Fire

• Maree Patsouras, Grade 9, St Monica's College - Senior School
• Short Story
• 2014

3rd in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

The fire licks the bottom of her feet like a hungry kitten with a saucer of milk. It flares on the wooden floor boards and devours everything in its path. Plumes of black smoke choke the air and block her lungs and she crumbles beneath. Ash floats to the ground like dirty flakes of snow, charcoaled black, sprinkling onto her rusty brown hair. She is screaming at the top of her lungs, thrashing her arms and roaring like a lion in a desperate hope that someone will save her. Please, come save me. Suddenly she feels frozen water washing over and awakes suddenly, her body shooting up from the hospital bed with an ear-piercing scream. She finds herself drenched from head to toe, the translucent white covers twisted around her.
“It’s the third time,” a nurse with red lips whispers to the other nurse, obviously enraged from the noise. The nurse huffs and walks away, mumbling colourful words about annoying patients.
The other nurse helps her up by offering her hand outstretched, but she is immobile to move because the nightmares continue to swirl around her mind hazily.
The nurse pulls her with a gentle tug out of the drenched bed and places her on her feet. The nurse smiles and forces her body onto the soft, brown chair and she sinks into it. She glances around the room. A single bed dominates the room and the covers are dripping wet, water dropping from down the side. The walls are painted a dull white, the paint chipping off and the floorboards are rusty and old. The air around is so tense she feels like she’s choking.
“Your Grandma is on her way. She’s coming soon,” The nurse announces softly. Finally, a small sliver of hope shines its way in the dark tunnel she has found herself in. Her mother’s mother was one of her favourite people in the world. But with this small piece of good news came the crushing weight of the horrid news to come. She had survived the fire, the flaming inferno that was her house, but she was the only one.
“They are gone, aren’t they?” She speaks, her voice crackling and the nurse jumps as the first words in two days tumble out of her mouth. The pity in her eyes is all the answer she needs. Her family is gone, dead.
She’s alone.
The dam breaks, pain overcomes her as she sobs for her family, her mother and her father, the people who loved her, the people she will never have the pleasure of facing again. Her mother’s face floats into her mind, blonde hair that matches her own, the beautiful smile that forever covered her face. Her father, a man of wisdom and loyalty, the way his blue eyes sparkled when he laughed, just like her own. She curls herself into a ball and sobs with despair.
And she wonders to herself how much pain one person deserves to receive.