Chapter 1- The Awakening
I knew as soon as I jumped that I regretted it, but it was already too late.
Time seemed to slow as my body descended toward the ground, the glass shards from my bedroom window falling beside me. It was like I was floating in the air, waiting for gravity to pull me down. But it wouldn't. It wouldn't dare take me as quickly as I wanted it to.
Death used to seem like an unimaginable thing, something that I was completely petrified of. Where would I go? How would I die? Would I be in pain? I knew it was inevitable for everyone, but I thought that maybe I could be different and be the only one to avoid it. But it was coming in mere seconds, and I was the one to blame.
Death by fire or death by fall?
I would have chose my burning house if I knew it was going to take this long to hit the pavement. But I couldn't, I knew I couldn't. Not when I felt my skin sizzling against the fire, blistering by the second. Not when my lungs were full of so much smoke that I literally felt it burn my insides as I choked. I could actually smell my flesh burning.
Jumping seemed easier at the time. My bedroom lit up in flames in a matter of minutes, lighting up the peaceful night sky along with it. None of my family responded to my constant shouting but I could hear the sirens of a fire truck from a distance, so I kept throwing anything I could grab from my room out of my broken window into the darkness beyond it. I needed to make sure someone knew I was in there. But I couldn't take it anymore, I had given up. I knew nobody could have gotten to me in time, not when I was trapped by the blaze that separated me from the rest of the world. It was my time to choose how I would die and I chose the quickest way.
It's funny how everything could go wrong at the blink of an eye. My summer was going perfectly until now. I had spent it with my older brother and his girlfriend at the beach almost everyday. They always bugged me about having no friends since I mostly kept to myself, but I had one more month in paradise until my first day of senior year, the last year of suffering until I moved out of this pathetic place they call a town.
What have I done to deserve such a horrible thing? How did this fire even start in the first place?
My body was nearly touching the floor and I braced myself for the impact. The ground looked bigger than it did from above and I felt my heart stop as I squeezed my eyes shut.
I heard my bones crunch underneath me when I finally hit the pavement and I waited to fade into complete darkness. But then it didn't come, and instead, pain shot through my body like electricity. My legs felt hot with pressure and I lay still, unable to move, unable to make a single noise to let someone know I was in agony. I felt my legs underneath me at an awkward angle and tasted a mouth full of blood in the back of my throat, begging to come out.
And then, I felt something explode in my head. I heard my bones pop back in place, I felt my lungs clear of smoke, and as I began to sit up straight, I saw my charred black skin heal and turn back to my summer tan.
And in a few minutes, the longest minutes of my life, my body was completely healed, and the excruciating pain that I just endured moments ago felt like a distant memory.
