Fighting Fires

Fighting Fires

From birth I had been told to avoid fire. “You can never fight fire with fire,” my mother said. While those words are usually meant in a figurative context, my mother meant it literally. My father was a fireman and had been trapped in a burning house. She told me I would meet the same fate. Since then, she avoided any flames. No candles, no gas stove, no fireplace, and so on and so on. Finally, I moved out and was able to see fire. It was entrancing. The beautiful ways it danced in the light it created, leaving images burned into your head of people, things, and memories.

Unfortunately, the trance that the fire would put me in was too strong for me to break.

I’m going to die. 

That was my only thought as I watched my apartment building erupt into flames. There were 20 of us in this small room. If I counted right, there were 8 kids that looked under 10, 3 teenagers, one baby, 7 adults, and me. We were hiding, waiting to be rescued. No you’re not. I said in my head, trying to calm myself down. You’re not going to die. Neither will anyone else in here. I was so focused on myself, that I didn’t see the door start to burn. A baby started crying, and I snapped out of my trance. The stairs had broken in the hurricane a couple weeks ago, so we were all stuck. I ran over to the baby and its father. 

“Let me help.” I said, taking the baby out of his arms.

“Hey!” The man protested, reaching for his daughter. The baby started to calm down, until the sound of shattering glass joined the wailing sirens and piercing screams. The crying resumed. 

I rocked the girl, turning to face her father. “I’m sorry, sir.” I said, handing her back to him, “I was just trying to help.” She calmed down fairly quickly, and he kept rocking her, trying to keep her from screaming.

“It’s fine, I didn’t know what to do, so... thank you.”

“Hey you two!” Someone else yelled from across the room, “Stop messing around and help us make a rope!” I looked over, and everyone was running around trying to find things they could tie together. I ran over and grabbed some towels from the closet. “Here!” I said, throwing them on the floor near the guy. The door was completely gone now, and the room was beginning to fill with smoke and flames. I told myself not to look at the fire, I knew that if I did, I would stand there, watching it until it killed me. The rope was almost long enough to reach the ground, and people had started climbing out the window. I looked over, and saw a fight breaking out. It looked like they were trying to get the kids out the window first, and one man wanted to go. 

“Get out of the way!!” The guy yelled to the kids by the window, fighting to get out. I recognized him as one of the people on my floor, his wife must have been at work. 

“Hey!” I yelled, fighting through the crowd, “Shut up and wait your turn.”

“And who are you to tell me what to do?” He sneered. I was 18 and he was probably 40, so it was a fair question. 

I ignored him and turned around, helping people out the window. All of a sudden, we heard something that sounded like a bomb going off. I turned around and looked out the door, the elevator had exploded. We started sending people down the rope 2 at a time. We got the rest of the kids out the window, and my neighbor slid down the rope immediately after them. We got everybody else out, and the man, the baby, and I were the only ones left. He was struggling to get out the window, when I realized that he couldn’t carry his daughter down the rope.

“May I help? I can easily climb a rope or slide down one with one arm.” I said, and the man gave me his baby. “What’s her name?” I asked.

“Autumn,” he said, “My wife picked it.” He slid down the rope, and soon after, the firefighters got there. I went next. I climbed out the window with Autumn, and we had just started to slide down it when the rope started to break. I started dropping instead of sliding, and we got down far enough that the man could catch Autumn. I dropped her, he caught her, and I started sliding down the rest of the way. Then the rope broke. I fell the rest of the way, directly into a burning tree. 

After that, I can’t remember much. I remember the heat, and the person in the fire. But then it was put out, and the person vanished. I was pulled out of the tree, and I saw the fire person beside me, reaching out. He grabbed my arm, but I felt nothing. I saw myself laying on the ground, but there was no pain. It looked like I was dead, but that was impossible since the man still saw me. The man beckoned, and we walked away into the sky. I left the hurt of this world, and witnessed the glory of another. Then I looked back. I saw the man with Autumn. He was crying, holding his daughter as tight as he could. I needed to return. I needed to know they were safe. Immediately, I was consumed with a burning sensation. It scorched everything in its path, but I didn’t care. I had to make sure Autumn was safe. 

Orange and red and yellow tinted the world. I closed my eyes. Imprinted on the back of my eyelids were the flames. They danced and spun, twisted and leaped. My mother’s words came back to me: “You can never fight fire with fire.” I needed to fight the fire. The beautiful, wondrous, illuminating fire. Even the images produced in my mind were filled with a hypnotizing beauty. For a moment, I got lost in the flames. The noises faded, the siren was gone. All I could see was the fire. All I could feel was the heat.

I heard a small cry in the distance and forced myself back. I needed to come back for Autumn. For my mother. For the man I had just met. Most importantly, for my father. I couldn’t leave the same way he did, not without helping the world first. He was a hero. I needed to be one too. Fight the fire. Fight the fire. Fight the fire. I kept repeating to myself. I tried to say it out loud, but couldn’t. For a moment, I opened my eyes. 

The light flooded in, and color returned. I took a breath, feeling ash and smoke flood into my lungs once again. A far cry from the paradise I had seen just moments before. A man ran over to me and picked me up, putting me onto something soft. My eyes closed again, too heavy to hold open for long. I heard sirens and alarms and a loud beeping noise keeping time with the breaths I was taking. 

Then everything was dark, and all that was left was the heat.