We hit the streets pretty hard; sirens screaming through the streets with the screech of our tyres burning off a few layers echoed not too far behind. Truth is, this wasn’t a matter for us; I mean how often do you hear of a woman calling the fire brigade because of locking herself in her flat? But unfortunately, in our line of service, we don’t get to pick our battles. No matter how stupid they might be. Especially not since our budgets have come under surveillance because of all the years and stories of cats stuck in fucking trees. So now, everything is an emergency and our time is heavily monitored. Lieutenant Oxbridge delegated a small chunk of the budget to repairs and tyres. But had to slash our overtime, not to mention sick pay. And that’s my - and of course other peoples’ - problem right now. I was on paid sickness suspension for the past four months, visiting a psychologist and about ten different doctor’s, all with their own unique theories on what dosage should be crammed down my throat. Of course none of it has helped. How can it? You can cram all the dextropropoxyphene, codeine and fentanyl down my throat that you want, and it can numb the feeling, but that still leaves the other four senses to remember.
Sure enough as we tilt around the next corner on our twelve-street journey, I feel my nostrils flaring at the stench of the crimson fires. My skin radiates the heat and toasts under the gentle licking of the flames caressing the soft skin of my arms. Shivers ripple through my spine, slamming goosebumps out of their way as they shoot up my back, leaving a pimply runway from my lower back to the tip of my neck. My eyes began to dart furiously; were we on fire? No. But the smell was intoxicating, it must be right outside. Spluttering out a cough of fumes, I tore my eyes around my surroundings, where is it? There. A small little bungalow set ablaze, the sillhouttes of a mother in her late twenties frantically pounding on the reinforced windows that were designed with the specific purpose of protecting her family from any wanton intruders. I had to get out. I had to help her.
“Pull over” I thought I said to Nic, before clasping and pummelling the door handle.
And just like that, the burning stopped. All her screams evaporated, and all I could hear was my own tortured screams and the rapid clicking of a locked door handle straining against the muscles of a 32 year old fireman, and the feeling of tears that had rolled long ago down my face and now nestled and semi-dried themselves out in my five o’clock shadow. I chanced opening my eyes and saw Nic staring me down. His hazel eyes strangle cold, no concern, no confusion. Just sick of my bullshit I guess. I can’t say I blame him. I figure we’ve stopped the truck now because of my hysterics rather than reaching to our destination, so I slide out the trusty bottle of dextro and tossed a couple of pills down my throat; exaggerating each action of the whole affair, before throwing Nic a contorted fake smile to show I knew what he was thinking and I was fine. He cracked a disbelieving smile and pulled out again and flicked back on the sirens as I practised my best face for any public we may have to deal with.
Crackling of a fire rippled against my ears again, but this time the screeching of our tyres told me this one was real, so I found my pulse and massaged it down to a calm poker face, before flicking up the door lock and stepping out of the truck and started adjusting my jacket to give of an impression that we rushed straight to the scene without any delay - like I said, impressions are everything today.
Routine started to take control as I slammed the door shut and started to walk along the polished sides of the truck to open the side and start tugging loose some hose lining without so much as a glance to the job at hand. But I managed to fight it, taking only the first couple steps before contorting my body to face the blazing inferno of the day; it was a tower block. The kind you see erected in the four corners of every rough neighbourhood across the country; as if trying to contain our scum of the universe with 13 storeys of pensioners and immigrants. I scan my eyes quickly over each window of every storey and assess the damage. Nearby I hear people mumbling about how good I look. Guess I scrub up good for a fuckup. Must be the uniform I smirk, people always love the uniform. I pretend to tune it out as I buzz Nic over the radio to tell him exactly the situation, but I train my ears very much on the gathered audience all muttering excitedly about the devastation and throwing out their own theories of how it happened and hypothesise over what they would do to save hypothetical people trapped in the blaze if they could get the chance and wouldn’t just stand around like we are, wasting time. I can’t help but smile though as it just reminds me of myself back when I used to care, and for a brief shining moment a flicker of passion erupts in my stomach in a glorious spark of optimism, only to immediately be extinguished by my stomach acid. I remember when the sight of the chaos would excite me, and now even the wildest turret of flames are just a statistic calculation to my eyes. If I ever got around to watching that DVD “The Towering Inferno” Holly bought a couple months back, I’d probably be looking past the antics of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, and instead be commenting to myself bitterly about how an electrical fire like that wouldn’t react that way in such a situation. I guess that’s why Holly and I haven’t managed to watch anything together in so long, no matter how often she catches her lips mumbling the endless ream of pictures she would like to be taken to go and see.
Nic is on crowd detail on this one, and god help them. Nic’s a nice guy, and his heart is in the right place, but he doesn’t do well with people. Last year, the department received 72 negative comments from the general public, and just under 30 of them were for Nic. He just gets these crazy eyes when he gets excited, and starts breathing vocally and it puts people on edge. Honestly, I want to tell him to take this one and I’ll do the ever impossible line of hurling buzz phrases “Get back!” “Nothing to see” and “Move along” to our adoring fans; the fact that I get surrounded by fires to make me sweat out a panic attack just sat in a car should be sign enough I’m not ready to step inside a 13 goddamn storey blaze, but no, that’s not how Head Office currency sees it. They see a schmoe on medication and think the task he should be kept away from, is public interaction. Throw another crazy onto the fire, is their motto. Well I’m lying, it probably isn’t, but you get the idea.
I maintain my public grimace of false hope, nothing to see here comradery as I slide open the back and grab the essentials and clip everything in place; my SCBA Air Bottle (never leave home without it!), two cheap miniature bottles of flame retardent (not strictly regulation, but I just feel a little safer having something that could require a mosquito bite of assistance in a third degree situation) that I quickly cram into my inner pocket out of sight and under heated protection within the beige turnout jacket, and finally my own PASS - a little sort of motion tracker to activate in case of any emergency that pinpoints my location and surrounding area via technology stuff to help the Colonel guide me out incase of any dire visibility-destroyed events. After running my gloved fingers over my body, fine-checking everything was ticked off and raring to go, spun my helmet off the rack and dunked it on my head, before turning on my heel, scooped up the fire hose and marched dutifully toward the tower block inferno.
The sound of my boot tearing the reinforced door - after I was ensuring I was safe from any potential back draft naturally - ripped through the air like a thunderclap before the door slammed onto the concrete flooring. Gingerly I stepped inside and pressed my back against the wall as I made my way along the hallway, although the fire was mostly located on the 11th floor, it doesn’t hurt to be weary when passing the string of almost barn-door-esque storage units for the flats above.
Muffled screams of panic drifted down the corridor and lightly vibrated inside my padded helmet, so hauntingly soft I daren’t place a bet on whether these were real, or another apparition. I shrugged off my pessimism - I’d taken my pills, so I should be safe from any unwanted visitors and tricks, but I could still quite easily just be losing my mind - and I sped up my shuffle along the now seemingly never-ending corridor before ducking into the stairwell. I know faced another one of my dilemmas; the smoke would be at it’s thickest on the top floors by now, so should I head straight up, and work my way down to safety, or do I play it safe and just work my way up the first few floors and just write the top floors off as either safe or KIA? No time to deliberate, so I immediately scoot to the first door on the ground level as I see how it goes - regardless of whether or not I wanna play hero, I might as well spend my time thinking dealing with the doors here. I hover my hand several inches in front of the varnished and untarnished frame testing for heat. It’s warm, but definitely not to the touch. I trade my extended hand for a boot as I lunge it to the door and hear the hinges splint slightly with a mighty crack. I turn to a shoulder barge for the final push through. A gust of cool breeze welcomes me in with a loving embrace and I take a refreshing inhale before I ask with an elevated voice;
“Any survivors?”
Silence.
“Hello?” I repeat, as I start to trudge across the cracked laminate flooring into the lounge spacing. The walls are an offsetting beige-cream and blood red, and densely decorated throughout with a medley of photos and framed artwork. The happy faces of a beautiful mother and two children stare up at me compacted behind a wedge of fogged up glass, with an array of crooked children interpretations of Disney princesses assault my senses. I follow the breeze through to the bedroom, where I see a soft and inviting Queen-sized bed splattered with fragments of window pane; the flower-patterned duvet utilised as a draft excluder against the door that would lead into the children’s bedrooms. This mother knew what she was doing, and for a moment I projected my interpretation of what must have happened onto the scene in front of me and I follow it methodically as the ghostly initial scent of smoke drifts up to the sleeping mother, jerking her from her dream of a father figure for the kids that will do them right, the bead of panic oozing from her forehead and trickling down her cheek as she gathers her senses, before her instincts take over and she pounces from the bed like a ravenous cheetah to the children’s room, snapping the door open, shaking the children awake and coaxing them out of bed - grabbing one small cuddly toy each from their crumbing stash to help focus their attention as she leads them to the bedroom. She shuts the door, drapes the duvet over the children as she takes that alarm and fulfils every morning fantasy by hurtling it through the window overlooking the bed; the occasional glass shard bouncing off the four foot flower-patterned lumps that stand patiently by her side. She flicks the sheet off the children and rolls it up under the door, before gently lifting the children on the bed one at a time and talking them through as she helps push them through the window before undoubtedly taking one last longing debate of any possessions she could risk taking with her before deciding better judgement and simply hopping through. The scenario is a beautiful depiction of human integrity that does for a moment put a smile on my face as I think; for every individual spark we as humans have, in a life-threatening situation such as a fire, we all become the same sheep, predictable down to the last hesitant glances at our prized treasures.
Of course there are exceptions, as the fourth and final door of this floor kindly reminds me. The room is a putred assortment of filth and expired foods breeding new life forms, matted into the tacky worn through carpet. The window here is still intact, behind the nailed in curtains that blanket them, but the place is remarkably barren; cracked shelving with a dust-free tv-spacing, and dangling spare cables trailing along the floor from a torn-out-the-wall xbox. This man (there was no mistaking this to be a man, thanks to his airing laundry draped along the breakfast bar atop a grease-deteriorating pizza box, had spared no expense in prioritising and had clearly waddled through on what must have been - judged by what I assumed to be a weight of approximately 15 stone of belly fat - no less than four visits to gather his prized possessions. And not once would this morbidly obese bastard have gone to check on his family of three down the hall because he just had to ensure he could continue knifing ‘noobs’ on Black Ops II’s latest dlc pack. A moist grimy layer of disgust coated the inside of my stomach as I dwelled on this fuckhead. And I returned to the hallway ready for the next step in this mission.
“Nic this is Korben Leigh, do you read me over.”
One very long beat of silence.
“This is Nic, Korben I read you, how’s the clearout going? …Over.”
“I have sweeped around the ground floor, it seems everybody has got out, I’m going to make my way upstairs. Can you see any priority hotspots to aim from outside? I’m not too sure how long we can hold out for with The Fog. Over.”
Several painful beats of exasperated exhaling.
“Uh yeah, Korben, there appears to be a couple of possible silhouettes up on the.. Seventh floor. Could easily be justy a plant or something from this distance, but that’s something to go on. Over.”
“Alright Nic, thanks. I’m gonna make my way up now. Over and out.”
The radio complained as I flicked it off and fastened it back into it’s holster across my belt buckle and took the stairs; my new plan of operation - head straight to the seventh floor, shouting through the halls, and then work my way back a little more thoroughly.
As my boots echoed up to the fourth floor however, this plan had completely blinked from my mind and instead I started to move gingerly as the charring smoke and embers started to appear and danced around my receding hairline, I found myself talking idly to myself. I may not be much of one for conversation, but I am a good listener for idiot’s prattling away; and that was certainly what I felt like doing right now. I’d recount to you now what I was saying, but honestly it was just a string of words rather than any cohesive sentences. I was just throwing words to the dartboard of my eardrums and seeing what stuck; largely Korben. Calm. Fire. Families. Pain. Mistake. Her.
By the time I hit the fifth floor I could no longer tell if it was pools of sweat gushing down my features, or a river of tears that I was blindingly flicking into the visor of my helmet. Even though the medication was suppressing her apparitions, that girl was still etched so perfectly into my mind that I might as well not fucking bother. They block off the smell and the touch sense of the fiery ordeal but what goddamn use is that when I’m stuck in a burning building anyway? They need to get rid of the memory, I don’t want to see her anymore. I can’t see her anymore. A small clattering of plastic shells and the ruffle of my jacket and trousers indicate that I’ve fallen to my knees at the top of the stairs now, just shamelessly sobbing to myself. I’ve ran it over and over in my head every single moment of every single day, but this is the first moment I’ve let my mind dwell on the situation in it’s entirety, and it’s killing me.
As I woke up from a nap that had glazed across the day, I slowly clawed my way up into a sitting position from the cream leather couch I had apparently fallen victim to, and forcefully massaged my pupils into focus with the balls of my smooth, hairless fists. The blaring colours from the broad-boxed television set counteracted my feeble attempts with it’s own assault of slightly fuzzy pixels imprinting vivid shapes of cartoon characters into the insides of my eyelids as my palms worked their magic. Eventually I won the battle for vision, and peeled the purple fleece I had apparently cocooned myself in, before I thudded slightly on the beautifully cool wood panel flooring and scampered to the kitchen, leaving small sweaty imprints shrinking into the rivets of the flooring.
I poured myself a glass of water from the kitchen taps, almost letting it overflow before managing to wrestle the tap to a halt, and made my way back to my groove in the couch and nestled myself in, cradling my glass in my arms before slowly, very slowly, succumbing to sleep again. But this time as the sandman swept me up, my arms drooped limply and the glass tipped to the floor before cracking against the 4-way adapter plug pulled halfway across the flooring. A miniature firework display erupted instantly from the socket; gusseting smoke to pool around its impressive display. The fizzling soon ignited into flame that pawed effortlessly at the laminate boards, before running across the plug cable to the television set; the flame momentarily disappearing as it sucked into the monitor, before a prompt explosion flung the white hot shards of glass towards my slumping figure; impaling fragments into my cheeks before biting into the muscle tissue and imprinting themselves across my face, and a few shards tumbling down my pyjamas, left to fizzle menacingly at me as I tore from my dreams howling in pain. As I tried to swallow the pain, my eyes watched the confusing collage of orange and yellow dancing around my TV, and my mind began scribbling reams and reams of ideas, but refused to space the options out and instead just wrote each consecutive idea over one another at such impeccable speed, within milliseconds I was rooted to the spot as my nervous system desperately tried to decode the scribbles they had been marked to take to all extremities. My heart ceased its war to rip through my ribcage and came to a complete halt. My blood drifted to a slow stop throughout my body, and my temperature - despite the now blistering heat bubbling at my skin - began to drop, leaving the only thing moving in my body now, an army of goosebumps rippling around me.
My mother’s voice drifted through my ears; her screams of my name censored under the shellshock and drone of the rumbling inferno, and then I felt her slender claws wrap firmly around my arm - artistically designed and crafted talons shredding through maybe two layers of skin as she pulls me from the trance and tries to fly me to door. I’m a lot more aware of my body now, and the talon indentations start to throb slightly, as my mother begins to punch violently at the smoke slowly throttling her as she flips the little wooden mail table over, running her fingers across the floor, as if reading Braille directions to the door keys. The tips of my stubby little fingers begin to tingle as the blood pools into them from spending so long frozen in place but I do nothing about it. But moments into the frantic searching, we both perk up an extra six inches and bob our heads about as if we had suddenly devolved into meercats as a flaring siren’s call beckons us to the window. The fire licks our skin longingly as we dart to windows and peer through for the screeches of hope. I hear my mum mutter some unspeakable words under her breath about having the family protection installation over our windows, meaning we were powerless to break through. My oval eyes swung around the frames, following the siren before we eventually see it. Instinct takes over and our hands start beating against the double glazing with every oozing sweat of desperation in our bodies. The fireman stepped out from his van and he gathered his equipment, but as he sprinted across the tarmac field in front of our bungalow, a rogue breeze flung the vicious tongues against my pyjamas, and embers ran their way up my clothing with feverish excitement. Then all of a sudden the blistering agony numbed into nothingness…
“Fuck!” I woke up, spluttering and wheezing out of breath, now back in my 37 year old body; feeling much more decrepit and creaky than I remember, with another two coatings of sweat sheathing it. I don’t know how long I must have been trapped in that memory before the crackle of my surroundings scorched me back to reality, but what did stun me was how different this one was. This wasn’t the girl coming into my life now and bringing with her, her horrific fate, I felt it now. I was the one in the fire. I was the one who I let down and watched as the lights in my eyes flared out. My eyes began to read the space around me, as my hand clasped to the railing. Ironically the coolness of it is what reassured me this was reality, in this tower block inferno, and I flicked my fringe of sweat off my forehead and gathered myself to my full 5’9’’ height and jogged my way along the corridor, wheezing out my chants of ‘Hello?’ and spluttering exhaustion and fear into the increasingly thick layer of smoke that was now beginning to encapsulate me from the torso upwards. My voice began to harmonise and struggle to keep a tune as my mind became preoccupied with the intense vision.
“Help!”
The screams cracked through my helmet, and echoed against my ears. Was it real? Or was it just the girl again? I couldn’t be sure. Not yet.
“Hello?” my voice boomed in response with a quiver shaking through the brave façade I tried to adopt.
This time the voice just screamed in response and trickled off into desperate sobbing.
“Where are you?!” I bellowed and began to pace towards the staircase to the next floor, ears pricked back ready to follow that voice. “Where are you?!” I repeated with the last ounce of dominance I could muster.
“73!” She screeched between her howls.
My ears tried to track the screams, and my body ran up the staircase, with my ears locked onto the rails of the sound waves created.
Crack! The frame splintered into my shoulder and I fell through the door after the failed shoulder-barge, and a whoosh of heat punched behind me like a blizzard. The fire had very obviously taken place on this floor in a neighbouring flat. It’s a goddamn miracle this woman will be alive.
Remains of door frame slid from my back as I once more gathered to my feet, coughing and heaving dust and fragments of door in my way. I took a quick look back at the frame and noticed that some of the door was still locked in place, almost certainly what probably prevented the occupant’s escape. I couldn’t chance much of an analysis though; the smoke was tapping on my helmet and trying to prise it open, so can only imagine the abseiling it must be doing down this woman’s throat right now, so I shrugged off the last remaining shards and polish sinew, and took a couple of cumbersome steps across the narrow hallway into the lounge.
“Hello?” I began to boom, cutting of with an exhausted cough. “My name is Korban Leigh, I’m with the fire department. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
I began my personal guided tour along the turquoise nightmare, panting slightly from anxiety and fatigue, and found myself inhaling sweat that now trickled down my lungs with a few rogue air particles every time I breathed. Although the visor of my helmet was finally beginning to crack under the pressure and hide itself behind a few rhythmic scratches and a cloud of condensation, I couldn’t help but notice how bare this place was. Sure there were bookshelves and entertainment units, but it all felt unsettlingly sterile. No ornate decorations, no personal photographs, not even a painting - this entire room had the distinct vibe of the mock-up half-room shown at a DS Leisures type setting; too afraid to create any real spark of personality lest it dare offend someone. As I stepped by the dark brown leather sofa, I seized the moment and dropped to a crouch to keep my head down under the smoke ceiling coating, and tear my helmet off, snatch the doily draped over the middle cushion and violate it’s purity as I grind every last layer of grim and sweat off my face before tossing back onto the couch - why bother to take care when it’s just gonna burn anyway? Besides, it’d probably more insulting if I had put it back perfectly as if nothing had happened, better to be upfront with it.
I push on, a great deal of disinterest joining the tour with me through this staling environment, my helmet clasped firmly in my mitts; letting every possible second of breeze dance past my pores with only the warning being the mild spasms of a couple of the grouchier old man muscles cramping in my spine, disapproving strongly of the need to hunch under the smoke for any given time. A thing mist of smoke is still filtering through my lungs, not enough for any damage just enough to tickle out a cough or two, as I push into the kitchen and my pupils jump back into the backs of my eyes in shock as they adjust to the devastation before them; the room itself is screaming with personality, assaulting from every single angle - the decorative array of knifes, spatulas, and other oddities of cooking, the vibrant colours splattered across the walls and bread bin, the personalised coffee, tea and sugar pots; the sparkling white fridge almost completely adorned by every fridge magnet made by man from around the world, this was one hell of a contrast to the rest of this person’s capsule of a flat. The other oddity was a small lump of shivering black fire retardant fabric vibrating incessantly against the freezer door, flashing repressed memories of the shiver-inducing Nicole Kidman vehicle The Others. Repressing as much of a shudder as I could manage, I reached out to clasp the sheet whilst softly grunting;
“Don’t worry ma’am, I’m with the fire department. I am going to get you out of here.”
I pulled the sheet off the shivering wreck and our eyes met; mine slowly managing to quiver into semi-focus views, but even through the gust of smoke and almost-Parkinsons-level sight, I could see this woman was astoundingly beautiful. My lungs weighed the pros and cons of allowing an entire exhale of oxygen in astonishment. They conceded, and for what felt like an eternity the air I had been pooling in my lungs flooded from my chapped lips, and although this moment lasted an eternity for me, there was a little part of me that knew it wasn’t for her and I was probably just looking like another mesmerised creep in her existence, and forced composure on myself and extended my clammy yet thankfully gloved hand to her. She sized me up in a moment, almost as if sceptical of my help, before slipping her delicate fingers betwixt my kevlared mitts, and hoisted herself up before breaking her hand free.
“I’m - I’m with the fire department ma’am, I’m here to get you out of here.” I stammered with a quivering authority.
She crackled a half smile for a moment at my fumbling communications before asserting her own authority;
“Danielle. I have no idea how this all happened, I was just in the kitchen when all of a sudden the ceiling came crashing down and then there was this fire spreading and I couldn’t escape!”
I extended an arm to hug her reassuringly but she met it with a flinch, so I quickly withdrew.
“It’s okay, uh, Danielle. The fire doesn’t seem to have hit anything major, and is mostly contained. We should be fine. But we’ll need to move fast.”
At as-close-to-lightning-speed as an early 30s on heavy meds would allow, my hand latched on to my bag and tore off the miniature mask for such occasions, and extended once more, this time with a faint twitch of nerves to Danielle. She slid it from me and quickly flicked it over her curls, and without another word we both made our way into the halls at a gingery pace. The smoke now consuming the atmosphere like an overweight man who sits exactly in front of you in a theatre, leaving only the skirts of vision a possibility, made the next four minutes of inching along the hall tense and grating, with the muffled crackling of a raging blaze and playful popping of splintering wood entwining with the throaty gulps of air our masks were filtering through, adding an unwelcome soundtrack to the ordeal.
My mind was racing about her, almost as intoxicating as the fumes we were wading through. I was getting noticeably lightheaded, but passed off slowing down to a crawl as merely precautionary measures. I couldn’t even tell you why she was affecting me so much; of course I knew she was beautiful - she was fucking stunning - but this wasn’t romance swelling inside me, Hell, it was barely lust given the pathetic state of my libido. There was just something truly, and terrifyingly, unerotically asphyxiating about this woman. And then a sharp needle pricked under the skin of my chest, and it became all to clear why this was so excruciating to me. I had to get out of there.
As we veered the corner to the stairwell, my gloved hand felt a little heavier as it became burdened with a slender and dainty companion, and I felt some of the lesser organs inside fail under the pressure, and with a desperate wheeze, I grasped tightly and against any better judgement flew down the staired. The smoke grew thicker and thicker in our blurred rush, meaning even the cornered vision allowed to us became questionable, until a sudden shatter, whoosh of brimstone and scorching of bright night lights told me that in another twenty feet we would be safe and our connection would be over.
As Danielle sat in the ajar doors of the waiting Ambulance, sucking oxygen to steady the adrenaline and clouded lungs she was no doubt recuperating from, as a medic stealthily wrapped her in a warm, beige sarcophagus blanket, and neatly dabbed at a couple of minor burns and cuts freckled across her pore-less skin, I lay in my passenger seat of the Fire Engine, head imprinting into the headrest and eyelids straining through each other, my insides bleeding through exasperation.
“Nice work in there, Korben” Nice boomed with curious insincerity as his monstrous palms pounded my chest in approval as he clambered back into the truck, before firing the ignition and we pulled away, ready to return the truck and get a good night’s insomnia ready for tomorrow to start it all over again.
Helluva night.
