by A. E. Murphy
The firemen nod and take off.
“I TOLD HER TO STAY IN HER ROOM!” Presley screams, struggling.
Stanley appears behind me and places his hand on my shoulder. I curl into his side, watching the scene unfold. “That fucking soup kitchen is on fire too… this is the only truck they had spare.”
“She’ll be okay, won’t she?” I ask over the roaring flames. I understand now why people say that, they really do whoosh and roar like nothing I’ve ever heard.
Presley is screaming on the ground as the police keep him clear.
I’ve never heard anybody sound so desperate before.
“PAISLEY!” he screams. “I’M SORRY, PAISLEY!”
I cry, feeling salty tears flood my eyes as the boys who were just enjoying themselves, dancing like they had no problems only minutes ago, are now screaming for the police to let them go.
There’s a bang and a powerful whoosh of air. The two firemen that approached the door with the hose are sent flying back and a mist of water drenches us all and two others fight to control the strong, heavy pipe as it twists and turns in the air.
“Oh my God,” I say, pulling forward. The house groans and creeks and the firemen remain on the ground, one of them seems unconscious and the other drags him away from the heat.
Everybody looks so helpless. Meanwhile there’s a little girl in there who might already be dead.
“DO SOMETHING!” Presley begs and the firetruck starts to move.
“The propane tank is going to go any fucking second!” I hear the chief yell. “It’ll bring the entire house down. We have to get that little girl out NOW!”
“The entire ground floor and half the second floor is done for. There’s no clear route in. The ladder will be too close to the flames to climb.” The other fireman sounds as panicked as the first one.
“What about the side? Ladder through the window?”
“It’s the spare fucking truck, Daniel. The ladder is jammed. It won’t reach that high!”
“DO SOMETHING!” people start to scream.
Another ambulance arrives to deal with the fallen fireman.
“GET OFF ME, YOU PUSSIES!” Presley shrieks, his voice hoarse from all the screaming. He’ll run into the fire if they let him, he’s not thinking straight.
I tug away from Stanley again who pulled me back into his chest when the chief spoke about the propane tank. Then I move to Myers, who is watching the scene through drunken, panicked eyes, wrapped in the safety of one of those foil fucking blankets.
I grab it and rip it from his body.
I’m probably going to die, but I always figured I would anyway.
If God is real, I’m here for a reason. And I have a feeling that this is the reason. I can get in there. I can do this.
“I’m here for a reason. I’m here for a reason,” I whisper-chant to myself to help gather the courage I need.
I wrap the blanket around my waist and tie it because I need my hands free, then I run at the truck, and using what skills I have, I scale the ladder on the back with ease and pull myself onto the top. I run across the slippery surface that’s slick from the errant hose. I can make it. I’ve jumped farther. I can get in there.
“MALLORY, NO!” I hear Stanley’s voice as I leap and sail through the air and over the flames of the crumbling porch.
My fingers grip the rotten wooden frame of the second-floor window and I pull my body up and in, grateful the window is open, tumbling into the house sideways. My lungs threaten to close immediately. There is so much smoke, and because the window is open it is pulling it all my way.
I stay low and hold my breath. I can’t see shit. My eyes are burning. It’s like when you cook oil in an oven for too long but a million times worse.
I try to focus but my mind is stuck in panic mode. It’s like when I learned to conquer my fear of heights. I just have to focus, get calm, try to breathe-ish… I can do this.
Carter said she’s in the next room. It’s not far.
I use the blanket to open the door and almost scream when I see flames climbing the banister. Crackling angrily as they eat away at it as though it’s little more than marshmallow.
It’s so hot yet I’m not sweating. My skin is dry. It feels like I’m sitting in an oven. I suppose I am.
I crawl along the floor using my hands and toes. The carpet feels like it’s melting beneath me.
I hear a groan from somewhere within the flames and start to panic.
I could turn back. Nobody would blame me. But then I wonder what I can turn back to. I won’t be able to jump back, there’s not enough running space.
“Stop being a coward,” I choke to myself.
I breathe and cough. It’s impossible. There’s no oxygen in here.
“PAISLEY!” I yell, begging her to reply.
I keep going, feeling for another door.
When I find it, I also hear a little girl’s cry. Oh my God. She’s alive.
I wrap the blanket around the handle and push it open, then slam it shut behind me.
“PAISLEY!” I yell and cough again. I’m starting to feel dizzy. Smoke poisoning will set in soon.
“I’m here,” the little girl replies and her hand peeks out from under the bed.
I grab it and pull her out but keep her low. “We have to go. Okay? We have to go.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. I am too. But it’s going to be okay.” I cup her cute little cherub face with my hands, leaving ashy marks on her peachy skin. “Are you hurt?”
She shows me her blistering hands, I can just make them out as smoke pours in from under the door.
“I tried to open the door but the handle was too hot.”
“Okay. Come here.” I wrap her from head to toe in the foil blanket and look around the room. “Can you hold on to my neck?”
She nods.
“Even if it hurts?”
She nods again and her eyes fill with tears.
“Okay.”
I crouch down and she wraps her legs around my body. Thank God she’s not too heavy.
I look around her bedroom and find a jump rope. I tie it under her butt and around my waist.
“I can’t hold on to you so you have to hold on to me, but not too tightly or I won’t be able to breathe.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t look. Okay? Just close your eyes and keep them closed.” When she doesn’t reply, I urge, “Pinkie swear it.”
“I swear it.”
I shift her, feeling uncomfortable and constricted, then I move to the window and break it with a little wooden chair.
Who puts a little girl in a bedroom with only one tiny-ass window?
She whimpers when I lean out and then whimpers louder when I pull back.
Flames are creeping up the side below the window. It’s no wonder the room is suddenly feeling warmer.
The power of fire is insane.
“Hold on tight,” I say, feeling sick and dizzy.
I rip open the door, shielding my face from the heat. The metal of my piercings is scorching my skin but I don’t have time to deal with those.
There’s no way down. When I step out of the room, the house groans and the stairs and hall collapse.
I dart across, catching us on the banister. It digs uncomfortably into my stomach but I right myself and bound up the stairs, trying to keep us low as possible. I feel clunky with the extra weight and lack of breathing.
It’s hotter up here. If that’s even possible. But there are no flames.
I kick a door but end up using my skirt on the handle when it doesn’t budge. I was hoping it would just crumble like the rest of this fucking place. My hand stings from the contact with the metal.
I’m on the third floor. I’m in Presley’s room. I can tell it’s his from how dark it is, and the fact there are sports socks on the floor by a hamper and clothes strewn all over the place.
I open his side window and stick my head out to breathe and look aro
und.
There’s a pipe I can scale like I did at the school but it might be too hot. The ground beneath looks like it’s caving in and I wonder if that’s the basement collapsing or the foundations.
SHIT.
It’s our only chance. There’s a wall I might be able to get to…
I don’t know what to do.
I’m panicking again.
“Are you holding on?” I ask, terrified now, I can hear people screaming. My time is running out.
“I’m holding on.”
“Don’t look down, okay?”
“Okay.”
I double-check the room for any other ways out but then I hear this high-pitched hissing sound mingling with the roar of the fire. It’s the weirdest noise. Like boiling water through a spout.
“Fuck,” I mutter through dry lips when I feel a rumble.
Then there’s the sound of an explosion that rattles the entire house and I hear things start to collapse. Groaning, creaking… My ears are ringing. Paisley is screaming and holding too tight. People outside are crying and screaming my name.
People care… they care…
I have to get us out of here.
“We gotta go,” I whisper and climb out of the window faster than I’ve ever climbed before. This house is coming down.
I grip the pipe and swing our bodies around but the momentum is too much. I almost fall but, somehow, with sheer luck and mad skill, I manage to hold tight.
The pipe is hot but not unbearable so I start to climb down it, focusing on the people screaming my name and Paisley’s.
“SHE’S THERE!” is shrieked in the distance.
“Here I am,” I murmur, coughing so powerfully I have to stop climbing for a moment.
I manage to make it down an entire floor before the pipe starts to get too hot and wobble precariously.
I pick up the pace, knowing that in a moment I’m going to have to leap from the pipe to the boundary wall. I’m still too high. If I land wrong, which I probably will, I’ll likely never be able to dance again.
“I’m scared,” Paisley sobs. “I want Mommy.”
The pipe can’t hold my weight, it starts to come away from the wall.
“Oh shit,” I say as it slowly moves outwards. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
It leans and I can do nothing but hold on for dear life.
“Please God, if you’re real, don’t fail me now. It seems cruel to let me get this far.”
The pipe leans more and more.
“Kid, say a fucking prayer.”
She screams when I swing my body, gathering what remains of my courage and strength.
I release the pipe at an angle and hold my breath.
My feet touch the top, narrow curve of the wall that stands at about seven feet high. I bend into a crouch and grip the underside of the curves with my fingers.
I don’t sway.
I don’t fall.
I don’t feel pain.
I landed it. I fucking dropped fifteen feet onto a wall the width of my mother fucking shoe and I LANDED IT.
“Oh my God.”
There’s more screaming and people race our way. I see a blur of faces as I clamber down from the wall into the neighbor’s yard and collapse onto solid, cool grass.
The sobbing girl is removed from my back and I’m sprayed with a cooling mist and dragged to my feet.
“She’s burned her hands,” I say, sounding like a fifty-year-old male smoker. “But I think she’s okay.”
“Don’t you EVER do something like that again,” Stanley yells, trembling as he hugs me tight. “You stupid, brave, foolish, idiotic, moronic, idiotic, foolish, stupid girl.”
“Running out of adjectives there, Stanley?” I ask hoarsely, grinning up at his face.
“You’re a hero, kid, never seen anything like that,” the fire chief tells me, shaking my hand until I cough in his face and he ushers me to an ambulance.
I see Presley hugging and kissing his sister as her hands are looked at by paramedics. A mask is forced over my face and I’m led towards an ambulance.
“I’m fine,” I say but even I’m not sure of that. My throat is constricting. The oxygen feels nice in my throat.
People clap as I pass, they cheer my name, but it’s as I’m being told to get on a gurney and I’m arguing about it that I’m suddenly spinning around to face another.
A hand grips my head, my mask is tugged away, and lips crush my own. I emit a squeak and my eyes widen as Presley hardens the kiss, hurting my lips in a way that I don’t mind.
He pulls back, hand tangled in the underside of my braids. It pulls on my scalp but I’m not bothered about that either.
“I owe you my life,” he tells me, unashamed of the tears falling from his eyes. “I owe you everything.”
He kisses me again, and for a moment, I lose myself in it. A moment shared between two people on the edge of tragedy.
Stanley yanks him away, forcing us to stop.
“She needs checking over, fuck off back to your own ambulance.”
I sit on the gurney, dazed, with a body on fire and not because of the burning building.
I’m running on pure adrenaline right now.
I can’t believe any of that happened.
Hospitals suck ass.
“I’m fine, I want to go home.” I’m whining but I’m tired, I’m smoky and I need a shower.
Lane chooses this moment to walk in with a bag of toiletries and clothing.
“I got shampoo, conditioner, shower gel that smells like candy…” She lists everything, sounding breathy and emotional as she goes. Her eyes fill with tears and then she suddenly blurts, “How could you be so stupid?”
“I’m okay,” I reply, husky and painfully.
I take the bag from her and step into her embrace for the first time since we met. She squeezes me so tightly I can hardly breathe and my already aching body gives a twinge of protest.
“You won’t believe us, why would you? You hardly know us. But we do care about you. We love you.”
Stanley joins in, wrapping his big arms around both of us.
“Guys,” I mumble on a throaty laugh while squished between them. “Can I shower now?”
They shove me towards my en suite. Got to love private healthcare.
What they don’t see as I’m closing the doors are the tears sliding down my cheeks from her words.
They love me. Do they mean it?
I hope so because my heart has never felt so full.
I shower under a lukewarm, not hot spray because my skin feels really prickly and tight. I triple wash my body and hair but the scent of smoke lingers in my nostrils.
I’m lucky I didn’t lose my hair, I’m also very grateful that I came out unscathed.
I’m eager to see if Paisley did too but Stanley wouldn’t let me leave the room to find out.
I dry and dress in brand-new pajamas, Lane must have gone to the store on her way. She’s so sweet and thoughtful.
My body is snug and soothed in the super soft, white and purple striped button-up and matching pajama pants.
When I exit with a towel in my hair, Lane pulls it free and combs through the tresses for me. I close my eyes and relax, letting her braid my hair like a mother would. Like my mother should but never has. It’s tingly and soothing. It almost makes me want to sleep.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers and kisses the top of my head.
Moments later I’m checked on again by my doctor and a nurse who both tell me to stay in bed on the oxygen mask. I don’t complain about that part because who doesn’t love puffing on pure oxygen?
The adrenaline eventually leaves my system too, and when Stanley dims the lights, I fall asleep, while drowsily insisting they go home.
They don’t and I know they won’t.
“He’s got to learn sometime. Right? He’s a growing boy. He’s just experimenting. Just clean her up and make sure she doesn’t ever talk about this.” He laughs cruelly
and I sob harder. “How hard could it be to manipulate a seven-year-old?”
His face lowers to mine and he smiles like he used to, right before he gave me money. But he doesn’t give me money this time, or a teddy. He slaps me around the face. It stings. I cry harder, wailing until he shakes me to shut up. Spitting in my face with each word. His breath stinks of cigarettes.
“Listen here, you little shit. Your mother doesn’t want you. Your daddy doesn’t want you. I don’t want to take care of a naughty little girl. If you tell anybody what Landon did, I’ll throw you out on the street and nobody will take care of you and you will die. Do you understand?”
I nod frantically, sniffling until a man’s big hand brings a tissue to my nose.
“Do you want to die?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to die. “I want my mommy. My belly hurts.”
“Get her some medicine or something. Take the pain away. No use her being in pain. I’m not a complete monster.”
Uncle’s friend takes my hand in his and leads me away, lifting me when we get to the door to wrap my legs around his waist.
“I’ll make it so you don’t feel any pain at all, little darlin’.”
I wake up, screaming as loud as my damaged and sore throat will let me.
MY ALARMS. I forgot my alarms!
Nurses flood the room as Stanley restrains me, holding me back on the bed.
“She’s okay,” he insists, “it’s a nightmare. She’s okay. You’re okay, kid.”
I calm down, looking around. I’m safe. I’m fine. I’m not back there.
“Let me go,” I plead and they all step back.
“It’s just the shock setting in,” one nurse explains and another adds, “It’s to be expected.”
“We can sedate you if you like?”
I shake my head. “No. Please.” Because then I’ll be trapped in my nightmares all night. “Where’s my phone?”
Stanley hands me his. He looks exhausted. Like he hasn’t slept a wink.
Lane leads the nurses out to speak to them while I set my alarms on his phone and close my eyes again. My body is trembling. Stanley places his hand on my shoulder and I feel safe, like nobody can get to me. Like nobody will ever get to me again.
