I made it one step before I fell over, my shoulder taking the brunt of my fall, the chair thumping against the thickness of the carpet. I lay there and coughed, squinting through my moist and blurry vision, staring at the flames… the flames that seemed to stalk me.
They traveled closer, following the path of the gas, snaking through the living room, filling it up and rushing around me until I was almost completely circled with fire. The heat, God, the heat was so intense that sweat slicked my skin, and it made it that much harder to breathe.
It was the kind of heat that smacked into you, that made you dizzy and completely erased all thought from your brain.
I was going to die.
Even if I were able to make it to my feet, I wouldn’t be able to make it through the circle of fire that consumed everything around me.
I pressed my cheek against the carpet, not reveling in its softness, not thinking about the comfort it usually afforded my bare feet. Another round of coughing racked my body. My lungs hurt. God, they hurt so bad. It was like a giant vise squeezed inside my chest, squeezed until all I could think about was oxygen and how much I needed it.
My chin tipped back as I writhed on the floor, making one last attempt at freedom before the flames claimed me completely. I heard the sharp crackling of wood, the banging of something collapsing under the destruction, and I blinked.
This is it.
The last moments of my life.
I’m going to die alone.
I started to hallucinate, the lack of oxygen playing tricks on my fading mind, as a large figure stepped through the flames. Literally walked right through them. He held up his arms, shielding his face and head as he barreled through looking like some hero from an action movie.
My eyes slid closed as my skin began to hurt, like I sat outside in the sun for hours without the protection of sunscreen.
I heard a muffled shout and tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy. Besides, I preferred the darkness anyway. I didn’t want to watch as my body was burned to death by fire.
Pain screamed through me and the feeling of the carpet against my cheek disappeared. My first thought was to struggle, but my body couldn’t obey my mind. I felt movement, I felt the solidness of someone’s chest, and I could have sworn I heard the sound of a man’s voice.
“Hang on,” he said.
The shattering of glass and the splintering of wood didn’t wake me from the fog that settled over my brain. The scream of pain at my back, the extreme burning and melting that made a cry rip from my throat still wasn’t enough to get my eyes to open.
And then I could hear the piercing wail of sirens, the faraway shouts of men, and the muffled yell of one who was much closer.
I really thought heaven would be more peaceful.
And then I was sailing through the air, the solid wall of whatever held me ripped away. I plunged downward, and with a great slap, I hit water, the icy cold droplets a major shock to my overheated system.
My eyes sprang wide; water invaded them as I tried to make sense of what was happening. I thought I was burning. But now I was… drowning.
The water was dark and it pulled me lower and lower into its depths. I looked up. The surface rippled and glowed orange. I almost died up there. But I would die down here now.
I wanted to swim. My arms, they hurt so badly, but they wanted to push upward, to help me break the surface toward the oxygen my body so desperately needed.
But I was still tied to a chair.
The chair hit the ground—a solid, cold surface—as my hair floated out around me and bubbles discharged from my nose and mouth.
It wasn’t hot here.
It wasn’t loud, but eerily quiet.
It was a different kind of death, but death all the same.
The ripples in the water grew and the chair began to rock. I heard the plunge of something else coming into the water and I looked up. Through the strands of my wayward hair, I saw him again. My hero. His powerful arms pushed through the water in three great stokes. He reached out and grabbed me beneath the shoulder, towing me upward toward the bright surface.
When my head cleared the water, my lungs automatically sucked in blissful air. It hurt so bad, but it was the kind of pain I had to endure. Another cough racked my body, and as I wheezed, the man towing me and my chair through the water said, “Keep breathing. Just keep breathing.”
And then I was being lifted from the water, the chair placed on the cement as I coughed and wheezed and greedily sucked in air.
“Ma’am,” someone was saying. “Ma’am, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
I looked up, blinking the water out of my eyes, but my vision was still blurry. I tried to speak, but all I could manage was another cough.