Remnant Ashes

“Mommy… it’s dark mommy… I can’t find Teddy,” James said.

           And then, a small bloom of light emerged. James stood there, half shrouded in darkness, looking down at the wood beams running along the floor. His feet were bare, his clothes tattered as they clung in strange drifts in loose threads of clothing. “Mommy, where are you? Where’s Teddy?”

           The house around him, looked strange to his young mind… a boy, all of six years old, looking upon the room in which he had now found himself. On the surface it had looked the same, but the walls were blackened and dark, the furniture ruined from the remnants of a fire. The air smelled of smoke. Looking down his feet were covered in soot and ashes. As the boy began to wander the rooms, he left behind footprints there along the hardwood floors, leaving small steps in a trail from room to room. He went to her bedroom, finding nothing there except the sunken shape of her bed, with a large remnant patch of a burnt crater there, dripping with water droplets. The smell of smoke was prominent in his nose, his eyes watered… not from the smoke, but from having not found his mother… looking for his beloved pale and tan colored teddy bear, aptly named. Teddy had been missing an eye, as the other dangled along a thread of a socket to which it had once belonged. He searched for his missing teddy bear, searching in earnest for his mother and found neither. Her antique chest of drawers had slanted along the wall, all had been blackened and badly damaged from the remainder of some fire that had been… but James had hardly noticed, in his mind he saw not the ashes that had collected along the floor, saw not the damp and wetted waters coating the black and cracked charred wood trimmings of the furniture and the doorframes in which he had now been stepping through.

           “Mommy?” he called, louder this time, still unable to find her. He perked his ears to try to listen… still not finding her… as he began to look beneath the flame touched pieces of furniture there within the small living room, looking for Teddy. They all had mostly burnt to ashes, left in husks of residual shapes of what they had once been. This had been a coffee table, and he looked beneath, his eyes tracing beneath the couch on the other side… a flowered embroidered print of the fabrics there and found nothing. Nothing but the sunken place that he often dozed in in the early afternoon hours as he watched cartoons. He stood once more, his hands now blackened with the ashen remains along the floor, the palms colored black and graying in streaks as his fingertips glided beneath… trying to stand up once more. His feet hurt from standing, and not knowing why… there was a lengthy pain that seemed to radiate up and into his legs… curling along the small of his back. Not understanding, James began to cry. “Mommy!” he cried out, not finding her… wanting to go to her so badly, so that she could wrap her arms around him and protect him from the bad dreams… from whatever all of this had been. For all that he now saw before him, must have dreams… for the world that he now found himself in, couldn’t possibly be the reality in which he was now standing. His eyes watery, looking over the furniture dripping with water… from holes torn in the ceiling above… in odd cut patches and sunken plaster… scorched black and smoldering. There was steam above him, curling down along the ceiling in strange slants as he watched, wiping away his tears… staring then at the drifts of smoke appearing from somewhere above as it floated there like a gentle rolling of waves.

           He went into the kitchen, almost expecting to see her there… fiddling with the burners along the stove… trying to get the gas lit to boil a pot of water, but what he found in its place, was deep in black of charred remains… as almost every appliance, cabinet and countertop now a distant representation of what it once had been. The refrigerator seemed to melt into the floor, as it swelled along the midsection and had fallen over… black and burnt and crumbling. The cabinets had become a dilapidated and sunken representation of its former, hanging askew by the bottom hinges in some… as others had fallen along the floor beneath, the linoleum there peeling back in melted bubbles of circular splotches with burnt ends. There along the rubble beside the wall… as they had fallen, the cartoon drawings of portly white coated chefs… with tall matching puffy hats and tweed mustaches…were now a burnt and tattered representation instead.

James began to cry harder this time, doubling over… his small frame unable to hold his own weight, and he collapsed there along the remnant tiles of linoleum, almost white even still… but had greyed from the surrounding area as nothing could escape the fire and spread of its ashes that had been there. Everything smelled smoldered, singed, burned, charred or cremated. His mind trying to make sense of what he was seeing, what he was bound to this earth in believing. He knew not of the fires that had started in the downstairs apartment, or the way that it had spread out along the four corners of their home. He hadn’t known that it had happened sometime in the night as he lay beside his mother… choosing to sleep in her room instead that fateful night, in the small two-bedroom apartment while they had been fast asleep. He didn’t know that they had both perished from smoke inhalation… as the fires had suffocated them, tearing through the ceiling… creeping along the floors there beneath them while they drifted deeper into death’s cozy embrace. James, coming back to reality and seeing the world around him for the first time after their bodies had perished, he stood there amongst the rubble… after the fires had been doused and put out. How he would have loved to see the sight of the firefighters there, saturating their home… heroes all of them. But James did not see them, for James and his mother had already gone, and their home in ruins.

“MOMMY!” he cried, looking around, wondering why she hadn’t come to him. Broken and lost, James stood once more, the gray ashes clinging to his tattered clothes along the knees, creating large swaths of black. He began to walk, he went to the front door, and looking up he noticed that the top of the door itself was partially cracked and broken away, trails of where the fire had been had licked along the opening there, but the door had been tightly shut, and the empty space above only blackness. He tried to unlock it, as he had done on outings with his mother as they would go across the street to the nearby park that had been there. In his mind, the sunshine would be there waiting for him… the swings, the jungle gym… the merry-go-round, possibly even his mother… but as he unlocked the deadbolt, he turned the door’s handle only to find that the door would not open. He pulled on it with all his might, the small child leaning back and yanking against the doorknob trying to break free the hold that the doorframe had now been gripped. The doorknob, like everything else there was slickened to the touch with residual water droplets, and he fell backward sprawling along his back upon the floor… further covered in soot and remnant ashes. Sitting there upon the floor, James cried again… scared, and confused, unable to fathom the immense gravity of his own swelling emotions. James was all alone, in a place that had looked so very much like home… but everything there touched by some fire… appeared distorted and jarring. Nothing there seemed to be familiar, only almost…

He sat that way for a while, wiping his tears away again trying to self soothe. He held onto his legs, rubbing his hands clean the ashes that had collected along his palms, and smeared black streaks along his faded blue jeans. All around him he listened to the sounds of the water droplets, it sounded like the apartment itself had been raining. He listened to the pitter-patter of the water running along the tops of the wood furniture, the thick splatting sound of water striking against clumps of residual ash. He listened to the trickle of water coming from somewhere in one of the back rooms and stood then to investigate. With his small hand he turned the knob to his bedroom, and as the door opened into his room there beyond… it was just as he had left it… unchanged from the aftermath of the fire. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and blinked. Sunlight streamed in through the open window, the smell of the afternoon came along with it. The trees, the nearby chrysanthemums that their elderly neighbor had grown across the way… hung within potted planters surrounding her balcony. The room smelled like green leaves, freshly cut grass, flowers, and even his mother’s perfume that she’d like to wear on nights that she’d hired the teenage girl a few doors down to babysit for ten dollars an hour. The room had been as he had remembered it, the scatter of toys along the floor… plastic toy action figures, stuffed animals… his sneakers sitting quietly beside the bed as if he had forgot to put them where they belonged. His bed freshly made, the covers drawn up to his pillow and there sitting along his bed… Teddy.

He ran to the stuffed animal, diving across the bed with a wide smile and wrapping his small arms around his best friend. As he lay there, he rolled back along the bed, and curled into a ball, wrapping Teddy in ‘big bear hugs,’ his mother had called them. Before long, James eyes began to droop… the exhaustion of some sort of adrenaline… the powerful sweeping emotions that he had been overcome with and found himself drifting off and into a light doze. His mind wandered, wondering where his mother had been, but for the moment he felt safe… in the untouched bedroom of a child’s imagination after his body had perished, but his spirit had lived on. He did not dream, dreams are meant for the living, and James was not that… any longer. But awakening some time later, the light spilling in from the bedroom window had remained, as if time had been lost here. He rose to a seated position and looked down at his hands. His hands were washed cleaned; no traces of the ashes had been there. His clothes had become like new, without their former blemishes. He dropped his feet down to the floor, staring down for a moment at the toys scattered there… a smell of something delicious in the air… cooking…

He ran to the bedroom door and stopped, looking out. The apartment was as he remembered it. There were no more leaning and charred furnishings, the couch sitting there flowered and embroidered… restored to its former glory. His footfalls were hesitant peering around the corner, but everything was as he had left it… as if the blackened remains of the fires had never been. Sunlight cast down from the windows, and as the light spilled there to the hardwood floors, dust particles danced and shifted along the beams of light in an otherworldly radiance…the interior of the home itself looked like everything had been drowned in a serene haze, like walking through a light mist along a forest floor. It was peaceful, luminescent and beautiful to the eye. A thin smile touched his lips, and his feet began to move all their own, running across the living room and when he rounded the corner to the kitchen… he saw her there.

His mother, with her back turned to him, in front of the gas stove, simmering a pot of macaroni noodles. Her blonde hair done up in a simple ponytail, her house dress surrounding her silhouette in a soft shifting of pastel blue fabric. Her feet were bare, along the untouched linoleum, the kitchen surrounding her was as he’d remembered it… comfortable and quaint, with the depictions of portly cartoon chefs spinning giant forks of pasta with wide smiles along the walls. She felt his gaze, turning then and smiled… her bright blue eyes beaming down to him. “Well, hey there!” she said continuing to smile. He ran to her, collapsing into her, hugging her with strong arms, tears streaming down his cheeks. James cried against the shape of her body, and she held him… feeling all at once the pain, and the sadness… the terror that her son had felt and stifled the tears that welled in her very own eyes. “There there,” she said. “It’s all right now,” she said shooshing him into calmness. She wrapped her arms around James, holding him and knelt for a moment, holding him gently back and away from her to collect her son in her vision. “It’s alright,” she said, dismissing the emotions there as if they’d amounted to nothing more than bad dreams. “I’ve got you, it’s alright…” she said looking at him.

“It was so scary!” he said with hitching breath. “I couldn’t find you! I couldn’t find Teddy…”

“I know baby,” she said holding him close to her again as his breath hitched and he sobbed once more against her shoulder. “I know, it was scary, wasn’t it? But do you know what?” she asked, holding him gently away from her once more. “It’s all over now, see?” she said, pinching him along the arm lightly. “It doesn’t hurt anymore…”

James looked down at her fingers along his bicep. He stared down with a stunned silence. James couldn’t feel a thing, except for his mother’s embrace, the gentle vibration of her warmth against him, the aura of her… the essence of her spirit there in front of him. “Don’t be afraid,” she said looking at him. He met her eyes, and a smile touched his lips, knowing a truth that he hadn’t yet realized. That they were gone from this world… that the two of them were together there, in a place between their home and some other realm entirely that was now hovering over them as if they’d been together within a dream, instead of standing there along the linoleum tiles of their warm and inviting home. She smiled at him. “We have a big day ahead,” she said looking at him. “Are you ready?”

He nodded enthusiastically, his child’s disposition emphatic. “Yes mommy,” he said smiling, already knowing.

“Go put your shoes on, you know we can’t leave until you’re ready.”

James ran across the house. He went to his bedroom, pulling the top drawer open and picked out his favorite pair of blue socks: fluffy, comfortable and snug. He struggled with the ends, finally forcing his wiggling toes inside, and pulled the long socks halfway up his small calves. One by one, he put his feet into his sneakers, the laces had been undone and James still hadn’t known how to tie them, and as if knowing this, he looked up and his mother had been standing in the doorway watching him. She smiled, “What am I going to do with you?” she asked in jest, and he replied with a shrug. She went to him, lifted him to the bed and one after the other, propped his sneakers against the light blue shift of her housedress and laced them up. “All done,” she said looking down at her son, smiling. She turned then, and he hopped down from the bed, heading for the door. James stopped, and turned around… along the bed, Teddy lay there, with one remaining eye cocked slightly from the socket. He went to it and picked it up… holding it gently against him, smelling the plastic of Teddy’s nose, and caressed the softness of Teddy’s fur against his cheek. His mother stood nearby, waiting. “James… I don’t think that where we’re going, that you’ll be needing Teddy anymore…” she said saddened.

James hesitated. “I know,” he said. “I’m just saying goodbye.” He held the soft teddy bear against his chest, giving it big bear hugs and squeezing it as hard as he could. “I love you Teddy,” James said, and set the stuffed animal back along the bed, before pulling the covers back and tucking him in as his mother had done to him so many times before.

James went to his mother, wiped a tear from his eye and they looked at one another then, not knowing what to expect… just knowing that there along the hallway leading out and away from their front door… a feeling of serenity was out there, waiting for them. “You ready?” she asked looking down at him. He nodded. She held out her outstretched hand and he took it. She guided him through the apartment one last time, went to the front door and turned the doorknob.

Brilliant white light bloomed along the edges there, as if a carving of light had appeared from the shape of the doorframe, and as the door opened, they were enveloped in it. She looked down at him once again, this time both of them had been smiling… knowing that where they were soon to depart to, nothing behind them would ever matter to them ever again. Knowing, that they were going there together… and that that had been enough.