Filling The Void

Chapter 2

Chapter two

When Eileen was seven, her school had caught on fire. Eileen had been washing her hands in the bathroom when the fire alarm had suddenly rung. They had had their emergency drill the previous day, so Eileen had understood that an actual fire had started in her school. She had opened the door in order to get out, but the sight of fire—though escapable—had scared her. She had closed the door and then started panicking. She had sat by the far corner of the bathroom, leaning against the wall that was perpendicular to the sinks. She had brought her legs near her chest, wrapped her arms around them and then started rocking back and forth. Gaining a little courage, she had decided to attempt running through the hallway but the second time she touched the door, it had become too hot to touch. Clutching her now-burnt hand, Eileen had started crying. Burying her hands in her face, she had prayed to God to save her, not because she was afraid of death but because of her mother; Ever since her father’s death that had taken place two years from then, Eileen’s mother had become a mess. Although Cassandra had moved on and proceeded life normally after Charlie’s death, she had stopped living. She had started looking for jobs within a week; she would drop her daughter off to school whenever she could; she had regularly ate meals; and not once had she even considered resorting to drugs and alcohol. To any stranger’s eye, she would have seemed fine, but Eileen was the one who had been hearing her mother sobbing and sniffing every night in the previous two years. She had only wanted to stay alive because she didn’t want her mother to get any sadder.

Suddenly, Eileen had looked up and remembered that there was a window behind the board—which held a reminder for the kids to wash their hands after using the bathroom—that hung on the wall she had just been leaning on. The teacher had told her in one of the classes that the window was for emergency cases and had even taught all the students how to get out by it. After removing the lightweight board that hung on top of the window, Eileen had climbed on the sink that was nearest to it. Reaching out, she had given the unlocked window a slight push—which had been enough for it to open all the way. Taking a deep breath, she had jumped towards the window and succeeded in making her torso hang from the wall. After kicking her legs against the wall, she had managed to bring her whole body onto the ledge of the window. Heights had been one of Eileen’s greatest fears, even small ones. And that was why she found herself frozen on the ledge of the school’s bathroom’s window, fifteen feet above the ground.

“Hey!” a voice had hollered from beneath. Eileen had looked down to see a man dressed in a dress shirt and slacks. “Little girl, you need to jump out of that window because the fire’s getting bigger! I’ll catch ya, I promise!” Eileen hadn’t known what to do. She hadn’t wanted to jump but she also knew staying in the school wasn’t an option either; she had felt so scared at that moment.

“Little girl,” the man had spoken, again. “You need to trust me and jump.” The look in his eyes as he spoke had been so captivating that she had no other option but to trust him.

 Taking a deep breath, she had jumped off of the ledge and—with the exception of her forehead bumping into the man’s—landed safely in his arms. The strange man had then grabbed her hand and walked her to the school playground where everyone else was.

Later on in life, Eileen had understood that, regardless of the reason that she wanted to survive the fire, at that moment she had wanted to be safe. And for the sake of achieving safety, she had done anything that had come to her mind—including jumping into the arms of a man whom she had never met. She had concluded that for no matter what reason, humans always ran towards safety when caught in any sort of trouble; running towards safety was simply the first instinct.

As Eileen stood in front of Danny Johnson’s apartment, she realized that Danny was her first instinct when she ran away from her house; in Danny, she found safety, she found comfort. Some insecure part of her feared that Danny would turn his back on her, just like her mother had. That insecure part was dominating her head as she stood there, but she had already knocked on the door and it was too late to turn back.