Rise and Fall [[BEING MOVED TO ANOTHER ACCOUNT]]

Chapter Fifteen

Fifteen

The fire is ripped down the center by the wind that makes people fly, and my lungs are crowded by ashy smoke. The corridor of flame jumps and dances -as if laughing- and begins to close around me.

I am suddenly aware that a familiar pressure is gone from my right hand, but I have no time to stop and wonder what it might have been. The walls close in, and I run.

The heat licks my face, and the embers sting my eyes as I sprint down the slowly narrowing fire-wall. Each rasping breath that I attempt to rip from the hold of the flames, like a hot poker down my throat. And still, the walls converge. They join behind me as I fight to stay ahead of them. Their union, powerful. Powerful enough to take lives.

 The flames leap at my pumping arms, and singe the hair as I fly by. “Come and play,” they whisper. Reaching out like hands behind me. Trying to grab me, and pull me in.

“Come and play with me.”

I try to run faster, but the flames just laugh, and lunge ahead. Sweeping me into the inferno. I try to scream, but nothing comes. I try to cover myself, but all I feel is fire. Everywhere. In my head. In my heart. Coursing through my veins.

And then it stops.

Cautiously, I raise my head. Fear cradling me like a child in its vice-like grip. There’s nothing but darkness around me, and no matter how hard I strain my eyes, no shapes begin to form. That’s when I hear it. The whimpering. The quiet calling.

“Alek… Alek…”

Sasha.

“Sasha!” I call frantically. “Where are you?”

“Alek…” she cries softly.

“Where are you?” I try to stand, and immediately feel the fire again. It’s inside me. And it burns. I drop to my knees and crawl towards the voice. This burns less, but burns all the same. Each movement sending a knife of flame flickering through my body. “Where are you?”

“I’m everywhere.”

It’s a new voice. A child’s. A boy’s.

I scream. Realizing now what I’ve lost. What has been ripped from my hand, and thrown to the flaming mouth as it laughs. It always laughs.

“Keyne!” I scream his name. “Keyne!”

Sasha’s crying turns to a wail.

“They’re burning me!”

Her voice is twisted with fearful agony, and suddenly, she screams. A long, high note that tears off jaggedly at the end.

“Sasha!”

“Alek.”

Keyne’s voice is deadly calm.

And then the light floods in.

I choke. Unable to scream. The girl isn’t Sasha, but one I’ve seen before. She sits with burn patterns like that of chain lacing her skin, and she turns to me. Half of her alabaster face is gone. Replaced instead by a gory mask of burnt flesh, and charred bone. It is a face that had stared up at me from the ground the night the world burned. A face that was alive. I face I’d left to die.

“They burned me, Alek.” She says, and a chunk of flesh falls free from her ravaged cheek.

I gag as the stench of it hits me.

“Why didn’t you help me?”

Her voice is questioning, but lacks all emotion. A wicked smile twists what is left of her lips.

“Why, Alek?”

“Yes, Alek. Why?”

Keyne has stepped out from behind a tree. His clothes are ripped, his hair singed, and every inch of him either black and blue, or matted with blood.

“Why didn’t you help us?”

He takes a step forward.

“Why didn’t you hold on to my hand?”

He holds up his left hand, and I see the scarring marks. The fire has taken its toll.

The girl gets up, then.

“Why didn’t you save me?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Why?”

They’re drawing closer, and I stumble back.

“I tried!”

I throw the words at them. But still, they come.

“No you didn’t,” the girl says, and suddenly, I trip.

Falling backwards into the ashen remains of a house. My house.

“You didn’t,” Keyne echoes.

“You didn’t help us.”

And then they attack.