Through the Flames

Her tears never stopped. Instead they flowed and flowed, spilling from her reddened eyes like little streams, stumbling and tripping over each other in their race to slide down her cheeks. Tom almost envied them, the way they ran so freely and without restraint. He always felt so restricted and constricted in his speech and movement. He was never allowed to say what he wanted or do what he wanted to do. Like now, every instinct and thought in his head was screaming at him to move, make the first step and engulf her hysterical and fragile body in his arms. Instead he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, hating himself for the fact that he could do nothing but wait and watch. The fear of rejection was too dominant. He didn’t want to push her away or make her feel uncomfortable. So instead he waited and watched as the tears continued to flow.

“What am I going to do Tom?” her helpless baby eyes were staring up at him, demanding her answer, and it was killing him that he couldn’t. Chewing his lip in confusion, he finally took her shaking hands in his, meaning to give at least some small words of comfort. But instead she collapsed fully into his arms, completely unaware of his surprise. Tom was so shocked he almost pushed her way again. But it was too late, she had broken down the last barrier and now he could finally hear the last of the broken glass melting in his heart.

*

Tom never was a handsome guy. He had always known that and had told himself it didn’t bother him. He grew up as an only child with a junkie for a mother and a father who was always popping in out of prison. It only made sense for him to go down the same track. But Tom wasn’t like his parents, he wanted more from life. He wanted to be someone, achieve something. The army seemed like the right way to go. It was something that he could work for, strive for. It quickly became his lifetime goal to fight and die for his country. It was something he was good at; whizzing through the training Tom had never felt so proud, he’d never felt so alive. And then there came that horrible day. When he was only a couple months away from the end of his training programme, a horrible, horrible, horrifying accident had happened. A simple little mistake had caused a grenade to off unexpectedly. It was no one’s fault and it was everyone’s fault. It wasn’t revenge that rained through Tom’s body, when he woke up in hospital several weeks later with the whole left side of his body ruined – it was hate. Hate for himself - the monster that he had so feared becoming.

His dream to fight had vanished within a second, and all too soon Tom had nothing – again. They told him that he had to be forced into a coma, because if he had woken up, the pain could have killed him. They told him, he was extremely lucky to be alive. Still Tom didn’t care about that. All he could see was the pity and disgust that were clear as day in their eyes. No one would ever look at him in the same way again. For the rest of his life nobody would look him square in the face with the respect that he so desperately wanted.

It got worse during the months of recovery, when even a trip to the supermarket caused children to laugh and point at the ‘monster’ walking down the streets. Anyone would have given in, but not Tom. Instead of fearing life and the fire that had taken his, he embraced it. He became a fireman, doing the best he could to save people from the fire. The heavy uniform and helmet covered most of his scars and after a while the lads got sort of used to him. He should have been happy then.

But the service could never fulfill the burning desire he had to want to fight. There wasn’t a day where he didn’t go over the accident in his mind, dissecting every detail of the events to the point of madness. Still the same panicky fears crept up inside of him everytime his crew were stuck with a really hot case. The cries and coughs of people calling through fires stayed forever locked in his memory. He remembered every single one of the faces of the people they saved, especially those that they didn’t. It was terrible for everyone when somebody died because they couldn’t reach them in time, and yet Tom felt it differently. The smell of rotting flesh made him gag and when they found the burnt disfigured bodies he was filled with so many conflicting emotions he felt like he was going to explode.

Keira was different. When he’d pulled her from the flames, she hadn’t pulled back at the sight of his scars. Instead she clung to him, as fragile as a baby. Even when they made it outside of the burning house and she was being sent off for medical examination, Tom had reluctantly taken off his helmet in front of her, and he became even more confused when she didn’t flinch. Instead she had smiled sweetly. Her eyes didn’t bounce away from his, but she looked him square in the face and took his hands in hers and had whispered thank you.

It was at that moment he had fallen in love with her. Keira didn’t need him, he needed her.

From then on they had been inseparable. Keira had kissed away his pain and shame, she had pushed and pushed until Tom was fully persuaded to return to his dream and sign up for the army again. They were both too tightly wrapped up in their bubble of surrealism to really think over the consequences over what would happen.

Letters of Tom’s acceptance from the army reached him in the early hours one morning in Autumn. The postman woke him up and he had reluctantly crawled out of bed only to be hit full in the face with the news. He had taken one look at the letter then at the peacefully sleeping girl in his bed, her hair splayed out behind her like a halo. She was so beautiful and deserved so much better. He really should just leave. It would be so much better for her. But Tom was selfish. He didn’t want to share her. He quickly tore up the letter and threw it in the bin hoping that would be the end of that.

Keira wouldn’t let it go, suspecting him of his treachery. “You have to go!” she would plead.

“Why? Are you so quick to get rid of me,” he had snapped.

“You know that’s not true,” she had whispered calmly back. “I can’t bear to think that I’m stopping you from your dream.”

While Tom hated the words that came from her mouth, he knew that they were true. He was too young, too strong, too full of the sap of living, to submit so easily to the destruction of his hopes. He wanted to fight so bad. Yet things were changing. Keira was slowly falling apart. The fire that he had saved her from, was also the fire that took both her parents and younger brother. While Keira managed to convince everyone she was over it, Tom knew better. And now with the stress of his possible leaving, the ghosts from the fire were slowly creeping into her life and wreaking havoc with her mind. Tom knew she was suffering from depression, a feeling he knew only to well. He told her over and over again that he wasn’t leaving, but they both knew it wasn’t true.

Tom didn’t know how he managed it. She had cried and cried, and kicked and fussed. It was the most heart wrenching thing he ever saw, so then why was he doing it? Greed his mind told him, - the undeniable human quality that never let him be satisfied. When he closed the door of her room at the mental health clinic his heart officially wripped in two.

That was the last time he ever saw Keira. News of her death reached him in another foreign country, miles away, under a war torn sky. The letter claimed suicide, but Tom knew better. It had been murder of the worst kind. His greed had killed Keira. Tom Eric Clapton was a murderer.