HOUSE OF FIRE

Chapter 10

        My body trembles in response when a thousand sensations race through my skin. Strangely, I feel a jerking sensation yank me forward into a blinding light, almost as if I’m being dragged by a string. In what feels like slow motion, I’m struts abruptly into some kind of vision.
       
      Murky and indecipherable at first, until I take a closer look at my surroundings. I look around in astonishment, gaping at what used to be the building of my parent’s apartment home in New York. I whirl around in shock, bewildered by the sight of everything.

     I can hear the bustling and loud blaring noise of the cars and people moving about on the streets of Manhattan. I can feel the cool evening breeze on my skin, and can even inhale the aroma coming from the hot-dog stand a couple of feet away.

     This feeling is bizarre, like an out-of-body experience, except all my senses are entirely active and alive.

     Glancing around again, one minute the night is as peaceful as it can get in New York City, and in the next minute a large blazing ball of fire comes crashing down from the sky on my former home.

     The ground trembles as if attacked by a severe earthquake, everyone jerks forward, and an uproar erupts.

~*~*~*~

     I jerked upright with a scream, and warm arms suddenly wrap themselves around me. “Coral, you need to calm down,” her soft voice murmurs in my ear, her arms fastening around me as she rubs my back in circles just like my mother used to when I was terrified as a kid. “your safe, your okay.”

      Nodding, I clung onto her for a long minute, taking in deep shaky breathes before pulling away. Letting out a long sigh, I run my hands through my hair and wonder why I agreed to do this again. “It was different this time.”

      “I know,” she replies, standing to her feet she moves around the room and steps into her kitchen to get me a glass of water. Since Steven couldn’t sit around and wait for me to finish my therapy session due to a business meeting in Paris, Amelia felt it’d be better if we commenced today’s therapy out of her stuffy study. Walking back, she hands it over before settling back on her seat across from me. “You told me everything. Why do you think your dream was different this time?”
   
   “I don’t know.” I shake my head, gripping onto my glass tightly. Raising it to my lips I swallow desperately until the glass was empty before slamming it on the table separating the both of us, sucking in another deep breath I lean back against the couch.

     "Okay, let me ask you this. When your apartment caught on fire, were you ever outside?”
     
       “No. I was asleep in my mother’s study... I think,” I reply, confused. “I remember hiding beneath her desk for some reason and woke to the sound of a massive explosion. Suddenly, there was fire everywhere.”

      “What about the scenario you just painted out, have you ever seen it before?”
   
      “All the time on the news, it’s still ranked top of the list on the internet.”

      “Alright, let me explain plainly what you just related. It appears you underwent what scientist call astral projection. Projecting outside of your body. An intentional out-of-body experience that implies the existence of a soul or consciousness called an "astral body", that is detached from the "physical body", is capable of travelling "outside" it throughout the universe. Only it appears you didn’t astral project now, just sometime before the incident. For any reason, do you think it’s real, that it literally happened right before the fireball struck your apartment?”
  
        Hesitating, I stare at my hands and bite down on my lower lip, before nodding slowly. “Yes, I do. I don’t know how but, I’ve always had the ability to like you said "astral project" out of my dreams if I tried hard enough. Though, as of late, I haven’t done it.”
 
       Astounded by my response, it takes her a few seconds before she asks. “And at any point in time did you ever tell anyone about this?”