Yours Soulfully...

18.

It has been one week since Eleanor and Theodore Lincolns' funeral. It has been seven days since the ruins of their bodies have been submitted to the ground and sent into the afterlife.

Oh, how some wish they get punished hard in that life as well.

Lucas Appleton was casually strolling back and forth in his office. The Carlos Hills Community building has always been his home. He even has some crayon scribblings in a few secret rooms of this precious monument. His sharp boot cackles echoed around his large room as he mused on and on about fire and death. In the past week alone, three people have been prey to the deadly fire accidents. And no one could find particular reasons behind these sudden uprisals. 

"It seemed like a smoke fire gone wrong," one of the reports said, but Judge Morgan has never touched a cigarette in his entire life. And there was no evidence of a human nearby his room anytime before or during the accident except for Aaron. But Lucas had to try his might to keep Aaron out of this mess because A) He was his best friend's son and B) He was actually a genuinely good fellow. 

"It is most probably a kitchen fire," the other report said, only there was no recording of an alarm going off in the finest safety system set up in all of the houses of Carlos Hills. The fire had been identified only by smoke; the smoke of dying objects. 

In precise words, the fire in Carlos Hills was not good news. The fire has never been good to Carlos Hills, especially not to Lucas. Whenever he saw even a flick of fire, his mind always transported him to the second worst day of his life; the first being the day cancer won the battle over his wife's body. The ominous memories he had of both these days still kept him up at night. 

The fire happened when he was seventeen. On that wretched sinful day, his beloved tree house had been lit to ruins. While he and his friends were inside. Kara Lincoln was the first one to recognize the smoke, and she was quick to wake us up, lest all of them would've been permanently scarred in the skin. Lucas was still scarred in the mind. 

The bitch had started the fire. 

He was sure of it right that moment he opened his eyes to Kara's shouts. The bitch was missing. She was lying on the support of Kennedy's stretched arms the last time he saw them before he went to sleep, completely spent and tired, and when he woke up, she wasn't there. 

Instead, she was standing outside, behind the tallest peach tree his garden bore. The bows of the tree were bowing down and flowers hung low right above her head. The light pink hue was common to both to the petals and to her scars. Tattered clothes, disheveled hair, bloodied legs; there she stood, with a matchbox in her hands. She saw the five boys and the girl come running out of the fire, barely in good condition but alive just the same. Kennedy had spotted her first and he shouted at her. She threw one disgusting smile at him which transcended into the creepiest laughter you can hear from a sixteen-year-old. 

And then she ran into the fire. 

I should have let her die, Lucas thought. She didn't deserve his saving, for she was not grateful at all. 

Lucas shook his head out of thoughts about Lisa for the umpteenth time. He didn't know for himself why his mind kept going back to memories of her. She was in no way a good memory for him and yet his mind made sure he doesn't forget her. Oh, how crazy the human mind works. 

The telephone in Lucas' room pealed heavily in the air and Lucas whisked his head at it. His old, shrivel - skinned hands reached out for the receiver, his eyes disgusted by time's wrath on his youthful self. As he placed the receiver in his ear, his wizened body went stiff.

"Hello, Lukey," said the voice of luster at the other end. His ears then listened to the creepiest laugh he heard from a sixteen-year-old for the first time in three decades. Time did no wrath on that voice, for Lucas could recognize every single note in that laugh.