Caught in the Blaze

The Crime

1

The willow trees swayed in the thick heated night of the Louisiana swamps. In the air the moisture was edible, and the quiet unreachable. Crickets and owls and insects buzzed though the darkness, becoming silent only as she passed, and the raw gravel of the driveway crunched beneath her small footfalls as she walked closer to the house.

122 Sycamore Groves was once white and beautiful, a time Amber never saw, but now it was a molding rotting carcass, a memory of different days. All that remained of paint on the old house had fluttered to the ground in quarter-sized chips long ago, and the sagging residence was now revealed in grey rotting wood. To the side a faint light was glowing out of a cracked, dirty window, where faded torn yellow curtains hung as if ancient flags of an ignored surrender.

Ugly weeds, like tufts of dirty fur, sprouted from beneath the grit and pebbles of the front yard. More congregated their hideous roots around the dejected, rusted mailbox as if the letter receiver was their dying god. The rusted lid hung open on one hinge, gaping at the aging world surrounding it, and the supporting wooden post leaned precariously.

The trees rustled with an unfelt wind, like a cackle of wicked whispers, and the still night receded around her as the porch light of the crumbling home stuttered on hopefully before fizzing out like a silent lightening flash. The steps of the aging porch creaked as Amber leaned her childlike weight upon them, and more ungainly weeds wiggled up through the cracks rusted nails left behind. Cobwebs that were abandoned long ago collected stray dirt and the dead carcasses of dried insects upon the ceiling of the sinking canopy, and several dusty moths fluttered aimlessly where the light had flickered on in the hopes their sun would return.

She opened the torn screen door, hating the heinous rusted creak it created and stepped within the quiet house unlike an intruder. The floorboards were warped with many floods, and a dirty water line traveled along the length of all the old walls several feet above the ground. The ancient house creaked in protest of her small presence with each step she took, but Amber turned the corner into the unused kitchen reigned mostly by bugs now, down the narrow hallway and past the disgusting moldy bathroom, past the room with five crayon scribbled pages hung delicately on the door, to the closed door at the end, with a faint line of light, like a bar of honey, escaping from under it.

She opened it a crack and stood in the gap, the faint orange light of the room bathing her shadowed face. A man, middle aged, lay sprawled still within his clothes and shoes across the dusty mattress in the center of the room. His face sagging with a shadow of stubble under his sharp jaw. His shirt was crumpled, and his belt was undone and flopped on his partially exposed stomach like a dead snake. In the man's hand was a bottle of amber liquid, and the stench of stale alcohol hung in the air like hovering mosquitoes. To the right was the only other furniture on the room, a wobbly bedside table, with a moth eaten lamp. The lamp projected a faint light throughout the room, and the illumination glinted off the cold metal of the sleeping man's undone zipper.

Amber walked slowly into the room and knelt by the bed. Through the dusty cracked window she could still hear the faint sounds of singing crickets, and she reached quietly for his shoes, slipping the worn boots off his sleeping body with her child-sized hands. He stirred tiredly, slurring his words as he mumbled and shook his head. Amber stopped for a moment to regard him fearfully, waiting for him to wake. He looked at the ceiling and groaned, spotting her only after he could finally lift his head. The man was past drunk; the smell of alcohol seemed to seep from his skin in the form of sweat, covering his tanned body in a shiny gleam. He grinned lazily at her, a smug, disgusting smile that twisted upon his face like barbed wire.

"Come back finally?" He jeered drunkenly, his blue eyes so pale they seemed almost completely white. Amber didn't respond, and instead stood slowly at the end of his dirty mattress. He lounged lazily under her blank gaze, and took another swig from the glass bottle in his hand, while his other left his side to fumble with his zipper. "Come here, Amber," he said gently but with the fabled truth-less tone of a drunk, after dropping the bottle to the floor. It clunked with a thud and the glug of escaping liquid followed.