solojunkie
New Here
Suspended
I hear a shrill of terror; like my child has awoken from a seething nightmare. I picture her sitting upright in her bed reaching for me in the darkness.
I hurl myself to my feet and take flight; into the red-hot flames I run. The tips of the flames sting my cheeks and my feet; like bare-naked skin being lashed with a leather cord.
Dripping with sweat my nightgown keeps me from igniting. I’ve searched everywhere, high and low, except for the top floor. I cannot find the stairs to take me there.
“Please! Please! Mommy help me!” she shrieks. “Somebody help me!” Her words ricochet inside my brain and I suddenly see through the smoke and rings of fire with extra human vision. I lean into the flames and fight my hardest.
Suddenly, I feel aggression wrap around my waist and lift me off my feet. They are dragging me away from her. “Surely, they cannot expect me to go in the opposite direction!?”
It is not the flames that engulf me it is the horror of what I’ve just done by leaving her. I tell myself I let them take me away and in a last gasp for air, I am gone. It is as if I’ve fainted but my body is still conscious. Like I’ve died but my body lives on.
I have escaped the pain. All of it. They have my body down at the ambulance wearing an oxygen mask, while they dress my burns. That’s not important any more. It’s just an empty, scorched shell. I don’t need to breathe.
For a moment I am lost in space, transforming from my body into me like they do in Star Trek but the process never completes.
I cannot find my desperate child. And I have no arms, no legs, no spine to carry her out of the collapsing building.
Her life is in the balance. Her life depends on them now. All I can do is listen.
(Did you know fires are loud? They are loud like a freight train ripping through a sleeping small town in the pitch black of night without first sounding its horn.)
They bring her down five flights of stairs and hand her to the medic who then, in a matter of fact way, lays her on the gurney. They have to push my body away. Someone else has to carry it away so they can try to save her.
I am floating above and around my body which I can see moving and screaming and pleading. I cannot comfort my body and I cannot help my child.
(Meanwhile, the red and yellow lights are flashing, people have lined the streets to witness the horror, the authorities are keeping them back. the speakers on the walkie-talkies crackle. There is urgency all around. A controlled chaos. I can see that. I know that much for sure.)
I have no panic. I see no white lights. I have no pain. I have no human emotion. And I don’t know if my child is alive or dead. It is then that I realize I am still floating and I am suspended above it all until further notice.
I hear a shrill of terror; like my child has awoken from a seething nightmare. I picture her sitting upright in her bed reaching for me in the darkness.
I hurl myself to my feet and take flight; into the red-hot flames I run. The tips of the flames sting my cheeks and my feet; like bare-naked skin being lashed with a leather cord.
Dripping with sweat my nightgown keeps me from igniting. I’ve searched everywhere, high and low, except for the top floor. I cannot find the stairs to take me there.
“Please! Please! Mommy help me!” she shrieks. “Somebody help me!” Her words ricochet inside my brain and I suddenly see through the smoke and rings of fire with extra human vision. I lean into the flames and fight my hardest.
Suddenly, I feel aggression wrap around my waist and lift me off my feet. They are dragging me away from her. “Surely, they cannot expect me to go in the opposite direction!?”
It is not the flames that engulf me it is the horror of what I’ve just done by leaving her. I tell myself I let them take me away and in a last gasp for air, I am gone. It is as if I’ve fainted but my body is still conscious. Like I’ve died but my body lives on.
I have escaped the pain. All of it. They have my body down at the ambulance wearing an oxygen mask, while they dress my burns. That’s not important any more. It’s just an empty, scorched shell. I don’t need to breathe.
For a moment I am lost in space, transforming from my body into me like they do in Star Trek but the process never completes.
I cannot find my desperate child. And I have no arms, no legs, no spine to carry her out of the collapsing building.
Her life is in the balance. Her life depends on them now. All I can do is listen.
(Did you know fires are loud? They are loud like a freight train ripping through a sleeping small town in the pitch black of night without first sounding its horn.)
They bring her down five flights of stairs and hand her to the medic who then, in a matter of fact way, lays her on the gurney. They have to push my body away. Someone else has to carry it away so they can try to save her.
I am floating above and around my body which I can see moving and screaming and pleading. I cannot comfort my body and I cannot help my child.
(Meanwhile, the red and yellow lights are flashing, people have lined the streets to witness the horror, the authorities are keeping them back. the speakers on the walkie-talkies crackle. There is urgency all around. A controlled chaos. I can see that. I know that much for sure.)
I have no panic. I see no white lights. I have no pain. I have no human emotion. And I don’t know if my child is alive or dead. It is then that I realize I am still floating and I am suspended above it all until further notice.
