Page 116 of Precious Hazard

The fire moves like waves through water, spreading in every direction like ripples across a lake. More windows shatter as something flies into the living room through the glass. Small. Explosive. Bursting into an immediate fireball. Once the flash subsides, more flames spread around the area of impact.

The living room is now almost completely on fire. The carpet. The couch. The bookshelves.

It’s coming. The arms of the fire are reaching for me.

Closer.

Closer.

Closer.

I can’t look away. Can’t move. Can’t utter a sound.

My world has turned into an inferno.

“Fuck, baby, tell me where you are! I’m coming for you!”

I’ve lost the ability to breathe. My lungs seize up once the smoke and its putrid burned odor invade my senses. Regardless of the passage of time, that particular smell is permanently carved into my memory.

Crash.

More broken windows.

Crash.

Another on my right.

Crash.

That one was in the kitchen.

I wait for flames to spiral around my feet.

Nothing happens. Strange. What gives?

The gaping holes in the glass form a sort of mini wind tunnel. A burst of fresh air swooshes across me. It’s brief and jarring, but not enough to shake off this paralysis.

Outside, night has fallen. The dark has swallowed everything beyond the fire’s reach. Nothing moves. Nothing exists in that darkness. Nothing but the wind and the echo of my jackhammering heartbeat.

I stare. Stare while, lit by the flickering light of the blaze around me, the figure of a man fills the frame of a broken kitchen window.

Stavros’s father.

Lifting a gun. Pointing it at me.

Smiling.

“Tara!” Arturo screams on the other end of the line. He sounds desperate. And so, so far away.

I should do something, right? Duck. Run. Magically teleport. Are there other options?

But I can’t do anything. I can’t even think clearly. I feel like an observer stuck outside my body. A spectator who is incapable of performing a single simple act. My body has frozen in this particular position, with the phone pressed tightly to my ear and my limbs unable to move an inch.

I don’t even hear the gun go off. The only reason I know it has is because of the burning. Not the wall of heat at my back, but the gut-tearing pain in my abdomen. My knees give out; my legs fold under me. I drop to the tiled floor, landing on my side.

I lie.

Motionless.