Light in the Darkness

Fires of Death

She sat up, her forehead cool and damp with sweat. Heat filled her bedroom and she opened her eyes to see her entire room engulfed in flames. She climbed out of bed and ran to her door. It was stuck. She began to cough from the dark smoke filling her lungs. She tossed on her robe and tried to cover her mouth and nose to ease her breathing, but it didn't help. She heard banging on the window and saw her sister Carmen kneeling on the roof just outside her window. Adri heard the wail of firetruck sirens in the night as she ran to the window and tried desperately to open it. She unlocked it, but it wouldn't open.

Suddenly, the whole house began to shake like an earthquake. When the shaking stopped, Adri saw a look of sheer terror cross Carmen's face before she backed up quickly, forgetting she was on the roof. As she fell, Adri turned around. What she saw standing there petrified her. The creature was unlike anything she had ever seen before, unlike anything that should've existed. The creature was about the size of a large donkey, but looked more like a snake. The top half of the creature was numerous heads each on the end of a long neck the length and thickness of Adri's arm. The bottom half was as thick as a tree trunk, greenish scales reflecting strange colors in the firelight. The scales seemed to reflect images of the future, Adri thrashing in the water, Carmen running through a dark forest, a large giant marching up a grassy hill. Too late, Adri realized that these reflections were merely a distraction. Adri put her hands up in defense as the creature spit burning acid from all of its heads. She closed her eyes as the room turned blindingly light and the window shattered. She opened her eyes to see that she was still alive, but the creature was not. The creature seemed to have burned, its charred scales could no longer reflect those images.

Adri heard the ceiling groan and dove out of the way as the ceiling collapsed in on her. She felt the burning debris covering her from her mid-back to her feet, but she couldn't feel any heat. She heard firemen in the house calling for anyone trapped in the burning home, but she couldn't respond. She could feel her consciousness fading and she wondered if this is how she would die, alone, scared and burning in her own bedroom. She heard the firemen running into her room and unburying her from the debris, but it felt so far away. She felt herself being lifted off the floor and looked up into the face of a fireman with dark blue eyes, blond hair, and soot smeared across his face. She noticed that rain was pouring in through the roof, but it hadn't been raining a few minutes ago. Then she lost consciousness.

She woke up laying in her yard in the cool dry grass. She heard Carmen crying next to her, and opened her eyes to see their whole house reduced to ashes. She tried to sit up, but her whole chest felt as though she was breathing burning embers from breathing all of that smoke. She saw a fireman walking up to an ambulance on the other side of the lawn, two gurneys with white sheets inside. She heard the hushed voices of the paramedics talking to the firemen. Adri reached over with her right hand and grabbed a hold of Carmen's small hands.

"Adri!" Carmen cried full of alarm, "They told me you were dead, your heart stopped!"

"Little smoke can't kill me. Not on my birthday," Adri replied as Carmen wrapped her little arms around her neck.

The paramedics on the other side of the lawn gasped and ran over to Adri. The fireman from that morning who had pulled Adri out of the burning pile of roof debris pried Carmen away. The paramedics tested Adri's pulse, breathing and various other things to make sure she hadn't gotten any permanent damage from breathing the smoke or being dead. Before long, even the pain in her chest went away as her lungs cleared.

"We found these and would like to give them to you, they are some of the only things that survived the fire," An older fireman handed Adri the jewelry box she had studied the night before and a small velvet pouch about the size of a CD that had a few things in it.

"Thank you," she replied taking the items.

She set the box aside and opened the pouch. Inside was a necklace, just a leather string with a chunk of amber on it, some crumpled money totaling about $150, a hairclip and a note. She set the necklace and the hairclip on the box and the amber chunk flew into the hole on the right of the box, fitting nicely with a gentle click, nerves of faint gold light covering the right side of the ceramic circle. The fireman who brought the items over tried to pull the necklace out, but he couldn't.

"Huh, think its stuck," he observed.

Adri reached over and gently removed the stone from its place. She called Carmen over and placed the amber stone around her neck. The fireman who had been standing with her was gone though Adri had never seen him go. As the firemen packed up their gear, the paramedics cast nervous glances at each other as if they had something to tell the girls but they weren't sure how.

"They're gone, aren't they?" Carmen asked Adri.

"I think so," Adri replied, taking Carmen's hand.

The paramedics apologized and promised that theyhad done everything they could to save their parents but in the end there wasnothing that could be done. As the emergency responders packed the rest oftheir gear, one of the young women who was volunteering brought over somesandwiches for the girls.    

[To be continued...]