Stunned, Iris turned to the far end of the corridor to see a black woman, much the same age as her, moving through the bedroom door.
The two women laid eyes on each other. Crystal sniffed the strange air and then focused on the woman with the lit matchstick in her hand.
“Oh my God.”
Crystal tried to process the strange vision before her. A woman she didn’t know was threatening to detonate her apartment, and her husband was trying to stop her.
“What the hell?” she yelled. “Lennard, what the—”
“—Mom?”
Crystal turned around to the bedroom door and held out her hands, “Sam, no—”
“—Sam?” Iris mouthed in a daze.
The little boy stepped into the hallway, half asleep, and rubbed his eyes.
“Mom? What’s happening—”
“—Babe. Go back to your room. Now.”
Iris and Sam’s eyes met from across the landing. She felt her hand lower to her waist without thinking about what the flame might do.
“Sammy?” Iris mouthed, but produced no sound.
Sure enough, the boy looked exactly like her own child. The same age. Same face, same skin color - same frame, even.
But the child had no idea who she was.
“Goddamn it,” Crystal screamed as she held her arms in front of the young boy. “Get out of my apartment, woman.”
Whine.
Iris turned to the elephant ramming its front against the hallway landing.
Crystal stepped forward and clenched her fist.
“Lenny, man, what the hell are you doing? This woman’s gonna blow us up.”
She darted forward and grabbed the elephant by its ears, “Why did you let her in—”
“—Mommy.”
Now free from his mother’s clutches, Sammy ran up the corridor and made a beeline for Iris.
Her pupils expanded across the surface of her eyeballs as the small, innocent figure raced towards her. The carbon monoxide escaping from the stove chased after him like a deathly ghost.
“I d-don’t want to die,” he screamed. “I don’t want to die—”
Schloooooo — schwip.
The gas hit the flame on the matchstick as Iris held her arms out to fend off the approaching terror.
“Noooo—”
Ker-Bang.
The kitchen exploded.
The walls bust apart as Crystal ran after her child. Much of the explosion crushed her into the ground, killing her in an instant.
It all happened in a blink of an eye.
The elephant bolted forwards only to get hit by the flying debris, and the fireball that followed. Its skin burst into flames and roasted the hideous monstrosity over the corpse of the woman cooking underneath him.
Iris tumbled onto her behind and covered little Sammy as the fireball chewed through the landing. The propulsive blast pushed her back and burnt up the back of her nightgown.
“Agh,” she yelped as she clutched the little boy in her arms.
The apartment turned into a blazing inferno, roasting anything and anyone at the far end of the corridor.
Fortunately for Iris and Sammy, the blast had catapulted against the front door. Battered, bruised, and in danger of death of smoke inhalation, Iris pushed herself up to her elbows and looked down at the young boy.
She squeezed her eyes as hard as she could.
When she opened them, Sammy saw her eyes had changed from gray to bright green.
She was now very much awake since leaving the safety of her bed all those hours ago.
“H-Help me,” he spluttered. “My legs. My l-legs.”
Iris didn’t have time to look, much less waste.
She fell back onto her knees and scooped the boy in her arms. “Hey, it’s okay.”
BANG — BANG.
The kitchen exploded once again, pushing flames into the corridor.
“Sammy?” Iris shouted over the cacophonous inferno.
“Ugh,” he wailed in pain. “Yeah?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
As she spoke, the butterfly tattoo on her left wrist fluttered. Both its wings bled out from the skin and began to flap.
“Huh?” Iris said.
Her skin split apart to release the now fully-formed rendition of the butterfly. Strings of thick, congealed blood pulled away from her wrist as the insect snapped from the veins under the butt of her palm.
Flap-flap-flap.
The butterfly hovered in front of her face, beckoning her to the front door.
Sammy spluttered. His legs had been badly burnt in the explosion. The apartment barbecued away; in a matter of seconds, anything that remained inside would be toast.
“Let’s get outta here.”
Iris lifted Sammy into her arms and stumbled after the butterfly as it made its way through the front door and out of the apartment.
***
“I c-can’t f-feel my legs,” Sammy groaned in a state of semi-consciousness as Iris carried him past the seventh floor apartment doors.
Apartment 705, 704, 703…
“Fire! Fire!” she screamed as she kicked each door on her way past.
Each door opened, one after another, to reveal a confused occupier in a state of confusion.
“What the—oh, my God,” a man dressed in his pajamas screamed as he clocked the roasting apartment to his left. “Quick, get everyone out.”
KRA-BAAAMMM.
The ground shook violently as the man darted back through the door and screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Wake up,” his voice echoed from within his apartment. “Everyone, get out.”
A plume of thick, black smoke shooting up the stairs met Iris as she reached the end of the landing.
“Oh, shit—”
BOOM.
The explosion in apartment 706 crunched down to the floor below. Descending the staircase wasn’t an option. To the right, the steps led up to the next floor.
Iris had no choice.
She planted her right foot on the bottom step and carried Sammy up.
“It’s okay, Sammy. That’s your name, right? Sammy?”
“Uh, y-yes.”
“That’s my son’s name,” she said as she reached the eighth floor. “What are the chances of that, eh?”
Seemingly unaffected by the explosion, the floor rumbled as the patrons left their apartments and scrambled towards the staircase.
A teenage girl in her bra and panties darted into the stairwell and caught sight of Iris making her way up the next flight of stairs.
“What the hell is happening?”
Iris shouted over the sound of fire from below. “An explosion in 706. We can’t go down now. The fire’s spreading. The only way is up.”
The teenage girl looked up the middle section of the stairs and saw a bright light billowing down at her face.
“We need to get to the roof. Quick.”
“Okay, okay.”
Iris quickened her ascent on the stairs. Each step posed a genuine challenge. Step by step, she felt her thighs turn to cement. The muscles in her legs pounded and pushed through her skin.
“What’s that?” the teenage girl yelled from behind Iris.
“What’s what?”
“That thing.”
The girl was pointing to the butterfly wading up the stairs, encouraging everyone to follow behind it.
“Oh, that’s, uh—” Iris thought aloud before realizing her explanation would come across as stupid. “It’s nothing. Just run before the smoke catches up to us.”
Rumble… rumble…
The walls shook and rained down a fountain of cement as the structure threatened to topple.
Iris roared over the commotion. “What’s up there? Please tell me there’s a roof we can get onto.”
The teenage girl gripped the handrail and pulled herself up the stairs as fast as she could. “Yeah, we go there all the time. There’s a door at the top.”
“Thank
God for that.”
The tenth floor.
By now, a collection of terrified inhabitants of Freeway Five’s Third Tower had joined Iris and Sammy’s ascent to the roof.
The sound of sirens whirled through the floor, shooting in from an open window to apartment 1100.
“The fire trucks are coming,” a man’s voice shot from behind Iris’s shoulder. “What happened? Did something catch fire?”
“Yeah,” came another, much younger voice. “Yeah, it woke me up. It was so loud.”
Iris inhaled and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Never mind that, now. Just keep climbing—”
“—Ugh, God. My legs are so tired.”
The teenage girl slumped to her feet and coughed up a wad of black phlegm. “I c-can’t go any m-more.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Iris screamed as she turned around two steps from the eleventh floor. “Get up and move. You can rest your legs later.”
“No, no—”
“—You’re getting in the way.”
Iris lifted her head at the dozens of petrified men, women, and children desperate to make progress.
“Get up.”
“I c-can’t.”
Iris lost her patience and turned her face to the next floor. “Look, if I can do it and carry this kid in my arms, then surely you can manage on your own. You’re trim. You’ll be fine. Just hold onto the railings.”
The butterfly lost its patience and buzzed its way over to the girl. It hovered around her sweating face and seemed to size her up.
Its voice resembled Iris’s. “I said get up.”
“Please, h-help me.”
“Fine.”
The butterfly floated back and made for the girl’s face, splashing through the skin on her arm and sizzling into her arm like a tattoo.
With a new wave of energy, the teenage girl gripped the handrail and hoisted herself back to her feet.
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Good.”
The girl resumed her climb with a renewed energy as she raced up the stairs behind Iris.
Iris shouted over her shoulder. “How many floors are there, anyway?”
“There’s twenty-three floors,” a random occupant yelled from farther down the line of climbers. “We’re never gonna make it.”
“Just shut up and climb—”
Whoosh-whoosh.
The central pillar surrounding the staircase throbbed like a blocked vein, followed by a screaming noise that shot from top to bottom.
“What was that?” Iris said as she reached the twelfth floor and turned the corner to the next flight of stairs.
“It’s the elevator,” the teenage girl bawled. “It’s falling.”
Bang - Bang - Thud.
With each passing floor, the random assortment of climbers banged on every door they could before returning to the stairs.
An assortment of raised and rushed voices advised in amongst the banging on the doors. “Run! Fire! Run!”
Iris looked at Sammy’s face just in time to see him close his eyes and go limp in her arms.
“Oh, Christ. No, no, no… Sammy, wake up.”
His eyelids sprung open and focused on hers.
The boy’s voice now sounded much like her son’s. “I am awake, mommy.”
“Huh?”
“Can you say the same for yourself? What happened to my daddy?”
“He—” Iris coughed the pain from her chest and stared him dead in the face. “He died in a fire, Sammy. Now he’s burning in hell where he belongs.”
“Get us to the roof, Mommy.”
Iris sniffed and coughed a rope of black phlegm down her chin, quite to her surprise, “M-Mommy c-can’t breathe.”
“I don’t care,” Sammy said, his face now scarily reminiscent of her own son’s. “This is all your fault.”
Iris’s knees buckled slightly as she hit the second-to-last step before the thirteenth floor. “It’s n-not my—”
“—Yes. It is. Now it’s up to you to save us.”
Boom.
The entire structure and staircase shook, sending more debris into the air and raining down around the two-dozen escapees.
A man screamed from below. “My eyes. I can’t see!”
Snap - Spitch - Schpat.
The lights in the staircase snapped off one by one, shrouding the cold, smoke-filled stairwell into a chasm of pure darkness.
“Not far to go, now,” Iris said to Sammy. “Hold on to me real tight, now.”
Chapter XX
Nicholas pressed his foot on the gas and peered through the windshield.
The Freeway Five estate raced towards the car, or so it seemed.
“There it is, we’re nearly there—” he said, before clocking the blazing inferno occurring in the middle of the five tower blocks. “Holy shit. Look at that.”
Irene wound the passenger window down and yelped at the burning building. “That’s the third tower. T3. Oh, shit.”
A dozen fire trucks blared their horns through the sirens as they raced either side of Nicholas’ car.
“Jeez.”
Irene rolled the window up and went to unfasten her seatbelt, “Follow the trucks. We can jump the red lights with them.”
“I hope she’s okay,” he said as he sped along the trucks.
The traffic lights switched to red as the vehicles shot past them, forcing a dozen oncoming cars to screech to a halt.
The five tower blocks loomed larger as the road swallowed forward.
Nicholas muttered with a determination in his eyes. “Damn it, Iris. What have you done?”
***
Tower Three’s roof hatch pushed open and slammed to the ground with an almighty clang.
Iris gripped Samuel’s arm and lowered him to the graveled roof surface with alarming haste.
“Quick, get up. Stay away from the edge.”
“Okay.”
Samuel attempted to move forward, but fell to his knees. The boy was exhausted. He reached forward and scrambled across the stones on the ground.
“I c-can’t move,” he spluttered.
Before Iris could process his complaint, the deafening sound of the propellers from two helicopters surrounding the top of the building crashed through her brain.
“Uhh,” she whined to herself before looking over her shoulder and clocking the dozens of people who’d followed her. “Quick, get on the roof.”
First among them was the teenage girl; her face ashen and blackened by the smoke threatening to take everyone out.
“Move, get up.”
Iris wasted no time. She lifted herself onto the roof by her arms and planted her feet on the ground. Turning around, she offered the teenage girl her arm.
“Up, up.”
“Okay.”
The girl grabbed the edge of the door frame, stepped up alongside Iris and dashed over to Samuel.
“Hey, what are you doing on the floor?” she asked. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I c-can’t walk.”
Whudda-whudda-whudda.
Two helicopters flew around the rooftop and initiated their spotlights, illuminating the crowd of residents making their way to safety.
One by one, Iris helped each of the survivors through the hatch.
“Come on, come on, get up.”
KER-RACCK.
The building’s structure rumbled and shifted the grains of dirt on the ground in all directions.
“My God, we’re all gonna die,” a man screamed as he tried to regain his balance.
The butterfly that had torn away from Iris’s wrist fluttered past her head and made its way to the south-facing edge of the building.
Iris felt compelled to give chase.
“No, wait, “ she hollered. “Wait for me.”
Her feet screeched across the ground as she stopped herself from falling off and plummeting down to a splattered death.
“Whoa.”
She widened her eyes at the scene taking
place down the side of the building. A giant bonfire escaped from several windows scores of feet below her toes.
“Oh, sh-shit,” she gasped as the wave of heat created by the inferno pushed her hair up and over her shoulders.
Just above the furnace, those inhabitants of Tower Three who hadn’t escaped hung out of their windows pleading for rescue.
“Help, help.”
“I’m sorry,” Iris screamed down back at them, before scanning the commotion at the building’s entrance.
Dozens of fire trucks pulled up amongst the parked cars. What appeared to be thousands of tiny ants scattered across the parking lot. Many of them looked up at the building in stunned silence, hoping anyone trapped inside the barbecuing building might escape.
They were too far away for Iris to make out what they were saying. Despite their insect-like contours, Iris knew they were a mixture of survivors from the explosion she’d caused, and those who came to watch the proceedings.
“God, forgive me,” she whispered.
Nicholas applied the handbrake and kicked the driver’s side of his car door wide open.
The Chief Fire Marshall came running over to the car as Irene climbed out from the passenger side.
“Hey,” the Marshall yelled. “You can’t park that here.”
“What the hell is going on?” Nicholas asked.
The Marshall couldn’t believe the question he’d been asked. “We’re having a fireworks party. What does it look like?”
“How did that happen?”
“Does it look like I have a crystal ball?” came the sarcastic response. “Never mind that, now. All civilians must keep back—”
“—My wife is in there,” Nicholas screamed.
He pushed the Marshall aside and bolted towards the entrance to Tower Three.
Irene called after him. “Nick! What are you doing?”
“I’m going after Iris.”
“You can’t run into a burning building, Nick. You’ll get killed.”
Irene pushed past the frightened bystanders and chased after him. As she looked up, Tower Three grew in size, growing like a sparkler above her head.
A fireman slid into Nicholas’s path and extended his arms, blocking any and all progress to the building..
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