A Tale of Twins Running

Ignited by the fire in the distance she runs into the looming woods. Her body aches but her will to live propels her into the unknown.

The world was a small sliver of blurry images. Her lungs contracted and heaved, her eyes burned and tears ran down her face. She blinked furiously and rubbed her eyes until she could see her surroundings. Feeling preceded sight, her skin prickled. The air distorted in waves at the tip of the fire’s long fingers. The house was completely consumed.

The grass underneath her body felt scalding hot and the sudden pain brought her attention into focus. She was sprawled out on the grass about ten feet from the mouth of the flame. Just like the monster in her basement, the whole house had become a hungry raging beast that would consume everything. The fire spread to the grass around the home and started creeping towards her.

She had to run but for some reason, her body wouldn’t move. She tried to stand and collapsed again, sending dust clouds into the air. The pain was coursing through her; she couldn’t tell where it was coming from, it was everywhere, inside her and out. It seemed her whole body had been engulfed in pain just as the house had been engulfed in flame.

Her clothes had been reduced to tattered rags, barely keeping their form. Inside the singed holes in the fabric, she saw bright red flesh. Her white moon-like skin had was burnt away entirely; the remnants of patchy skin clung to her body on the edges of the burns. Large sections of her body were covered in horrendous burns that shined the brightest red and continued to bleed.

She could barely stay conscious but she had to move. The fire would consume her if she stayed any longer. With great effort she climbed to her feet, holding her tattered body, and ran. She ran and ran and ran. Once she started she couldn’t imagine stopping. The pain fueled her and before long she forgot all else but the rhythmic sound of her wheezing inhales and her feet pounding against the dirt. It took her some time to realize that she’d long since left the path in the woods. This time there were no watchful eyes to fall upon her, there was nothing left but running.

When she finally could run no more she staggered to a halt. It was the blackest of nights; only a small sliver of moon hung in the sky. There was no light besides the small rays the waning moon could give. She was deep in the forest now; it was densely packed. Each tree stood only a foot or two from its neighbor. Silence abounded. No sounds of the night could be heard. No crickets. No bullfrogs. No rustling. No howling. Nothing. The night had turned into a vacuum, empty, silent, dark. The only sound she could hear was the distant roar of the fire echoing in her ears – even though she was now several miles away from the blaze.

The silence of the night felt stiff as the memories of the wildfire drifted into her mind’s eye. The darkness felt darker than dark somehow. The cold of the night air was like frost in the absence of the immense heat. She trembled at the reality of her situation. Tears dripped onto the blades of grass below, stinging her burns as they rolled across her tender skin. She knelt on the ground, shaking, weeping, and pulling at her hair for some time. As the night grew old, the pain of mind and body became too much. Sleep kindly laid her broken body to rest across the dewy grass; like that, she slept.