Scream

Oscar Alvarez

I'm sweating profusely. It's so... Hot. I feel like my skin is burning up. Crackling explosions sound and they rattle my core. Opening my eyes, I look up to see a nighttime sky painted with various, sparkling colours: fireworks. My skin is sweltering and it feels like it's burning.

Looking at myself, I realize where I am. I'm on the ground, and all around me: fire. Huh? I struggle to get up and stand, but my arms and feet are bound together. Fighting against the rope bonds, I try to sit up, but my hair-tie is caught on something. Struggling, I attempt to sit up. My hair tie snaps and my curls tumble out of place.

A rotten smell of hair chemicals reaches my ears as my hair sings on the end. Suddenly, intense heat is spreading to my scalp. Screaming, I realize my hair is on fire and is spreading to my head. The fire around me begins to eat at my clothes and my skin. I feel each layer being burned and melting off.

I roll around, trying to smother the flames, but they're everywhere. The entire field of dried grass is engulfed in flames. My entire body is engulfed in flames.

"Help!" I shriek as the fire takes over my face. "Somebody!" I feel the flames lick at my lips, the skin charring and coming off, exposing the soft tissue on the inside. "I'm on fire! Maren come on!" But of course, no one can hear me over themselves and the fireworks.

My clothes are completely burnt off, and now that my first layer of skin has been exposed, my insides are getting the hot flames now. My intestines, my stomach, my organs... all of it is scorching and killing me. My throat has been burned open and is out of use. I can't call for help or dry my burning mouth. My flesh is being flayed open and there's nothing I can do about it.

I can't see anymore, for my eyes have been burned – melted. My tear ducts don't work anymore and I can't breathe.

Eventually, I can't tell what is killing me. Is it the inability to breathe? Or the dysfunction of my body?

If I could scream, I would spite the killers, apologize to those I've wronged, and said I love the ones I'm closest to.

As I pass, I'm only comforted by a cold space of nothingness. Is this how it really all ends? I am burned to a crisp and am banished into oblivion? Faded into emptiness? 

Well, I guess anything's better than the intensity of pain I was enduring. I can only hope my friends can figure out who the killers are. I can only hope they survive the night and end the bastards who are ending me.

Who has ended me?