Nine Eleven (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 4

Orlando is lightheaded. He knows that he shouldn't be. Orlando is on his hands and knees. Literally covered in smoke and dust. Sweat spreads its salty hands across his face. His firefighter helmet grips his head too tight. His suit, burnt black and dry, wrinkled and shakes with every violent step. His axe strapped tightly on his back, dimly shows it sharpened face through the crowd of smoke like a crescent moon snuck behind lazy clouds. 

Sirens burst outside the apartment building. Fire screams his bloodless name about the apartment complex. On fire. Burning. And here he is rushing up the building. The firefighter; savior to the little girl stuck in her room on the fifth floor. 

"Why am I so dizzy?," Orlando says to himself. The purity of the gas suffocated his mind with a crystal smog. He was trained to climb stairs, to deal with the nausea. But this time, on this inglorious occasion, he couldn't take it. He falls on his knees, put his palms on the ground, and tried to grasp for composure. 

The screams of the child continue. A little girl, he knew that. His heart pounded unforgiving against his broad chest. Although the girl screamed for help, he only thought of Edith. His girlfriend. Only her. How he couldn't die there, not then, not now.

He stays bent down on one knee, looking as if he were praying, inside a burning south-east side New York Apartment. "Come on!," he grunts to himself, to press onward and rescue the girl. He lays before a closed wooden door. The apartment is empty, just fire hugging its hands of smoke—him and a crying girl hidden under her bed.

He knew he had to find his balance and save the child locked inside. He gets up quickly, too quickly. Blood rushes to his head, dizziness intensifies.

Smoke covers most of Orlando's view as he takes slow steps to reach the door. He reaches for the door and discovers its locked. So he takes out his axe, takes a step back, and swings the axe at the door with all his might. The crashing sound of the metal against wood makes the child scream louder. Every hit seems to evoke in her some type of fear, like the hard flapping of death's wings approaching gruel and greedily. Gruntingly, Orlando broke through the door enough to reach his hand through and twist the knob. He enters.

He hits his helmet against the broken door in stupor. He's worried, but not enough to stop what he was doing. Not stunned. Adrenaline rushes through his purple veins like fire drinking dry alcohol. 

Orlando finally broke the door down. "Where are you? Hey! Where are you?," he screams.

"Here!," she responds meekly. He can't see her. But he feel the fear that shook her beneath the smoke.

"Where!?," Orlando responds.

The bursting sound of sirens, and the constant roar of fire smothers their communication. 

But Orlando dizziness intensifies. In such a stupor that he began to stumble. The child needed him. Her parents needed him. To save the girl. Their child. Hopeless. Helpless. Young. She lies frightened and curled beneath her bed. Orlando starts to stagger slowly. He crashes into a chair, a desk, then a small dresser in the corner of the room. The sound of the chair falling makes the girl scream. 

Orlando tries to catch his balance on the bedpost. But in his dizziness his hand slips, and he falls down prostrate. He hits his face on the ground. Smoke curls hot over his unconscious body. 

Everything around him goes silent. Silent.

He sees nothing but a buried darkness snuck behind his eyes. Inside his unconscious mind is a black quietude. Outside the girl screams on, louder and louder. He sees nothing; smells nothing; knows nothing but solitude.

He lays in silence for an extraneous moment. As time's despot hands release their clutch, Orlando sits listening to the emptiness.

In the midst of his silence he hears the sound of a kiss. It was strange to him. Of all sounds to hear, especially then, he heard the sound of someone kissing. 

And then he knew. He dreamed of Edith. He saw her smile. Her eyes. Her lips. Her love. And realizes that he is kissing her. All of the outside world was deaf to him in that moment; pain, sorrow. All he felt in his dream was the core of his heart bleeding in a pulse of joy—a joy born from the love of Edith. In his dream he realized that he was holding Edith's hands, and that they were standing facing each other.

They were getting married. He felt himself smile, and jubilee plummeted through his tired veins. He saw her wedding dress, long, white, beautiful; in his mind's eye he knew that he'd never seen anything as beautiful as her.

And he heard only one voice. Not her voice, nor his, but the voice of a man. He was speaking. Orlando could here but couldn't make out the words. Until he heard: "to have and to hold until death do you part?" A question.

His eyes shoot open.

He sees the fire, the smoke, the apartment, his suit, and the girl weeping under her twin size bed. He hears the sirens breaking the breech of their mechanical lungs, the fire raging with unmerited indignation, and the smoke quietly crawling about them two. He gets up and starts for the child. He flips the bed over and lifts her into his arms. He wasn't going to fall this time.

He quickly paces to the stairs without saying a word. The girl hold on tightly . He started to run down. He doesn't slip, he doesn't miss a stair, he doesn't delay. He sprints down the stairs, to the end. He rushes through the lobby and out of the apartment complex. 

A large crowd mets him as he and girl escape the burning apartment building. They receive him with cheers and loud clapping. Firemen, civilians, and the parents of the daughter wait horrified at the results. 

"My baby! my baby!," a mother runs to Orlando with arms extended. She takes the girl from his arms and embraces her like she'd never done before. She looks up at Orlando and says with a heart full of love: "Thank you! thank you!" He doesn't respond. She didn't know that he went unconscious, and she wasn't going to find out. No one would. He walks towards the paramedics. Other firemen try to attend Orlando, but he refuses. He doesn't say a word to the girl who he saved. She doesn't say anything to him neither. But the look in her eyes as he turns walking away say more than sincere words can prove. Gratitude.

Orlando doesn't return the same glance. Embarrassed, and although he made it out alive, he knew he should have died in there. He knew he would've. But he didn't.

He thought of Edith and the dream that graced him in his unconsciousness. And he daydreamed of Edith sitting at the back of an ambulance, staring at the girl he saved through the crowd. And he only thought of love.

Chapter 5 is coming soon! Don't forget to vote and follow me on twitter @jonasaperez11! Thanks!