Wandering Ends A Flash Fiction Collection

Smoke In The Rafters

Smoke hung so thick in the library's rafters that she could read words in it. The library had been closed for three hours now, Alice was not concerned about getting caught. On a whim, she decided to invite a few of her friends to join her little after-hours library party. She invited three but fifteen decided to tag-a-long. The "little" party was not so little anymore but Alice was still not concerned with getting caught. If she did she knew she would lose her fifth job in five months but she was confident she would be fine.

The pot smoke filled the library, the words she could read in the smoke were clear as day but not really there. She was high. She was starting to see things. Her friends played the music loud, their friends were dancing on top of the bookshelves. The party seemed to be reaching a tipping point from ganja-filled, quiet fun to out of control mayhem. In her mind she knew she should get this thing back under control but she was glued to her seat entertaining herself reading the story in the smoke. Distracted, Alice did not realize that at least twenty more people had joined their party.

Someone passed her another blunt. She was fighting the urge to toke again, but she could not do it. She took another puff of the magic dragon then passed out. While Alice slept the party continued into the night.

Sometime just before daybreak Alice woke up to the music still blaring, but no one there. She noticed the smoke still hung thick in the air but had become a darker color. While she was still a bit fuzzy she was becoming concerned with the amount of smoke filling the library. She looked around, a bit frantically now, to see an ominous orange glow near the front door. Walking around the bookshelves that had been toppled, boy was she going to be in trouble, she found the source of the glow. Flames were licking the walls at the front of the library. The smoke had become so thick she was coughing and struggling to breathe. She was afraid now. She knelt down so she could stay below the smoke while she found her way to the back door.

As she approached the back of the library she found the other exit engulfed in flames too. It was getting harder to breathe and the flames were climbing the walls towards the ceiling. Alice now had no way to get out of the library. Panic besieged her, making it even harder to breathe. She laid on the floor, hunkering down as low as she could. She could finally hear sirens outside but it was starting to feel like a kiln in there. Beads of sweat turned to streams of perspiration. She could see heat blisters forming on her bare arms, her shirt was actually smoking from the heat.

She crawled her way to the bathrooms hoping to soak herself with water. The sinks were not working. The toilets were still full of water but were close to boiling. Already blistering from the heat, she decided to scoop the hot water from the toilets onto her clothes. She was now drenched in water and ready to find a way out of the building. As she flung the bathroom door open an explosion of flames burst through. The water on her clothes instantly reached boiling, her body burned from head to toe. She stripped off her clothes to find large pus filled boils from her thighs to her breasts. Skin peeled off as she felt she would burn alive.

Alice laid down on the bathroom floor, as flat as she could, in an attempt to escape the heat. Panic turned to despair as she felt herself cooking. She could hear voices in the building now. But her throat was scorched so she could not yell. The doorway was blocked by flames. She was trapped. The firefighters were yelling out as they made their way through the building. Alice was slowly losing consciousness and the voices sounded more like those in a dream, or a nightmare in this case. As she faded into unconsciousness she thought of the story the smoke had been telling in the rafters. It had been a story brought on through hallucinations but turned out to be a story of what was to come.

When Alice came to, she was outside on a stretcher, surrounded by a half dozen firefighters and paramedics. They were rushing her to an ambulance, trying to keep her alive. She faded out once again. The next time she woke up she was in a hospital room, her body covered in gauze. Machines were keeping her alive. Three doctors stood at the foot of her bed. She noticed her mom and dad outside of the room, eyes swollen from crying, staring at her. Police were standing behind them and appeared to be questioning her friends and others from the party. One of the doctor's noticed she was awake. He explained that she was lucky to be alive but that she was in very critical condition and may not make it through the next night. Tears welled up in her eyes as they explained that if she did pull through there would be years of painful rehabilitation and surgeries to repair her skin.

Alice made it through the first night but she was in such pain she wished she hadn't. Her parents could only speak to her through a speaker in the room. They told her to be strong. Alice did not want to be strong, she wanted to die. The slightest movement made her writhe in pain but she fought through it as she lifted her hand off the bed. She waved to her parents and tried to blow them a kiss. Seconds later, she reached up to yank the tube that was breathing for her out of her throat. Her parents screamed for the doctors. Alice could not breathe on her own, it was uncomfortable but the pain quickly started to fade. The world was fading to black around her. She mouthed the words, I love you, to her parents. Doctors came rushing to the door of the room as Alice heard the monitors screaming alarms blare. There was nothing the doctors could do now. Her throat was closing up. She felt the bliss of nothingness surround her as she slipped away.