I can’t live without

The fire started small at first, inside the charging port connected to my computer. The flames crept out slowly, starting to eat my desk and burn holes in the worn-down grey carpet. By then, I did not realise that my room was on fire. Nor did I realise that I was about to leave behind the house that I have lived in for my whole life, letting the memories burn like the marshmallows that my friends and I toasted on the campfire last July.When I did realise that my life had been set on fire, it was too late to put it out. My fire had sharp tipped flames, hot enough to slice through metal like it was a piece of cake. The small spark became a bonfire when it started to eat through my countless books and then burnt a hole in my desk drawer where I kept my notebooks.

Smoke was beginning to fill my small, low-ceilinged room as fast as it was filling my lungs. The flames started licking my wooden bed frame, right where I was sitting, and even through the abnormality of it all I came to my senses, nevertheless. I was on my hands and knees, crawling across the floor of my bedroom. It seemed like the clock on my bedside table was ticking in fast motion, and that time would cease as soon as it’s swallowed up by the fire. My world became a world of two colours, the spectrum not edging beyond the reds of fire and the dark greys of smoke. I could not see two centimetres in front of me, and at that point in time, the universe could have shrunk to the size of my house, and I would not have known the difference.

My hands searched, feeling for my surroundings. I grab hold of a chunk of my rug, a beautiful red fluffy mat resting on the floor. I knew that touch by heart. I should spend more time outside, with my friends. I love my friends. They guide me like stars, and I hope that they look towards me like a star, too. Because I spend so much time in here, cut off from the world, I know my room from the inside out. Just like the pimples on my face, the scratches on my glasses. I knew that if I took a sharp left here, I would be out of this fiery hell before you could say burn. But I also knew that I would not leave without saving some of my most precious items, and if I could not drag them out, I would burn with them.

Instead, I moved to the right, until my hands came into contact with a solid, velvety case. My violin. I ran my hands along it, feeling every bump in the lining, every imperfection in the thread, before forgetting all the mayhem around me and rising to a standing position. In a splutter of coughs, I dragged myself back down to the floor, my lungs burning as well as every other muscle in my body. But if I couldn’t save my violin, I wouldn’t save myself. It is beautiful how music can be so peaceful, yet so powerful. The melodic notes dancing with grace, working with harmony. That is why I saved my violin from my burning room, because I need to preserve music for the world.

Pushing my violin in front of me, I pulled it and myself forward, inch by inch, until I reached the shelf. I could picture my safe looming above me, next to an array of more books. It would be so easy to stand up, type the code in, and walk out of my room, if one big problem was not standing in my way. 

The smoke felt thicker than before, the heat even more intense. The darkness felt like a blackout, like the annular eclipse that my class and I watched from the projector in our classroom. From all the escape books I read, I learnt nothing but that in a fire you wet a cloth and cover your mouth with it. This seemed like a pretty good idea, except I had no idea where I would get water without leaving my room. My hands swept the bottom shelf and I was surprised when they ran into a plastic bottle. Through the smoke, I fumbled and undid the cap. Holding it in my left hand, my right went searching for something to pour it over and found a t-shirt lying in my dirty clothes bucket nearby. I could feel my hand shaking as I spread the water as evenly as I could over the shirt, and twisted the cap back on when I thought I had used about half. Slipping it in my pocket, I pulled the shirt to my face.

It felt like heaven. Like when you put your head under a blanket, and the air becomes stuffy with your breath, but suddenly you pull the blanket off and the coolness of the room slaps you right in the face. My legs pulled me up, and I knew that the safe was directly in front of me. I couldn’t see anything through the fire’s pollution, but my hands felt around and I found the space where I could type in the code. If I were to mess this up, I would die in this blaze and it would swallow me whole, wrapping it’s fierce hands around me and pulling me down, down, down, into the world of the dead. It felt like it this code was the thin glass wall between me and death, that if I got it wrong then that wall would smash.

My fingers pressed down on the numbers, three to go, two, one. I could feel the suspense, like the safe wanted to keep me waiting until the last second. After what seemed like ages, but was probably only mere seconds, the door swung outwards, and I heard the clutter of paper as my notebook fell out. My hands reacted just in time to catch it, and I thought about why it was so special to me. The crinkled pages and dirty cover might not look very significant to the normal person, but to a writer like me I see the story in every page, edged between the words sitting there. That’s why I saved my notebook.

The fire was coming close to me, but I was not done in my room yet. There was one more thing that I couldn’t leave here to burn. I dived onto my bed just before my legs gave out and my hands locked with something small and fluffy. It’s safety in this world of flames felt like a hug from a mother. I pulled it close to me and felt the protection it held. This was my very first Christmas present, given to me just days after I was born. A small golden bear that I named Wesley Bear. 

The fire raging beside me brought me back to now. The shirt was still stuck to my face, but it was nearly dry. I held Wesley Bear to my chest as I bent down to pick up my violin and notebook near the door. But when I walked outside, I turned back to get one last glimpse of the inferno, my childhood burning to bits. 

Then I woke up.