08 October 2012 fiction, "Imagine a House on Fire"

Imagine a house on fire. Orange flames swallow up the windows, the steps, the rooms where memories reside. Everything is engulfed. The fire hungers like a person, enveloping everything in a black smoke that leaves things charred and broken.

Now place a person in that house. She’s a woman, about thirty-five. She’s pretty; blond hair in a messy bun and pink lips, rosy cheeks and sparkling green eyes. The fire has taken its toll on her, it’s obvious because her bun has fallen and there are strands of hair pasted to her sweaty face. Her lips are chapped and peeling. Ashes have smeared on her cheeks, hiding their rosiness. But her eyes still sparkle.

She’s holding a book, her fingers pressed tightly on one page so she doesn’t lose her place. She runs down the stairs and collapses against the front door. After a moment of leaning heavily against it, she seems to remember her will to survive, and she wrenches the door open. She falls breathlessly onto the grass, and closes her eyes. The firemen come all around her, but she waves them away, and they get busy with the real victim: the house.

Her hand falls to her side, and the book opens to the page she’s been trying so hard to keep marked.

At first glance, the writing seems like nothing special. It’s a man’s sloppy scratches, and it takes some further inspection to realize what it is saying.

“I’ll love you forever.” It promises. “She means nothing to me, and I’m sorry I ever took my children away from their true mother.” The stepmother weeps silently, knowing that she loves the children as her own, and that she will now never see them again. She feels a tiny pang of remorse for the fire she started, but the revenge is sweet enough to cover the bitter taste in her mouth. I hope you’re happy with her. She whispers.