She
stood there, in shock. The black smoke
billowed and swayed into the winter sky, the below zero air producing a drift
that seemed like it was moving in slow motion.
Her head tilted back, and she couldn’t help but think, as she crossed
her arms and grasped her elbows tightly, that the slow motion of the black
pillars slowly rising above her head was fitting. Her own mind, and her life as of one minute
ago, was now going in slow motion, as well.
She felt faint, but more than that, she felt numb. The below zero temperatures helped with that,
but it was more; it was due to the fact that her entire life, despite the arctic
conditions she found herself in, had gone up in flames.
At
that moment, she could care less about the material things inside her
home. Not only her childhood memories
and pictures, but her expensive things like her computer and clothes, were all
gone. No, she didn’t care about those at
all. She cared about the other people
that lived there with her. Above all
else, she prayed they had all gotten out safely. As a hectic scene unfolded around her, blurring
the lines in front of her eyes, she realized, little by little, that that was
not the case. The heads of the brave
fire fighters hung a little lower, and you didn’t have to be a genius to know
what that meant.
The
blur deepened. She looked up and saw
only black contrasted against the arctic landscape; the smoke was black, the
remains of her home were charred to black.
Her hands appeared before her eyes suddenly, shaking; they were also
black. How had she escaped? How in the name of God had she gotten
out? And why hadn’t she rushed around to
find her mother, her sister, her cat? Why
hadn’t she burned to cinders with them?
Was she that selfish? Had instinct kicked in? How had she done it? She looked past her shaking fingers to the
bay window, or what was left of it, on the second floor of her family’s gutted
house. That was her bedroom, and that’s
where she had been earlier. She
remembered clearly being sprawled on her daybed, completely engrossed in her
book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
After that… it all went black.
The next thing she remembered was standing here on the curb, across the
street from her house, alone.
People
had spoken to her, but she hadn’t heard a word.
They stood before her, lips moving, embracing her quickly, smooshing her
numb face into their shoulders, stroking her hair. Complete strangers, even. She wondered to herself blankly if this was
the norm, was this how all strangers treated other strangers when it came to
comforting them? Did they think that
helped? It’s one thing to loose all your
material things, but it was another story entirely to loose your entire…
A
darkness enveloped her and the world spun.
Her hands fell and all she saw were the patterns the smoke created in
the bright winter sky. She didn’t
remember much after that.
Copyright 2013 by Erin M. Truesdale
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