Origins: The Fire (MILA 2.0, #0.5)(3)

The air around me fragments into black and orange particles.

I cover my eyes, feeling simultaneous burning on my left calf, my hand, my arm. I roll against the carpet in an attempt to smother any remaining embers.

I stand just as I hear my father’s stifled scream. Sweat that has nothing to do with the fire beads across my body. Flames crackle in front of me—a writhing orange mass, rearing up from the fallen beam, while behind me the wall of fire steadily flickers my way.

No way forward, no way back. Besides, Mom and Dad need my help.

Without giving myself time to think, I turn and race forward. The flaming banister sears my hand, and I can smell the acrid stench of my burning hair, where the flames grab at a few drying strands. My hand erupts into a blaze of agony, so intense that nausea twists my gut, rolls up my throat. But I don’t stop. I vault over the banister and through the orange wall—a solid mass of scorching heat; so hot, I’m sure my skin is melting from my bones. I close my eyes…before plunging into nothingness.

My stomach dives into my feet as I free-fall into space. Like on one of those roller coaster rides, only knowing there is no safe landing at the end. Smoke, flames, everything is a blur. Please, please, please is all I have time to think before I crash hard.

My feet hit first, and then I pitch onto my hands and knees. The force knocks me forward, and my right shoulder slams hard. My temple is next.

Pain explodes before everything goes black.

I come to moments—minutes?—later. My vision clears, only to show that the gray smoke and crackling flames still rage around me. The place where I landed is safe, but for how long?

Our living-room floor is scorched, its pale stain replaced by an angry black char. This part of our house used to look big but now feels claustrophobic, dwarfed by writhing orange and billowing gray smoke.

There isn’t much time left.

Gingerly I attempt to crawl to my feet. I scream when my burned hand hits the floor and double over, fighting not to black out again. Every bit of my body hurts. I push to my feet, and my right ankle gives. While I struggle to steady myself on one foot, I realize my clothes are almost dry. The shirt I have tied around my mouth is gone. My own shirt, once white, is gray with soot.

I look to my left, then my right. No sign of my parents—just fire, both ways, devouring the remains of our furniture. The dining table where I did my homework every night. The couch where we watched those ridiculous documentaries every weekend—a habit I’ll never complain about again, if we can all just make it out. As I stare hopelessly into the flames, I think I see a flicker of color behind them. Pale skin topped with blond hair. Mom? Is that Mom, heading for the French doors? Another flicker, of forest green. Is that Dad’s coat? Is he coming back for me?

I wave my uninjured arm. “Dad!” I try to scream, but once again my voice fails me. “Dad, over here!”

The fire’s crackle is my only reply.

Did he see me? Was he even there? Or was I hallucinating everything?

Panic pulses an ever-increasing rhythm through my body, even as my lungs protest the lack of oxygen.

Three minutes. Three minutes. Three minutes.

Then, through a break in the flames, I see his face, his brown eyes wide with panic. A relieved sob swells in my throat. He’s okay. Dad is okay.

He’s stepping toward me when, overhead, there’s a sharp clap, followed by a loud, creaking groan—a sound I’ve grown to fear in a very short time. I turn too fast and my foot slips. I collapse to my knees, hitting hard, but my eyes never leave the shimmering banister. It is tipping, tipping, slowly losing the battle with the flames. Anytime now the structure is going to collapse…and take me out with it.



I crane my neck, try to look back to where I saw Dad, but though I fight to pick him out behind the curtain of flames, he’s gone. Vanished. Or maybe it’s just the smoke growing thicker, darker. In the distance, behind the crackle and roar, sounds the high-pitched wail of a siren.

Too late.

When I push to my feet once more, I realize just how weak I am. Fatigue has turned my legs into dead weights. My lungs feel full, much too full to suck down any air.

The room is growing gray. I know realistically that the French doors can’t be far, but at the rate I’m moving, they seem a world away.

I manage to hobble one step forward, then two. But my energy is fading as fast as the fire is growing. More heaviness seeps into my limbs, a sleepiness that, somewhere in my head, a voice is screaming at me to fight.

But it’s so peaceful…and breathing is so hard.

I shake off the weariness. No, I have to move.

I make it one more step before an explosive CRACK! deafens me. The next moment, something strikes me across the skull, like a slap from a giant, and I go down. As my eyes fight to stay open, I’m encased in a tomb of black smoke, billowing across my face, filling my nose, blinding me completely.

“Dad?” I whisper. Why hasn’t he come for me?

My head hits the floor. Behind the curtain of black, there’s dancing orange. With the last bit of my energy, I lift my good hand and search for the picture I stashed in my waistband, but all I find is skin.

Gone. It must have fallen out along the way. My heart twists painfully—or maybe that’s an injury. By this point, it’s impossible to tell.

My vision grows hazy as the flames flicker closer.

No, not haze—static. Buzzing. Then the room separates into four, eight, sixteen tiny boxes, all in one. Sixteen tiny flames, dancing closer to me.