3 a.m Nightmares

The Stupid Girl and the Red Box.

For the longest time, my wish was to forget you. For memories of you to be wiped clean from my sheets and from my mind. It’s what I’ve always wanted.

Then the fire broke out.

The whole block was on alert. Two buildings had caught fire and everyone left without a second glance back. They mourned the memories now lost but did nothing else about it.

Something inside me snapped.

I ran into the flames, blindly.

I let the smoke taint my lungs and the fire burn the hairs along my arm as I set straight for my room. When I got there, it was almost unrecognizable.

The walls were no longer the dark green I had impatiently painted them when I was tired of the plain white they originally were but too broke to afford a better color, like teal or orange. They were now as black and as broken as I had felt inside for so long. The bed was reduced to ash along with the sheets. I stood there for a little while, pondering on whether that was a bad or good thing. After he left I could barely look at it, let alone sleep in it. So maybe it was a good thing. But the scent was gone now. Maybe that was a bad thing.

The book shelf was melting. I smelled the burning pages of the books I had escaped to for so many wonderful adventures when I had lost the real adventures of my own. But it was there. What I had ran back in here for. The small red box still stood there on the highest shelf where I had left it abandoned and gathering dust for the past year. It was, incredibly, untouched by the flames.

I knew you could bewitch.

I grabbed it and ran.

A piece of the crumbling ceiling almost ending my life on my way out. I dodged it just in time and continued to run. The flames closing in tighter and blocking my exit every step I took.

Finally, I was outside. I dropped to the floor, coughing violently and gasping for fresh air. My hair, face and clothes charred black and my hand still tight around the box.

“What was so important that you’d risk your young life for?” the people, who had gathered around me the same time the paramedics did, asked me.

As they placed me on the gurney, I clutched the box tighter to my side. My fingers had gone white from the pressure.

“Him.” I answered as I looked down at the box.

“I didn’t want to forget…him.”

People seemed to have stopped in their tracks.

“I didn’t want to lose him again.”

As they wheeled me towards the back of the ambulance, all I saw was the broken hearted looks on their faces. Their hearts broke for me and pitied me at the same time. The same look he had given me long ago. I loved too much. Now I knew.

I couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh as I lost conciseness.

The last thing on my mind was a simple question. A question that I plan on getting the answer to even if it killed me, because the answer to that question would change everything.

“Would he do the same for a box full of memories of me?”

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One day,
I'll set his home ablaze
and gaze
as he runs the other way.
Not toward his box of memories
but towards me.

The girl holding the match
with infamy.