Fahrenheit 451 Prequel: Beatty POV

Part 4

It was a simple two-storey suburban house.-the kind that is practically a copy from the neighbouring houses.

"We're here!"

The engine came to a screeching halt. The other firemen, one by one, ran up the sidewalk, hauling cans of kerosene with them. Beatty followed along.

The police were already there. They slammed a man and a lady onto the pavement, putting their hands behind their backs, handcuffing them before dragging them to their glittering beetle cars. "Jack! Jack!" The couple screamed their lungs out as they fought against their restraints. They bashed against the men in blue, only to get bashed back. Yet, they still tried to force their way towards something, someone.

Beatty turned his head in the direction the couple were facing.

There stood a young boy on the grass. Black hair. Black brows. No more than 3 years old. He was still dressed in his light blue pyjamas, holding a small brown teddy close to his chest. He looked at the couple with doe-eyes, a sense of drowsiness and fatigue plaguing him as he desperately called out, "Pa? Ma?"

The parents were dragged further and further away, a wall was seemingly being built, separating them. His face scrunched up as if something finally clicked in him, that something was terribly terribly wrong. Alone, he stood in the grass patch. It seems as though something had taken hold of him, the small figure started walking bit by bit before breaking out in a run. As expected, his little legs could only get him so far before he was  stopped by a towering figure. At first, he tried to run past that metre high wall. However, he was swiftly picked up in one swell swoop.

"No! No!" The toddler said as he smashed his walnut-sized fists into the back of his capturer. His parents drifted further and further away.

The small brown teddy fell onto the grass.

When he was put down closer to the house, his parents were already out of sight. Off they go to the asylum, never to be seen or met again. That little boy stood in the harsh cold wind like a lone small sampling in a deforested forest, without the protection of matured trees. The tears in his eyes reflected in the moonlight. His already small  stature becoming smaller and smaller as he cowers. He was like a fragile egg, a little touch before he would crumble, yet he already had everything ripped from him. He stood there in the grass patch like a marooned island, separated by miles of water, no one paid any attention to him. Even when his back shooked with deliberate force as he sobbed, no one cared.

"Beatty!" Lucifer called out. "Focus!"

Beatty immediately turned his head back to the house.

He joined the other firemen who were already piling the books and started making quick work of the place. Books were tumbling down the stairs and onto him like an avalanche. Beatty scooped a stack into his arms and threw them into the pile. Yet, more and more books seemed to flow down the stairs like a never-ending river. 

"Quick! Get the kerosene!" Snatching a tin of kerosene from a corner of the house, Beatty swiftly spun the cap open and poured the yellow foul liquid all over the books. Upon seeing the pile that grew by the minute, Beatty's hands instantly grabbed another can.

Beatty abruptly recalled  a slogan from his time at the Fire Academy. 'Kerosene never fails to keep things clean'. Taking the Zippo from his top left pocket, flick, strike, At this moment, he likened himself to a janitor, cleaning up a big foul mess someone had made.

He watched as the burning fire purged the problems of the world. As oxygen in the air fuelled the ever-growing fire, specks of ashes from the burnt books flung out from it, sticking to Beatty's uniform like glue. Despite his constant attempts to brush these little dark specks off his uniform, Beatty still could not get rid of them, something which irked Beatty very much, though he could not pinpoint why.