A Person You've Never Met [slow]

03:AMBER

Darkness spread out before her. It was a quiet black, soothing almost. Nothing could be seen.

Amber saw herself in the middle of the black, curled on the unseen ground. Her body looked fragile, like a puppet hanging by delicate strings. It was only until the screams rushed her mind, though, that Amber could feel the strings being pulled.

There was hissing and spitting: fire. It crackled in the depths of the darkness and lit her strings aflame. The curled Amber squeezed her eyes as heat crawled slowly toward her.

Then, there was screaming: people. Shouts erupted around her like gun fire. It was horrible, so much so that she bolted into standing position and spun in meaningless circles, trying to pinpoint the sounds. But there was only the impossible black.

Her heart sped up, quickening with every wail and every sob. Amber heard the flames growing on her puppet strings above and names being called from the shadows.

"Logan!" A voice screeched.
"Go!" Another screamed.
"Come on! Inside!" She knew this one, it was the chef, ushering others into the kitchen.

The voices continued to bombard her until Amber lay on the ground again, forehead pushed against whatever was below her and tears wetting her lashes. The fire had reached her wooden, puppet frame and now tormented her soul.

Heat dug it's way into every crevice of her mind and still she couldn't see anything. Well, if you didn't count the sight of her own self, burning within tears.

"Please, honey, we have to go!"
"Run!"
"Don't leave me!"
"Everybody get down now!"
"Amber!"

The last voice tugged at her burned strings. It pulled and yanked until finally Amber lifted her pained head. The fire hadn't left her body and was now growing on her frame, tracing its flaming fingers down her back but leaving her skin untouched.

She stood, head swiveling and fire whipping. "Izzy?"

"Amber!"

"Izzy!" Amber launched herself across the barren ground, feet seeming to race faster than her heart. "Izzy!" Where are you?"

The voices around her grew louder and louder. They screeched like eery bats in the night, invisible to the eye but heard in every direction. Amber ran until her knees buckled with the weight of the sounds, crashing down in a pitiful heap.

"Izzy," she repeated slowly. Her friend's voice was still floating in her ears. Then, as the voices reached their climax and everything was numb, Amber screamed. The fire that had wrapped her body in a hot blanket consumed her vision in one wave of agony.

Light poured into her view, flooding out all of the darkness that had once been. There was so much of it that Amber felt a sense of drowning. Drowning in fire.

First, she felt the burning. It wasn't like the fire in her dream, where it left her unharmed, and her body was shaken only by the thought of heat. No, this was worse. It was inside her.

Blood slid over her tongue as it gurgled up her throat. Snakelike when it slithered over her teeth. The burning, she found, was in her chest. Hellish fire tingling in every vein.

Amber's open eyes tried and failed to see something through the bright light above. Though, the pain was too much not to ignore. It crowded her vision, enabling her to focus on anything but her struggling lungs.