Bonded by Flames and Understanding

Laney traced her steps, pacing back and forth, dragging her feet across the carpeted floors of her childhood bedroom. She must have been spiraling for hours. She couldn’t break herself out of it. In front of her images of the past flashed, frightening scenes playing on repeat and smoke that wasn’t there burning her eyes. She shuddered as June’s horrified face was swallowed up by blue flames and squeezed her eyes shut, wanting desperately for it all to stop. But shutting her eyes only made it worse. Like a gear spinning endlessly inside of a clock that never stopped her mind churned round and round. The flames danced, making poor June’s eyes glow bright red and teasing Laney. She paced faster. Tears started to crawl down her cheeks and she welcomed them with open arms. They poured over her reddened face, releasing some of the emotion that held her hostage and putting out the seething fire that writhed within her mind. As the tears came so did Laney’s focus. She floated back to present, slowly reintroducing herself to reality. The sound of the front door opening downstairs and June’s raspy voice calling her name was what broke her out of the cycle completely. “June?” Laney managed to say in response.  

“Yeah, it’s me, are you okay?” June asked. Laney didn’t reply, the question had been mostly rhetorical, and June already knew the answer. It was so plainly displayed on Laney’s face. The redness and the tears and the scrunched-up expression all made for a huge billboard that told June everything she needed to know. But Laney appreciated it anyway. It was a reminder that she cared. June hadn’t been gone long, she’d just left to pick up some medication from the drug store, but it was enough time for Laney to have fallen into a panic. She watched as June put her bags on the kitchen counter and then made her way up the stairs. She sat on the bed and reached out her hand, motioning for Laney to sit next to her. She squeezed Laney’s hand gently and waited for her to speak. 

“It just won’t stop.” Laney finally said. “All I can see when I shut my eyes is you being swallowed up by the fire and all I can see when I open them is your blank stare. I can still hear the alarm and the people and the sizzling of your skin when you burnt it on the doorknob. The memories won’t go away. They’re loud and angry and they haunt me in my sleep and taunt me in the day. Sometimes it’s like I’m still there, I can almost feel the flames gnawing at my ankles.” Another tear stumbled down Laney’s burning face. June only offered a nod as a reply, but Laney could see the understanding in her eyes and knew that she just didn’t have the words to tell her she felt the same. She had been there too. Her and June burning together, set aflame by a god neither of them believed in and left to burn together before even learning each other's last names. Laney looked down at June’s arm. Scars wrapped around her wrists and crawled up to her elbows, marking where the flames had given their scathing kisses to her formerly smooth skin. Laney had scars that matched. They went up and down her legs, like streams of dipping candle wax that reminded her of the screaming blue flames that had locked them in that room. The two were bound now, connected by the mutual experience and understanding. Branded by the flames and told to console each other. 

“I miss before.” Laney whispered, her hand grasping June’s a little tighter with each word.  

“I do too.” June said quietly. And then a moment later she continued, saying “But at least we have each other.”  

The two had barely known each other before the fire. June had come to visit Laney’s roommate, Carrie, the day it happened. She walked in with a blue tote bag on her arm and her hands adorned with colourful rings and pink sparkly nail polish. She waved meekly at Laney, the paint on her nails glittering in the light, and offered up a shy smile. Laney waved back and smiled with her lips closed, an effort to hide her coffee-stained teeth. They didn’t speak. Carrie and June studied together until Carrie let out an exasperated sigh and said something along the lines of “Gosh, who let me of all people take psychology.” Then she slumped over her desk and let her papers fall to the floor. When she sat up, she spoke again saying something about how she’d “left something in Dan’s car” and she’d “be back before you can say Freud’s a fraud!” June had let out a dry laugh and watched as Carrie peeled herself of her chair shot them both a goofy smile as she headed out the door. And with that, it was just the two of them. June and Laney left alone with nothing but an awkward silence that hung in the air and begged one of them to say something. June gave in first and opened her mouth to say something but she was almost immediately interrupted by the fire alarm screaming through the halls. The sound still rung in Laney’s ears even now, reverberating in her skull and preventing her from getting a thought out. It had broken the silence before June could and made Laney yearn for that awkward silence, it had been much more comforting than the blaring alarm. The two met in a staring contest, both wishing the other would do something and not knowing what to do themselves. They held the frightened gaze until June managed to pull herself away and run for the door, shouting at Laney to follow. The rest was a blur. Once June reached the door and grabbed the knob, she wished she hadn’t. The terrible scene played over and over again in Laney’s mind as she looked at June’s hand holding hers. As soon as June had touched the handle the heat seared into her flesh and grabbed a hold of her, pulling her closer to the flames on the other side. She jumped back and retreated to where she had sat previously on Carrie’s bed, cradling her hand. Laney had gone the opposite way. She ran to the windows and strained, trying to pull them open and panicking more and more as she realized that she couldn’t. Thick white paint held the windows shut and prevented Laney and June from making an escape. Laney abandoned the windows and met a sobbing June on Carrie’s bed.  

“What do we do?” Laney had asked. 

“I don’t know.” Came June’s voice, another lyric in the song that played over and over in Laney’s head now. She remembered standing in front of June, unsure of what would come next and caught up with watching June's vacant stare as it burned through her ribcage. June's eyes were glassy until Laney let out a shriek. Only then did she manage to leave her daze and look up at Laney, fear plastered all over her previously emotionless face. 

“You can’t leave my like that. I can’t be all alone in this.” Laney said, pleading June to stay present. 

"I’m sorry...” June said, her voice quivered and shook, and the words barely made it off her tongue. She reached out to Laney with her unburnt hand and pulled her onto Carrie’s bed. The two sat there, side by side, and listened to the blaring alarm and the shouts of people and the crackling of the flames.  

And that’s where the memories of being inside the burning building stopped. Laney could still recall the feeling of being pressed up against a shivering June with her heart beating through her chest as beads of sweat formed on her forehead and she could still remember the smell of the smoke as it stung her nostrils, but she could not clearly recall the sequence of events that followed. Maybe that was for the best.  

After the fire and the sitting next to June and the waiting to die memories came the ambulance and stretcher and hospital memories. The first of which was Laney’s eyelids shuddering open briefly to reveal that she had been saved and she was being wheeled away by a nice man in a paramedic’s jacket. As soon as Laney was able to acknowledge the stretcher and the fact that she had been rescued her eyes darted around looking for June. Had she been saved too? All around were weeping people and stretchers like Laney’s but none of them were June. She panicked for a moment, thinking of June and her blue tote bag and glassy eyes being swallowed up in the flames. And then there was that familiar glint of pink nail polish sparkling in the light. There lay June, all wrapped up in her own stretcher. Laney’s whole body calmed. June was okay. With that, she shut her eyes and fell back into the sleep that she woken from only minutes earlier.  

Then it was all the hospital and hugging family and friends and making sure Carrie was okay and so many ‘get well soons’ and cards and bouquets of flowers that wilted in the hospital room windowsill. For a while, Laney didn’t speak much. She let her parents hug her and held light small talk when they came to visit, and she spoke with her friends, but everything was mostly pleasantries and empty conversations that she would forget hours after they happened. She never spoke of the fire. Despite this, people were quick to tell her they understood. ‘I know.’ They would say with misunderstanding dripping from their chapped lips. They didn’t know. No one except for Laney and June themselves knew. Because they were the only ones who were there. And though her mother could imagine the fear and picture the flames, she wasn’t there. She hadn’t smelt the smoke and seen poor June’s glazed over eyes. They didn’t understand.

Laney felt June’s hand gently patting her shoulder and suddenly she remembered she wasn’t in the hospital or the burning dorm room anymore. She shook her head slightly, trying to get her thoughts back in place as she returned to the present. “Do you remember it like I do?” She asked.  

“No, but it haunts me just the same.” Said June, her eyes now locked with Laney’s to keep her present. 

“What if we had died in there, June?” 

“But we didn’t.” June said. “We didn’t and that’s what matters.” 

“Didn’t we though? A little bit at least. You have to admit that you’re not the same, I can see it in the way you walk and in your hands. You don’t wear your rings anymore and you chew your nails until they bleed. And just look at me. I’m a mess, I couldn’t even handle being without you for half an hour.” Laney paused. “Do you think we’ll ever go back to how we were before?” 

“We didn’t know each other before.” 

“But I know you now. And I can see the shadow of who you were.” Laney said. June was quiet. She just stared blankly at her bitten nails.  She didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, she took a breath and looked into Laney’s teary eyes.

“We won’t ever be the same. You know that. The flames will follow us through our entire lives, biting our ankles as we move forward. But we have each other. And I'll always be there for you and you’ll always be there for me. We were ready to die in that burning room, but we didn’t. Laney, we didn’t die.” 

"We didn’t die.” Laney repeated. 

“That’s right. We’re here and we’re not ghosts or shadows or anything. We’re us and we’re alive and we’re together.” 

“And we have each other. We have each other.” Laney added. June nodded, taking both of Laney’s hands in her own. The two cried in synchronous silence, connected by the terror of the flames that had begged to consume them.  

“At least we have each other.” They said, repeating the sentiment silently and out loud, twisting and exchanging the words every so often, reminding each other that they were not alone and that they understood and that each shared that terrible memory of their two bodies in the smoke-filled room ready to die. And that they hadn’t. They hadn’t died.