Short stories

Fire lighter

Fire lighter

The memory is fresh in my mind. It still burns through me, its heat unbearable as always. I can’t look at the flame anymore. Every time I move the fire crawls up my leg. I smell the smoke still trying to suffocate me, although there is no smoke in the air. I can’t stand the colours of a fire ever since that day.

We didn’t realize the dangers of a fire. Lyndz sure didn’t. Lyndsey was her real name but I called her Lyndz because we were best friends. I could be myself around her; I didn’t have to pretend. In my dreams her voice cries out

“Ingrid! Do you want to come to my house?”

And I’d say “Yeah! I’d love to Lyndz!”

But then I’d wake up and realize it was just a dream and I would start crying because I missed her.

Reality hurts and it’s hard to get used to. When reality hits you it’s like you’re in slow motion; everything slows down so you feel the impact and pain and all the details that go with it.

I know that more than anyone.

When I was 13 Lyndz and I used to play at an old ware house. Lyndz is probably the reason why I am still alive. She said “Ingrid you want to come to the ware house after school?”

“Yeah Lyndz I will meet you there” I had said

People are so cruel. Lyndz and I had been there for ten minutes when we smelt smoke and heard the shouts of teenage boys. They set the building on fire. They knew we were in there because they had seen us walk in there many times.

By that point the flames were starting to burn our skin and the smoke was filling our lungs. We were afraid and didn’t know what to do, Until she spotted the window.

We stumbled toward the window, arms around each other’s shoulders, coughing and spluttering. We were weak and had to break the window.

She pushed me out just as the whole building collapsed. One thought screamed through my head as the piercing wails of sirens came closer. She was still in there.

At that moment I passed out.

White. White was all I could see when I awoke. The white walls of the hospital. I saw my mum first. “Ingrid” she said. “Oh Ingrid I’m so sorry” her voice was filled with misery. I realized though I didn’t want to but I could remember exactly what had happened.

Now I knew what it was like to be depressed. I couldn’t talk to anyone after that. Lyndsey was dead. She was dead. The burns that scarred my legs, and my body were painful reminders of what I had lost. My best friend.

When I turned 17 I finally worked up the courage to go to the warehouse. Or what was left of it after the fire. There wasn’t much left to see.

Something gave me the urge to walk over to the last place I had been. The window. Then I saw it.

It was sort of charred from where the flames had licked it. Her bracelet.  I picked it up and squinted to see the faint engraving. “Ingrid”

I smiled as a tear fell down my face. She cared that much that she had pushed me out first. She cared so much that she had engraved my name into her bracelet. In the end she had cared.

So had I.

So much that I knew she wouldn’t want me to be sitting around being depressed. I knew that she would want me to get on with my life.

I wiped away my tear and walked out of the ware house. I had finally let go.