Taken By The Blaze

• Michael Bartholomew, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2014

The light, delicate leaves of the Maiden Hair ferns made our backyard glow a cool green during this hot day. It was the kind of day where everyone in the house was hot and flustered, and to make matters worse the air-conditioning had broken down.

My dad was lying back on his reclining chair with a stubby and was watching the cricket on our brand new flat screen TV that we had gotten the previous Christmas.

My mum was carefully tending to her ferns in the back yard; she keeps on saying that the ferns are the only thing keeping us cool in the hot weather other than our one rickety old fan in the corner of our house. We lived too far away from the beach and we didn’t have a pool.
All of a sudden my dad yelled and cursed.

“Dad!” I asked with concern, “What’s wrong?”
“These nasty people took away my cricket!” he said, pointing at the television.
I took a glimpse of the TV and then sat down next to dad.

“… the fire is now spreading south and is still out of control, all of the district’s firefighters are out fighting the blaze but authorities say it could be days before they bring it under control. This fire is a danger to lives and homes and residents are urged to actively defend their homes as leaving is no longer an option…”

Then I heard a helicopter overhead, a water bomber. It turns out that mum was watching the TV as well, she looked pale.
Mum and dad were still watching the television when I left the lounge room and stepped outside to get a view of the fire. A huge wall of fire was spreading all over the land around us, blowing side-on to our house. My mind took over as I ran to grab the connector to the sprinklers on our roof. I turned them on quickly and ran back inside.

My mum and dad were calling me from inside our basement, the house was almost stripped bare and not much remained: my parents had taken all they could into their basement along with food and drink. You could practically hear the fire roaring as embers fell from above like meteorites. I raced into our concrete basement and had a panic attack.
“It’s alright, you are alright, everyone is ok.” Mum said trying to calm me down.

My dad was pacing up and down the basement floor swearing and cursing trying to get his phone to work. Then he stopped.
“The sprinklers!” he yelled, “We forgot to turn on the sprinklers!”
“Dad I did!” I yelled, “There all switched on!”
It was hard to hear anything now, the fire was too close.
I started feeling dizzy… Then I passed out.

The next thing I remember is being helped out of the basement by a man in a reflective suit. My skin felt sore and rough, I was safe, my parents were beside me crying, I feared the worst. My home was gone. It had been taken by the blaze.