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The familiar route home from my late night walks has become second nature to me. I was pretty sure I was able to walk the entire way with my eyes shut at this point, but I knew I was too clumsy to properly execute such an idea - especially at night.
My mom made it a point to ban my late night walks - she claimed that it was way too dangerous for a seventeen-year-old girl to do alone, especially on the streets of Brooklyn, where crimes were constantly on the rise. I wasn't one to disagree, but I still did it anyway. I just made sure to be aware of my surroundings and to be conscious of the neighborhoods I passed through.
The walks were the sole things keeping me sane throughout the stress of school, home and life in general. Lately, I had just been feeling a little bit off. I wasn't sure how to properly describe the trail of emotions that have been stringing their way through my body, but something I was sure of, was that something was missing. It was almost as if there was a gap in my soul which has yet to be filled. The only thing that let that feeling mildly loose, were the walks.
I turned the corner to get back onto the street where I lived and made my way to the side of the house. I picked up the ladder in which I hid in the bushes so my mother wouldn't find it and aligned it with my bedroom window on the second floor. I made sure the ladder was sturdy before carefully taking each step up. I slowly slid the panel up, placed my hands on each side of the window and pulled myself into my dark room. I pushed the ladder off my window, knowing that it was going to fall into the bushes resulting in minimum noise. I slowly shut the window and exhaled a huge sigh of relief; I had gone unnoticed.
"How was the weather, Healix?" I shut my eyes and muttered a small 'fuck,' under my breath knowing the voice belonged to none other than my very own mother. "How many times do I have to tell you? You absolutely cannot go on these walks in the middle of the night! What's next? Me locking your window and sleeping with the key? Because if that's what it takes, you bet your ass I'll do it."
"It's not that big of a deal, mom." I groaned, taking off my bright red sweater and placing it on the chair of my desk. "You over exaggerate way too much."
My mother looked at me, almost as if she didn't believe what I had been saying. "Over exaggerate? You have no idea what's out there Lix, you should be thanking me." I scoffed at her response and changed into my pajama bottoms, wanting this conversation to be over and done with already. It was way too late at night to deal with this.
"Thanking you? For what? Keeping me a prisoner in my own home?" I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in the air. "Might as well call me Rapunzel!"
"You'll thank me for this eventually," She signed, placing her fingers on the bridge of her nose. "You'll see the bigger picture when the time is right. I know this concept might be difficult to understand, but when someone tells you not to do something, you're supposed to listen."
I began to get angrier, and the fact that she was so calm made me even more irritated. "I don't understand what's going on! First, you stop my late night walks, then I can't go out after nine o'clock, and I can't hang out with friends unless your present? What is wrong with you?"
"This is what's best for you. For us." She explained, taking a step towards me, almost as if to go in for an embrace. I immediately step back, not wanting to touch her. She frowned when she saw me move away.
"I'm sick of you treating me like a child! I'm turning eighteen in two months. You've got to let me have independence."
"Not under this roof sweetie, you won't. This is my house, you will follow my rules. You don't have the authority here." She said sternly. "Now get to bed, we'll speak more on this in the morning." She exited my room and I couldn't help but let a burst of rage gain control of my body.
I slammed my bedroom door as hard as I could, felt the walls shake, and next thing I knew, the door erupted in giant flames. My eyes widened and I immediately backed away from the door.
"What the-" I whispered, the heat radiating off the door onto my body, instantly making me sweat. The fire began to spread from my bedroom door onto my walls, eventually caught my desk, my closet, and was making its way over to me. I watched all my belongings disintegrate, almost as if they were just dust in the path of a reckless wind.
At first, I thought I must've been dreaming. There was no way a fire could have erupted in my room just from the motion of shutting a door. I pinched myself so that I would wake up from this messed up hallucination, but I found myself still faced in front of the fire. Am I going crazy? I thought. Something isn't right, something strange is commencing.
A pure wave of both panic and intense fear washed over my body, and even more so when I realized my entire family is on the other side of the door. "Oh no, no no."
"Mom!" I yelled as loud as I could, praying for her familiar voice to respond. Instantly, the petty fight we had just gotten into didn't mean anything and I wanted absolutely nothing but to know if she was okay. "Dad!" The only sound I was able to hear was the roar of the flames.
Yet another wave of panic rushed over me when I realized my two brothers were asleep in the room right in connection to mine. "Jason? Kent!" I yelled, there was no answer. What if the fire had already gotten to them? What if they hadn't heard my yells in time? They were surely asleep at this time, did they wake up? Did they already smell the smoke? How the hell did this even happen?
I didn't know what to do. The flames were beginning to corner me, and the smoke began to make my breathing very difficult. I kept coughing until I wasn't able to scream the names of my family members. I felt the smoke slowly poison my lungs and it took all my power not to collapse right then and there.
I mustered up the energy and turned around and looked at my window, knowing the door wouldn't let me escape the room. The window was my only means of survival. In theory, it was a good plan, except I was two stories up, and I didn't have the ladder to ease my way down. I guess a few broken bones were better than death, right?
I felt a rush of adrenaline pumping through my veins. I shut my eyes. You'll be okay, I thought to myself. It's just two stories. You can do it. Broken bones mean nothing, you'll heal in a couple weeks. Don't sweat it.
I went to go open the window when I realized the heat from the overbearing flames had melted the latch and it was in a result, inoperable. "Shit!" I cried, my breathing sped up to quick and short breaths, almost as if I'd begun to hyperventilate. I knew I had only one option left, to run through it. I didn't have time to properly think through my actions, because at this very moment the only choices I had were to live or die trying.
And I could've sworn, as soon as my body weight slammed against the glass window, I heard my mother whisper, "This is Fate, Healix."
