VI: In Which We Meet Selena

Silence fell all around Selena.  For a moment she felt as if she’d gone deaf, then the little girl whimpered.  The mother shushed her and clutched her tighter as they huddled in the corner.

“Now, see, you be scarin’ the poor girl.  Don’t worry, Princess, this is how things have to be.”  The man said.  He was a big man, easily six feet tall, with broad shoulders and arms as thick as Selena’s thighs.  He had a bushy dark beard and shaggy shoulder-length hair.  He was dressed in all black, olden-style clothes, with heavy leather boots, in his hands was an axe handle.

The woman and her daughter were clad in dresses of a similar olden style, possibly nineteenth century.  The woman’s left arm hung at an odd angle, probably recently broken by the axe handle and her face was bleeding from a gash in the center of a large bruise that spread across the right side of her face.

The man had moved away from the only door to the room around to the other side of the heavy wardrobe next to it.

“Get up!  Run for the door!  You can make it!  Please.”  Selena screamed at the woman, but no one reacted.  They couldn’t hear her.

The man placed his big shoulder against the wardrobe and heaved it over in front of the door with a loud crash.  The girl and her mother screamed.

“It don’t be a thing to be scared of, Princess.  Things will be all right soon enough.  Yer momma made a mistake an’ I got to fix it, that’s all.”  Selena shuddered.  The calmness in his voice was terrifying.  He wasn’t yelling and didn’t sound hysterical, he was just matter of fact about it.

“John!  I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  Please stop!  Punish me if you want to, but let Ellie go.”  The woman sobbed.  She was hysterical.

“You know it’s too late for that.  Too late by far.”  He actually sounded sad as he picked up the lamp from the table.  It was an old glass oil lamp like you’d see in the movies.  Selena tried to grab it from his hands, but couldn’t grip it, her hands merely sliding off of it.  She tried punching him, clawing at his face, kneeing him in the groin, all to no effect.

John casually tossed the lamp onto the middle of the wooden floor.  The flames spread across the room quickly as the lamp shattered and the oil splashed everywhere.  Some of the oil had splashed onto the man’s boot and small flames danced on the leather, but he ignored them.  He didn’t even look down as they caught the hem of his pantleg aflame.

With a sudden swiftness born of desperation, the woman lifted the girl, Ellie, stood up and dashed through the flames which were already spreading and growing.  She ran toward the window.  The latch broke as she hit with her shoulder and the window swung wide.  With her good arm she tossed her screaming daughter outside as the flames leapt up through the room.

“Run!  Run, Ellie!  Go! As far as you c-Aaah!”  Her words were cut short by the axe handle breaking her leg.  She had been halfway out the window, herself, when John had hit her.  He grabbed the back of her dress and hauled her back into the blazing room.

“Momma!”  Ellie’s terrified scream came from outside.

“Run!  Now!”  Her mother yelled back, crawling back toward the window with her one good arm. Crack!  The axe handle came down on her elbow.  She screamed and didn’t stop, even as John sat down next to her and took her in his arms, cradling her.  Both of their clothes were on fire now.

Selena didn’t try to escape.  the thought didn’t even occur to her as the fire surrounded her.  She simply stood and watched in silent horror as John kissed his screaming wife on the cheek just before the ceiling collapsed on all of them.

Selena awoke covered in sweat.  She pulled the covers over herself quickly.  Her bedroom felt freezing compared to the fiery room.

The dream was still vivid in her mind as she grabbed her phone from the nightstand.  She opened the notepad on it.

“I had the dream about the fire again.”  She began and proceeded to type out all of the details she could remember.