A Fire That Burns

by Kirsty-Anne Still

  Tyler put his hands on his head in an exasperated way. He was so mixed up over everything and standing there reliving the past wasn’t helping him in the slightest. What was worse was that he let his anger get the better of him though. He changed before her eyes, becoming the evil one that put the distance between them, “Yeah, and then you come back and look what happens.”

  When Austin’s eyes met with Tyler’s she felt like she was thrown into the depths of hell. She was cast into flames and pain, and she was met with the devil in his newest form. This was no longer the man she loved, knew, had lived with. This was the man she had created when she ran like a ghost into the night and she couldn’t handle it.

  “Yeah, because I’m the bad guy,” Austin said and looked at Tyler with wild bewilderment as she tried to make sense of all of this too. She hated how they had become, how he couldn’t look at her properly, or how he had to physically make himself stay in the room with her. She could see the tension and irritation literally radiate off him.

  “Well you've been nothing but problems since you got back in town, so yeah, I guess you are the bad guy! You come back and tear your family apart, you alienate your mother from her children, you’ve nearly cost me my relationship and credibility with Natasha’s father and you killed my baby by attacking my fiancée! That makes you bitch, a liar, a coward and a murderer," Tyler yelled at her as his grief came on show, his eyes might as well be illuminated with redness as he stared at her with anger. That last comment mingled with Austin’s self-pity snapped his reserve. "I was living a perfectly good life before you got back! I finally got over you and you come back and rip everything out from under me! You come back and become my friend, distract me. God, I slept with you, Austin! That was a mistake beyond all others I have made in my life!”

  “I didn’t know this was going to happen! I didn’t know you’d be like that and I am no murderer so quit accusing me like everyone else. You know nothing!” Austin shouted back, her tone dangerously playing with erupting into full blown anger. “I didn’t keep an eye on you every day I was away or my family. I tried to forget about you, about everyone.” Austin admitted ashamedly, “That was what I have tried to do, but something always drew me back in. The computer systems, your birthday, our anniversary, even the day I left. I just couldn’t leave this place alone because I love you and I love my family and I only ever wanted that back! I just wanted to come home and be loved. That’s all,” her tone was drowning in her tears, her defeat wrapping around her entirely, readying to consume her whole and never let her go.

  “I do still love you, Austin,” Tyler told her and he saw hope ignite in her eyes. “I waited for you every day for almost three years, but you never came back. I had to move on. You have to realize that I had to move on because I couldn’t have survived that fucking limbo any longer. It hurt me too much, it killed me. I had to move on.”

  Austin snorted at that comment – she had heard otherwise, town gossip never stopped to sleep. She knew Natasha spent every day with him, she knew the pair were inseparable from the day after she left until today. “Yeah you loved me so much you allowed Natasha straight into your bed! Like she always wanted, like she always promised me would happen!” Austin shouted and pushed him over the edge with the town’s gossip that she had heard. “And you fell for her hook, line and sinker!”

  “I’m out,” Tyler finalized and shook his head and threw his hands up in the air. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” He told her and grabbed his phone and keys from the kitchen worktop and went to leave. He needed air, he needed to breathe clearly and that house was overheated and claustrophobic. He couldn’t stand it now. Not with the walls now stained with their loss, with their anger. He began to walk passed her, ready to just leave this house as it were. He was through with it and the powerful memories it held. He was completely done with Austin and he needed to get out.

  “I lost your baby,” Austin admitted and just watched his anger freeze with shock just as he went for the handle of the front door. Immediately her tears and remembrance strangled her, beginning to attack her and steal her voice, "Back then I found out I was pregnant. I was going to surprise you, but Natasha and I argued and she shoved me and I hit my stomach. I lost our baby before I could tell you, Tyler so I never did. I ran from you, from our life. I ran because where my head was back then, it was better to run and forget than tell you and have to fight off Natasha from getting you while I was breaking down. I was too weak to find the fight in me so I never tried. I felt I was losing you already and then that happened," her voice quivered as the droplets of salty tears ran their course down her face before they met at her chin willing to slip down her neck or drop to the floor. “I never could tell you what happened so I ran away to stop myself having to.”

  Watching him turn around, Austin was confronted the devil again. This time he looked ready to attack, ready to kill her with his words. This time he was ready to finish her.

  “You're sick, you know that?” Tyler spoke up, his brow furrowed, "It's always about you, Austin. Well for once it’s not, so quit with the lying and accept responsibility for your God damn actions! You pushed her and she lost my baby and you think that by making some sob story you’ll make it all okay and justified - well it won't. I'll make sure you pay for what happened with Natasha however much she fights it. No one will ever believe your lies, Austin, so quit trying on me. And if I were you, I wouldn’t run off. You’re a wanted woman."

  Fear ignited in Austin in an instance, “You don’t mean that. I didn’t do anything to her!”

  “Oh, I can and I will. You seem to forget my position in the local PD. Do not even begin to doubt what I am capable of when I need to get things done,” Tyler told her almost threatening. He hated doing this, really he did, but he was reacting to her news and he was in denial. There was no way he could live with himself if her words were truthful, especially when Natasha claimed the same.

  “I thought you loved me,” Austin managed as she tried to halt her tears. “You told me you still loved me and now you’re doing this? You couldn’t have meant anything you ever said if you’re doing this.”

  And Tyler spoke the words that would haunt him forever. Especially once his grief melted and disappeared. "I guess I lied. You should be familiar with the term. I can never love you again after this, I hope you see that. All I see when I look at you right now is a woman I hate. You ruined my life once with leaving and now you're ruining it by being here. I hate you, Austin, and I never thought I'd mean that, but I do. Why don’t you just do us all a favor and disappear again?"

  “Because this is my home as well,” Austin fought back fiercely. This was her hometown, where she grew up, where she had fallen in love. “And because I didn’t do what Natasha said I did! I didn’t push Natasha because she was never pregnant!”

  Tyler ignored that last comment as she said it. He didn’t want to believe he was the foolish one. It was better to lash out than admit the probable truths. “You gave up your home when you ran away,” Tyler said as he headed to the door of their makeshift house. “Maybe you should just do that again. You won’t be missed this time around.”

  And with that her heart took it last beat before dying completely. She watched him leave and did nothing but try and stable herself against the wall nearest to her. Her legs were like jelly, shaking at the weight of her body upon them and she failed. She just allowed her body to sink down the wall with her hands starting to tear through her hair as she sobbed. She just cried out everything that was in her system, the six years of her life she had wasted by just existing and realized that she really had lost everything.

  Austin didn’t even try to make an attempt to head home. She just sat there against the wall, crying out her heartache, trying to decide what was next for her life. There was no way she could stay here now. No way she could finish the house and there was no way she would be able to take the blame for something she hadn’t done.

  The sun had already set when she
finally began to wipe her tears away and try and make some semblance of a plan. She was feeling exhausted and light headed and just resulted to curling up on the floor. She didn’t want to leave the only piece of Tyler she had, regardless of how tainted it had become. The headache pounding away against her skull told her to sleep, and as she caved, she gave herself to the memories of the past, before ever taking a pregnancy test, before even thinking she could be getting a family of her own. She was back on the beach with Tyler proposing all over again.

  Closing her eyes cost her dearly as she was unaware of the black smoke beginning to claw the ceilings as it poured throughout the house, engulfing it with each new smoldering puff. The glow of the fire beginning to paint the walls as it began to eat away at the house around Austin’s unconscious body.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  WHEN Austin woke up she felt a shortness of breath and an aura of disorientation overwhelming her. Immediately she felt the heat around her as the flaming fingers stretched out ready to take a grip on her and smother her like it had the house. Trying to find some calmness within the chaos she quickly realised the breaths she was inhaling were heavy and humid in her chest.

  Pushing herself up onto her hands and knees, Austin felt so weak she knew she had to use the wall to pull herself up to her feet. She found herself faced with fire as it climbed the walls, crawled the floors, grabbing a hold of anything it could, quickly entrapping her as it raced to ignite her body. She quickly climbed to her feet, feeling how shaky her legs were already and she tried not to panic. She was trapped, scared to move anywhere and come in contact with the fire that burnt around her, destroying everything her and Tyler had made together. Trying not to admit defeat before she had attempted to make a go for survival, Austin looked around for her best plan of an escape.

  The door seemed so far away as it stood illuminated with the orange glow, the heat distorting her view in waves. It seemed so distant and quickly she was caught short – the last time she looked at that door, Tyler had left, hating her for everything. Now looking at it, she hated how everything had happened, how far away her escape was.

  She could already feel the smoke gripping her lungs tightly and the simplest action of drawing in oxygen was getting harder. She could feel how tight her chest was getting and all she wanted was pure oxygen, fresh air, a new start. She had no idea how long she was asleep for, and she couldn’t see if there was any help outside. Whatever she knew this moment was dire. The fact that her breathing was getting more and more difficult told her she had been asleep for far too long and she wondered if waking up was a miracle or another evil route in fate’s plan for her.

  Why not torture the already damned a bit more?

  If anyone in Point Arena knew she was in there she would be surprised if anyone would help the town’s resident murderer. Ironically, she remembered her brother commenting how everybody loved a witch hunt and here she was in the middle of a burning building. They were finally going to find her trialed and burnt, and if she knew the town as well as she did, they would be rejoicing by sun rise. It was a painful thought but, she knew that very few people would mind her gone for good. Her mother for one, Tyler another, and that just broke her heart even more than she thought humanly possible. She had seen it die a horrible death at the end of Tyler’s triad, but here it was, still suffering in her chest.

  The funny thing is she would have laughed if she wasn’t so scared stiff at that moment. Laughed at the irony of this moment, laughed at how desperate she was, laughed at how pathetic her life had really become. She would have laughed at her own demise if she was on the other side of the window looking in and not living it.

  And then suddenly, terror filtered throughout her entire body. The terrified feeling took over and dread ran rabid in her veins. She cried as she realized that she saw no escape and noticed the last place her cell phone was sitting was now a burning wreck. She had no way of getting out of this situation and that was what caused even more fear to rise. She was trapped and panic did nothing to raise her adrenaline and make her just sprint through the house to the door. She was frozen to the spot, watching death beginning to inch closer and closer to her. She screamed for help, but between her losing her breaths and the loud roaring crackle of the fire as it ate away at everything it could get its fiery body onto, she was silenced.

  All of a sudden Austin had so many regrets fill her and she wanted out to make her life right. She wanted her family back, all of them, and she wanted to tell Tyler the truth for however long it took for him to believe her, and she wanted him to see what Natasha had put her through her entire life. She wanted to free the burden that was locking down her heart at long last and then finally feel free to live properly.

  With desperation beginning to grab at her, Austin saw a quick exit, but as she ran to it part of the ceiling fell through right before her. Now with more fire beckoning to grab her, her horror was beginning to cloud her judgment to add to her oxygen deprived mind. She was feeling defeated and weak, but she knew if she succumbed she had no hope, but with each passing second the smoke and heat was taking over her. The oxygen in her lungs was slowly turning into carbon dioxide and she could feel it, she was weakening and could feel her body giving up slowly.

  Coughing, Austin tried to go for another way, but the smoke in her lungs and the burning down her throat became too much and her body gave up. With stinging eyes, she bent over double in a coughing fit, trying to gain some life back into her, but it was hopeless. All of the oxygen was transformed into its devil opposite and only carbon dioxide resided in the air around her.

  That was when she gave in and collapsed to the floor as the house continued to burn down around her.

  All of her fight now completely taken from her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  TYLER had a feeling of major foreboding. He had escaped to his parents and still hadn’t left. He wasn’t ready to face Natasha – especially not after Austin’s plea at him, at her reverent denial at the claims of her pushing Natasha and causing her to lose their baby. There was something about the way she spoke, the way she practically begged that made him stay at his parents’ house. There was something in the way she pleaded, cried, the way she gave up all of her fighting spirit for him to see her side in this that made him feel as though he need to be here.

  He just sat there, merely five houses down the street from his and Austin’s creation. He had been deep in thought ever since leaving her broken in the house. It took shouting voices to break completely through the barrier of his mind. The police officer inside him, and his own personal curiosity, pulled him to abandon his thoughts and investigate what could be causing such a stir outside.

  Looking out, he saw a mass of commotion, the shouting only got louder and more panic stricken. Allowing his gaze to look up to where everyone was heading, he saw his unfinished house on fire and he felt like he might as well be in there too as he found it suddenly difficult to breath. He turned to see that his mother and father had heard the noise, seen the chaos, and were drawn outside, rushing towards the scene.

  He said nothing as he took off running from his spot and bypassed them entirely, gathering speed as only one thing remained on his mind- Austin. It didn’t take long for Tyler to cover the small distance, he was quick to notice that Jane was now being comforted by neighbors as her sons all fought to keep Tom back as he bellowed Austin’s name at the house.

  Tyler felt his knees go weak as his own sister came to stand by his side as they all watched. Looking at the house, Tyler knew Austin never went home and she was trapped in the house being burnt alive. His feeling of foreboding was nothing more than intuition and he realized it had become a sinister indulgent moment of reality. He knew the worst was yet to come without having solid facts.

  Seeing the Pearson brothers broke his nerves, he saw them all fighting with themselves for what was right and he had to admit it, he was feeling the dilemma take him captive as well. He was compelled to be like them, act like them,
and become the hero like they wanted to.

  When Tom successfully fought off both his brothers’ hold on him he kicked open the door and ran inside, smoke bellowing out immediately smothering the front of the house. Tyler just stood stock still and felt sick. His last words with Austin were so full of lied hate and disgust and he hadn’t meant any of it. He didn’t want her to leave when deep down he knew she wasn’t ruthless and horrible enough to exact harm on another person. He had spoken with hurt and look where it had gotten them.

  He didn’t want her to die never knowing that he was running scared of loving her again. He needed to know more about her claims of being pregnant and he needed to get verification on those. He wanted her to know that the next time she planned to run he would be right there with her. He wanted her to know that he had fallen too deep into a life with Natasha when it was something he loathed with a vengeance. He wanted her to know that he couldn’t find a way to grieve properly over the baby Natasha had lost. That something didn’t feel right.

  With those thoughts running in his mind, he had no room for sanity or mental discussion. He ran towards the burning house only moments after Dean had run in and knew he wouldn’t leave until he found Austin.

  “Don’t!” Natasha said as she grabbed onto Tyler’s arm. “Don’t you dare run in that house, Tyler! She isn’t worth it!” Natasha watched Tyler as he ripped his hand away from her grasp, “Don’t,” she dared him to defy her. “Why would you want to save a murderer? She took our baby from us.” Natasha gulped harshly, begging tears to erupt in the corners of her eyes, “She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “She deserves redemption,” Tyler snarled at Natasha. “Now I’m going in there with or without your permission. I will be saving her, Natasha, so live with it.”

  Natasha couldn’t handle that type of defeat. She turned and stormed away, pretending to be the upset party here, and allowed Tyler to risk his life as she realised everything was falling apart all over again. Her lies were futile at keeping him honest to her.