Thursday Flames

It was like every other, typical Thursday morning, the day the incident happened; my family, consisting of myself, my sister, my mother and my father, all woke up to the radio playing pop music at 7am. My father went to make breakfast as my mother, sister and I all got ourselves washed and dressed for the day ahead. As father called us to eat breakfast as a family, I had just finished pulling up my wavy auburn, waist length hair into a high ponytail. Myself and my mother, who was wearing a black knee length skirt suit and her long black hair in a tight bun at the back of her head, came down the stairs first, and sat opposite one another at the table, quickly followed by my sister, who had her stick straight auburn, shoulder length hair pushed back with an alice band, who sat next to our mother and we all began to eat and enjoy our pancakes and chocolate strawberry milkshakes that father had prepared for us, the same as every Thursday morning.

After finishing his breakfast, father excused himself from the table to go and get ready for the day, while my sister, mother and I finished eating. Mother cleaned the table as my sister and I completed our final edits for our English and History assignments; before leaving to get to school, my sister and I brushed our teeth and kissed our mother on the cheek, we jumped into the back of fathers’ car and waited for father to come out from getting dressed. He came out wearing his black suit with his curly, bright blond hair brushed back, father got into the car after kissing our mother on the forehead and turned the ignition as mother got into her car. Father drove us to school before heading to work and mother pulled out of the driveway after us, turning the opposite way to us, just like every morning over the past ten years.

My sister and I are in our second to last year of secondary school. We are technically twins, however due to how late at night I was born, my sister ended up being born in the early hours of the following morning, making us have different birthdays, but still being twins. I was born 7^th October 2006, at 11:28pm and my sister was born on the 8^th, at 12:06am. I was born with the name Victoria Jayne Elizabeth and my sister was born with the name Michelle Hannah Veronica, but our friends call me Ori and my sister Elle.

School went just as it had since my sister and I got into secondary school, we were top set for every subject, within the top five students of the year for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, English, Art and Textiles, History and Spanish. Our teachers were impressed with both of our English and History presentations, each gaining us an A* for each subject that term. Throughout our school day, we continued to learn and completed our class assignments and homework sheets. While we were laughing and talking with our friend group at afternoon break, a school admin came to take us to the office where our parents were waiting to take us for our yearly doctors’ appointment.

On the way to the doctors, mother informed us that we would be going out to dinner that evening after our doctors’ appointment. As usual, our yearly doctors’ appointment went smoothly, no sign of anything that took our grandparents or our aunt on mothers’ side, they all suffered from a hereditary form of cancer, which is why we have to be checked each year, along with our mother. Father is safe as it wasn’t his side of the family, but he did get himself checked every few visits just to see if he had anything to worry about. The doctors took all of their usual tests, x-rays and scans, plus a few extra new ones, which would take a few days to get the results back.

While we were at dinner, we talked about our classes, upcoming assignments, projects and presentations that were due over the next few weeks and how we were progressing on them; we talked about mother and fathers plans for renewing their vows in the summer and where we were going to go on our spring holiday. We also began brainstorming ideas for this years’ charity fundraiser that our family- along with a couple of other families- were in charge of at school. It was at this point that fathers’ phone pinged with a notification from out home security system that someone was on our property. Father took a look at the security feed and it looked as if a delivery person was dropping off a package on our front porch, so he continued eating and talking with us as normal.

Another ten minutes passed when fathers phone pinged again, the man was still on our property, this time on the back porch, looking into our house and placing another parcel down on the mat.

Father pressed the emergency call out button on the app, and a police officer was sent to our house. But before the police could get to the house, fathers phone pinged again, this time to say that someone was inside the house, father watched to camera feeds and followed the man though our house, dropping small parcels all over the house, in every doorway, in each corner of every room and in the centre of each room, some rooms even with multiple in each spot. Father pressed the emergency button again, to signal that multiple police officers should be dispatched.

Father paid for our food and we left before dessert, heading back towards home to meet the police officers, and hopefully the intruder caught in the back of the police car there. As father drove towards home, his phone pinged again and again, this time the notifications weren’t just for intruders or people on the property, but this time for something much more serious, I just didn’t know what yet. As we got closer to our neighbourhood, we could see flashing lights and hear the sirens of the emergency vehicles.

As we neared our street, we noticed that it had been blocked by emergency services, father stopped the car by the side of the road before the barricade and got out to see what was going on. The police pulled open the barricade and father got back into the car, without saying a word he drove us closer and closer to our home, which was surrounded by a cloud of thick, black looming smoke. The closer we got we realised that not only was smoke bellowing around our home, and the ones around it, but it was coming out of our home, with bright orange flames steadily growing larger inside our home.

I began to cry as my sister grabbed my arm and squeezed it hard, mother turned around in the car, her eyes dark and full of tears, and she grabbed both of us by the hand. Our home, that we were born and raised in was burning to the ground right before our eyes.