House of the Damned
Prologue
“Wake up, Karen, wake up!”
My eyes burst open at the sound of the voice.
“There’s a fire! We have to get out!”
Flames, radiant orange and pulsing yellow throbbed around my bed, licking the floor. I began to cough and hack as smoke started to drift into my lungs, sweating already from the heat. Amanda was yanking at my arm, pulling me from the safety of my bed. Not wanting to go, I forced myself back as the fire rose ever higher. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed.
“No…this has got to be a dream…Let me go…”
“No, Karen! You have to!”
My head was spinning from the smoke. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep…run away from this nightmare…this couldn’t be happening, not my home, no…
The burning lights were hot on my flesh, teasing me and coming closer. One of them jumped onto my bedpost and began to consume the bed as Amanda dragged me from the flickering room and into the relieving, cool outdoors of September.
I should have felt something, the rush of adrenaline, the fear for the orphanage that was all I had left…yet I didn’t, still crusted over with sleep.
All I could do was gaze in faint numbness as it burned to the ground, wood foundations twisting black in the arms of the flames.
By four in the morning, the firefighters left. They had barely stopped the monstrous blaze from consuming the entire neighborhood. And everything that was left of my seventeen years was naught but ash.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
My eyes burst open at the sound of the voice.
“There’s a fire! We have to get out!”
Flames, radiant orange and pulsing yellow throbbed around my bed, licking the floor. I began to cough and hack as smoke started to drift into my lungs, sweating already from the heat. Amanda was yanking at my arm, pulling me from the safety of my bed. Not wanting to go, I forced myself back as the fire rose ever higher. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed.
“No…this has got to be a dream…Let me go…”
“No, Karen! You have to!”
My head was spinning from the smoke. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep…run away from this nightmare…this couldn’t be happening, not my home, no…
The burning lights were hot on my flesh, teasing me and coming closer. One of them jumped onto my bedpost and began to consume the bed as Amanda dragged me from the flickering room and into the relieving, cool outdoors of September.
I should have felt something, the rush of adrenaline, the fear for the orphanage that was all I had left…yet I didn’t, still crusted over with sleep.
All I could do was gaze in faint numbness as it burned to the ground, wood foundations twisting black in the arms of the flames.
By four in the morning, the firefighters left. They had barely stopped the monstrous blaze from consuming the entire neighborhood. And everything that was left of my seventeen years was naught but ash.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
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Short but relevant, with any luck I'll update again tonight or tomorrow.