Fire roared to life in a heartbeat, racing across the fluid-slick floor, licking up the walls and consuming the couch in a single breath. Heat blasted my face, the air turning thick with smoke as my numb fingers fought with the dead bolt, finally flipping it free.
Danny’s triumphant laughter filled the room, unhinged and awful.
“See?” He shouted over the crackle, with his arms spread like a conductor. “This is what freedom looks like! No one can take you from me now!”
The smoke clogged my lungs, searing and choking me as I twisted the knob and pulled the door. I screamed as it snagged; the chain catching it, giving me only a few inches of fresh air. Hope faded as fast as the flames grew behind me when the chain held the door shut above my head. With my hands tied behind my back, I couldn’t reach it to free it, and I screamed as the heat nipped at my skin, turning my mind crazed with fear.
I turned my face into the gap, screaming out into the fresh air, sucking oxygen as I tried to rip the door open. “Please help me! Please, someone help me!” It was pitch black outside, darkness fell quickly in the wintertime, but the orange glow of the fire reflected off the snow all around the house. It was burning—fast.
Danny stomped across the floor toward me, stumbling through the flames, still laughing, but the fire moved faster than he did, and it caught him by surprise. It licked the laces of his boots and then climbed his jeans in a single heartbeat.
His manic eyes found mine through the smoke, and for the first time in all the years I knew him, I saw fear looking back at me. So many times, he had broken me, beating me, terrifyingme, tormenting me, and usually there was sick obsessive pleasure in his gaze when he did so. Sometimes, early on, there had been remorse in them after a fight, but not in many years. Seeing the fear in his eyes, and then the pain, broke something in my chest, even though he deserved it.
He fucking deserved it and so much more.
But I was human, and I couldn’t celebrate his pain like he always did mine.
Still, I couldn’t look away from it, so I froze, watching it consume his body in half the time it took to engulf the whole house. His screams echoed through my ears, horrible and ragged, sounds that ripped through me even as I screamed my own.
I felt like my skin was melting, my flesh scorching as the flames danced across the ceiling. My lungs burned from the smoke, and I coughed hard enough to break ribs, but still I found no relief from the pain.
I wasn’t going to make it out of the house.
That single thought raced through my mind as I collapsed to my knees, searching for reprieve from the choking smoke and burning heat.
I wasn’t going to survive Danny, after all.
I fell back against the wall as I watched him fall to the ground, no longer screaming as the flames swallowed him whole.
At least I was going to die knowing that he was dead too.
At least he could no longer torment anyone, even if it cost me my life.
Fire nipped at my feet, burning through my shoes and pants, and I watched helplessly in some sort of dissociative state as the flames danced across my jeans.
I smiled grimly as Emmie’s giggle filled my mind, a calming balm on my soul as I neared death. Toby’s silly baby-tooth smile flashed in front of my eyes, covered in chocolate and chaos.
I felt Travis’s rough hands on my skin, tender and slow in that special combination I craved in the darkness of our home. Then I heard Elliot’s warm voice, calling my name in ecstasy, shouting for me.
The door beside me exploded into the house, and the flames danced higher from the fresh air that kissed my face.
Still, I couldn’t move to embrace it the way I wanted to. My mind locked up, so I couldn't feel the fire's pain anymore.
Movement through the door caught my attention, and then a massive body crashed through, in full firefighter gear. I watched with a sense of separation, as if I wasn’t inside of my own body anymore as the masked firefighter turned and grabbed my body, lifting me onto his shoulder as if I weighed nothing at all and carried me out into the cold crisp winter air.
“Frankie!”
I fought the fog in my mind when I realized Eli’s voice was coming from the man carrying me out into the dark night.
“Eli—” I coughed,
I saw Elliot’s face in my mind, his smile and dimples, the view easing the pain in my heart.
Ice-cold pain engulfed my body, a stark contrast to the searing heat that had been killing me as I fell onto my back in the deep snow.
It was the shock to my system that I needed, and then suddenly I was staring up at the night sky as a scream ripped from my lips, the pain coming back to me in full force.
The impact of me falling to the ground ripped the ties off my wrists, and I swung my arms at the flames burning my body.
