The rain was pouring so hard outside that it echoed in my room. Lightning flashed and lit up the dark corners, but they were no longer terrifying to me. Thunder roared and I squeaked, the fear overwhelming my thoughts. I'd been crying for hours, my knees pulled up to my chest while I stared blankly at the wall. My body ached from shaking and trembling but I couldn't stop. My face was covered in my own blood, and so was my comforter.
I clutched my backpack close to me, the hope of leaving this house becoming even more fleeting the longer I sat here, waiting for Nolan to come in and see the mess. I didn't know what I was going to tell him, what even could I say? How would I ever be able to look him in the eyes again after being defiled like this...
"He loves you," I whispered to myself, trying to push forward, "get up, wake him up, and leave."
The moment I tried to get to my feet, thunder struck outside again and I cried out in fear. I saw myself in the mirror, covered in my own blood and tears. I lost it when I saw the droplets on my legs, and I started to sob even harder than I had before. I held my backpack tighter as I tried to put my shoes on, a pair of white mary janes that I loved dearly. I barely managed to pull them on when I collapsed again, tugging my backpack on while I sat there trying to put the pieces back together. I could feel my nose begin to bleed again, I was almost sure it was coming from my eyes as well.
Something finally interrupted the meltdown I was having, a sound coming into my senses that I'd only ever heard when Nolan tried to cook. I looked up and realized a smoke alarm was going off somewhere within the house, and it didn't take me long to figure out from where. My room was filled with a thick gray fog that smelled like singed hair and copper, it was bitter and made me gag. Through my coughing I was able to finally take a deep enough breath to call out for help, my screams echoing through the house louder than the alarm was. Pounding footsteps reached my ears and Nolan was the first person to barge through my door, his face awash with horror when he saw me.
"AGNES!" He shouted, attempting to move closer to me. He reached out, his fingertips just barely brushing mine when he yanked them away, the sight of fire erupting on my skin enough to startle anyone.
"Help me!" I cried out as my body was consumed with fire, a sensation I'd never imagined to be so painless. Broken ceramics from a vase I'd tossed earlier went flying across the room, something invisible and unearthly having thrown them.
He ran out of the room, screams and shouting from my other family members finally reaching my ears. I tried to pull myself to my feet, realizing in doing so that my room was already being consumed by the fire. I was struggling to stay upright, but I made it to the doorway in time to see the utter chaos that had ensued outside of my room.
Everything was on fire. Picture frames were flying off of the walls, shattering against others and falling into the flames. There was so much smoke that I couldn't see clearly, but I could see figures moving as they tried to open the front door. All of the doors suddenly slammed shut, the sound louder than that of the roaring blaze. Hailey was screaming as she pulled her singed hands away from the red hot knob, and Patrick was on the floor of the living room, unconscious. One of the frames had hit him in the head and I'm sure it had killed him. The moment Jordan turned around to look at me though, that's when I lost it.
My scream brought with it fire that not even the walls of Hell could have contained. It licked the walls and consumed my family members, their screaming music to my ears. My bellows turned to raucous laughter as I watched him burn, his body turning into a charred, heaping pile of ash. After standing there for awhile, I realized I couldn't hear anything else. My shoulders drooped and I realized I was alone. The fire crackled and ate away at the the house, and until now, I hadn't noticed the searing pain in my chest and my face. I was about to leave when a voice brought my attention to the last member of the household: Nolan.
He was tilted against the piano, having collapsed there some time ago. His skin was charred and blistered, but nowhere near as much as everyone else's. I started crying again when he whispered my name, his jade eyes staring at me one last time before they closed for good. I wouldn't let him die here. I grabbed his wrists and began to drag him to the front door which was now wide open, all the way out onto the front lawn. I dropped him in the grass and collapsed by his side, still coughing and hacking from the smoke. Everything hurt and everything felt empty. Nolan was still breathing beside me, but the longer I laid on the grass beside him, the quieter it got. Eventually the sky began to turn blue and the fire was still as tall as the clouds. I heard sirens in the distance that seemed not-so-distant within a few short moments. Cars and ambulances pulled into our driveway, firemen running forward to put out the blaze. I felt hands on my shoulders and my legs as I was placed on a gurney, medical talk about my vitals going in one ear and out the other as I watched them put Nolan in what looked like a body bag.
"No..." I whispered, my voice hazy and croaky from the smoke, "no, NOLAN...!"
"Subject 0607C is on her way to Silver Lake, I repeat, Hellfire is on her way."
I finally turned my eyes to the men who'd retrieved me from the front lawn. They weren't paramedics in white, they were men in SWAT gear and gas masks. Panic set in and I realized I wasn't being taken to a hospital.
"Let me go!" I writhed on the gurney, their hands holding me down as I tried to sit up.
"Clearance for procedure code 25B and sedation needed." One of them spoke into a radio, and I let out an animalistic screech of terror.
"Clearance given, you have the go ahead."
I watched as they pulled out a syringe filled with a milky solution. I started crying the moment they stuck it into my arm, but it wasn't long before I began to feel woozy. Darkness surrounded the edges of my vision and I wanted to panic, but the sedatives kept me from being able to. Eventually I was pulled under, but this was unlike anything I'd felt before. It was like I was floating in between consciousness and death, just teetering on the edge of both. Everything felt wrong but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
After God knows how long I felt something shift in the air around me. It was like a cold breeze had swept against my skin and made me shiver, a feeling that released some of the paralyzed nerves. My pinky finger twitched, and I realized I was finally coming back into consciousness again. My body felt heavy and weak, but I had to power through it so that I could get up. I focused on my fingers more, working to twitch and eventually curl the rest of them into fists. Something tightened around my wrists because of it and I realized why my body felt so heavy: I was tied down to something.
Out of sheer persistence I kept pulling, trying to move more and more of my body as I did. Within an estimated ten minutes I was able to finally open my eyes, the fluorescent lights of the room shining brightly down on me. While it was painful, I was grateful to not have to look at the darkness anymore. I took a deep breath and lifted my head up to get a good look around me, noticing that the room I was in certainly wasn't a hospital room, and in fact looked much more akin to a jail cell. Well, shit.
YOU ARE READING
Clair de Lune
General Fiction"It's cold." The story I'm about to tell you is probably the least believable and most outrageous one out there, but I need you to hear me out on this. I was once a normal girl. Once, like, once upon a time, but this isn't a fairytale with a damsel...
