Shorts

Cigarettes & Oak Trees

Part One
   
   The smell of cigar smoke filled my lungs as I watched ashes fall
  from the top of the building, as if the school building were a cigarette itself. Thunder struck, without rain nor lightening. Hundreds of parents panicking, hundreds of lost children running about in dread. Tens of teachers pulling themselves from the nearly collapsed building.
  Through all of this chaos, this broken hell, I lay still against an oak tree. An oak tree, that has already had some branches engulfed in flames. A simple cut off of bark crumbles from the tree, and falls into my pale, somehow still cold hand. I move my head, and my eyes fall onto a small bathroom building window just under a football field away. I stare at the window, through the window, into the flames.
  A small shadow appears in the window. My eyes blur from panic, and I let out a large, short scream. No one draws attention to me. The shadow is a small girl, and her arms are banging against the window. I can barely make out her scarred, red face. I let out another scream, longer this time, and my hands twitch with it. A large group of paramedics block my view of the girl, and they grab me under my shoulders to lift me up. One paramedic waves his hand in front of my still-borne eyes. He asks me a group of questions, over and over again until I answer. They pull me onto the back of a rescue truck, surrounded by crying parents and firetrucks.                 
    They put a blanket over me, noticing how pale I've become.
I turn my neck in the direction of where i saw the girl, and I point with an achy hand.
  "The girl in the window" I creakily spit out. The paramedics share confused looks, and give another group of paramedics a signal. The group runs off into the distance of where I pointed.
"It'll all be over soon." One of the paramedics reassures me as they put another blanket around my shoulders. My eyes focus back onto the burning building. My ears listen in on the children crying. I smell nothing but smoke and isolation. A small body of a little boy is carried out of the front entrance of the school by two firemen.