of here alive anyway. Everywhere was consumed. She would have to force her way through the wall of fire to make it through the exit, and she had neither the endurance nor the courage to do such a perilous thing.

"I-I can't." Mallory turned to Jason. He'd enclosed his hand in hers. "I'd die."

Jason took her hand and placed a lingering kiss on it, then he looked towards the fire and back at her, and said, rather courageously. "Then we'd die together, Mal. We'd die together."

She didn't know where the comfort had been in that statement, but she set herself loose of every modicum of fear and anxiety and grief and let Jason lead her through the fire, and in short clippings of screams and unimaginably excruciating pain, she saw a figure through the fire, a blindingly white figure. It took just a second for her to realise it was the apparition of her father, of Cole. He was smiling down at her in his dazzling white gown, and if the prideful look on his face could be turned to words, it would say, "I'm proud of you Mal. I'm very proud."

Peace flushed over her as his apparition disappeared. Then, almost suddenly, an overwhelming darkness followed.

She saw nothing. She felt nothing, except the tight sensation of her hand wrapped in Jason's, and in the last fading moments, all she could think about was his promise.

Then we'd die together, Mal. We'd die together...