Falling into Flame (Champagne Challenge #120)--PG-13
Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am
For the “Fall” challenge. No infringement intended. Explication, maybe, but no infringement.
Falling into Flame
Things happen fast. Too fast to process, sometimes, and even your emotions have to catch up later.
Coraline was lying there, staked, and that had given me a few precious minutes to coax a terrified child into my arms, but I had no illusions that it was over.
I don’t know whether I thought that she’d somehow work herself free, or that I just had to end it forever, right then. Maybe I didn’t think at all.
But I did act. I snatched up that lantern and threw it at the most flammable thing in the room. It only took a second for the chair to be engulfed in flame, and the wooden walls caught almost as quick.
Coraline was trapped in the middle of it, her faced turned toward me, white dress red with blood and the flickering fire, like a queen on a pyre.
I couldn’t stand there and watch her burn. Not with the girl. Her eyes, at least, were too innocent for that.
I turned away, trying to shield the kid from—from what? The flames? The vision?
I’ll never know what made me turn back for one last look at the fire. I’d put a wall between us. Made my choice, which life to save, and which to take.
And then, impossibly, she appeared at the window, beating her beautiful, deadly hands against the glass.
Coraline—my wife, my temptress, my fate. Thirty-three years of passion, and it came down to that split second. And I couldn’t even see what was in her eyes. Betrayal, rage, understanding, despair. I’ll never know. The inferno sucked her in, and she was gone.
The child in my arms shifted, warm and heavy, clinging more tightly. Dangerously tempting. In my confusion, I thought she even smelled just a little like Coraline. But that must’ve been the scent my wife had left on her.
The fire was spreading. I had to get her out, get her to safety. From Coraline, from the flames, from me.
In the end, one falls and one is saved. You can’t stop and think too much about it. You try to do what’s right, but things—things happen fast.
Falling into Flame
Things happen fast. Too fast to process, sometimes, and even your emotions have to catch up later.
Coraline was lying there, staked, and that had given me a few precious minutes to coax a terrified child into my arms, but I had no illusions that it was over.
I don’t know whether I thought that she’d somehow work herself free, or that I just had to end it forever, right then. Maybe I didn’t think at all.
But I did act. I snatched up that lantern and threw it at the most flammable thing in the room. It only took a second for the chair to be engulfed in flame, and the wooden walls caught almost as quick.
Coraline was trapped in the middle of it, her faced turned toward me, white dress red with blood and the flickering fire, like a queen on a pyre.
I couldn’t stand there and watch her burn. Not with the girl. Her eyes, at least, were too innocent for that.
I turned away, trying to shield the kid from—from what? The flames? The vision?
I’ll never know what made me turn back for one last look at the fire. I’d put a wall between us. Made my choice, which life to save, and which to take.
And then, impossibly, she appeared at the window, beating her beautiful, deadly hands against the glass.
Coraline—my wife, my temptress, my fate. Thirty-three years of passion, and it came down to that split second. And I couldn’t even see what was in her eyes. Betrayal, rage, understanding, despair. I’ll never know. The inferno sucked her in, and she was gone.
The child in my arms shifted, warm and heavy, clinging more tightly. Dangerously tempting. In my confusion, I thought she even smelled just a little like Coraline. But that must’ve been the scent my wife had left on her.
The fire was spreading. I had to get her out, get her to safety. From Coraline, from the flames, from me.
In the end, one falls and one is saved. You can’t stop and think too much about it. You try to do what’s right, but things—things happen fast.