“Are you crazy? Sir, you’re not thinking of going in there, are you?.”
Nicholas slowed down, ignoring the frustration of the civilians around him. “You don’t understand. My wife is in there—”
“—A lot of people’s wives are in there,” the fireman explained. “You need to get back while we tackle this fire. It’s for your own safety. There’s no way anyone is going in there.”
Nicholas’s arm pushed forward as half a dozen firemen ran past him and made their way into the burning building.
He turned around and clocked Irene scanning the top of the building. “Irene?”
No response.
He called her name again in haste, “Irene?”
Whirr-Click.
Irene watched on as the side of the fire truck opened up like a complicated metal jigsaw. The slides pulled apart and folded onto themselves, nestling within the frame of the truck.
A circular drone, measuring five foot in circumference, shot out from the housing and zipped through the air.
Biddip-beep.
The undercarriage pushed out as the device lifted into the air.
Irene eyed the drone’s movement up the side of the building. “They’re gonna be okay.”
A woman screamed out of her apartment window on the tenth floor. “Our front room is on fire. We can’t get out.”
The drone beeped once again as it reached the window. A nozzle extended from under its lone frontal lens and twisted to life.
“Stand back,” a voice screamed from its speaker.
BLAASSTTT.
A thick jet of water burst from the nozzle and into the apartment just as the woman ducked behind the window frame.
Before she knew it, Irene witnessed a dozen more drones making their way from the firetrucks and up the side of the building, all intending to do their best to put out the fires.
Two of the drones on the east side of the building extended their in-built ladders, which clamped to the underside of the window frames.
“Get out,” one of them said.
With extreme caution, a little boy grabbed the first rung and pulled himself onto the ladder.
The rescue attempt - at least in this very moment - seemed to be destined for success.
Irene watched on with a hint of relief, though the drones didn’t capture her attention for much longer. A tiny figure dressed in green stood at the edge of the roof.
Irene squinted and immediately connected the dots. “Iris?”
Nicholas had heard Irene’s utterance.
“What did you say?”
She pointed at the green-coated “ant” perching at the edge of the roof. “Look. Up there. It’s her.”
Nicholas shook his head. His disbelief didn’t last long, though. He looked up and pushed his head forward.
“Shit. You’re right. It’s—”
KER-BANG.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floor exploded like an overstuffed cantaloupe. The windows sneezed out five-foot shards of glass, which rained upon the innocent bystanders below.
SCHWIP-SCHUNT-STAB.
Hundreds of sharp, transparent shards of debris daggered into the ground. Those fortunate enough not to get hit took cover and ran away from the scene.
Some weren’t so lucky.
Three women died instantly, speared to the grass through their chests and heads.
“Get back,” Nicholas yelled as the brickwork from the building fountained down around them. “Everybody. Get back.”
He launched into the air and grabbed Irene around the shoulders, covering her from the apocalypse raining down around them.
Her back hit the muddied grass; her front cushioning Nichloas’s fall onto her.
“Keep your head down—”
KEERRR-BLAAMMM.
The eighth and ninth floor were next to go as everyone screamed and ran for their lives.
“Jesus, get out of here,” the Chief Fire Marshall shouted at the top of his voice as he ushered the civilians back to the main road. “Go, go, go.”
Those who were able to run had to navigate their way around the fountain of burning rocks, rubble, and dead bodies scattered around the grass in the corpse-riddled war zone they now found themselves in.
GROOOAANNN.
The top half of the tower struggled under the weight of the fire. It fell forward to the south and crunched down onto itself.
Nicholas struggled to hold back his tears of petrification, “Jesus, Iris. What have you done?”
On the roof, Iris watched the hundreds of tiny insect-shaped humans run away from the building in all directions. The drones rose up against the building blasting water, aided by two helicopters supervising them.
A voice from the closest helicopter instructed the wailing inhabitants at the burning windows. “Please try to keep calm.”
Iris held her breath and lowered her arms.
“My God. What have I done?”
The warm evening air hit her nightgown. Suddenly, the rooftop ground seemed to turn to liquid and absorb into her skin. A nauseating feeling of helplessness.
GROOOAANNN.
The ground beneath her feet tilted forward, forcing her to stumble ever-closer to the very edge of the rooftop.
“Whoa.”
She planted the sole of her left foot on the cemented lip to stop herself from falling to her death and kicked herself back. Her body twisted around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, just in time for her to witness two of the escapees tumble down the newly-formed ramp and careen past her.
“Agghhh,” one of them screamed as he bounced over the edge and fell hundreds of feet to his death.
The teenage girl fell onto her side and tried to grab whatever she could to prevent herself from falling.
“We’re going to die,” she whined.
“No,” Iris yelled at her. “We’re going to get rescued. Just stay—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Samuel rolled over onto his side and slid towards Iris. In a few seconds’ time, he, too, would tip over the roof’s southern edge and plummet to a messy, splattery death.
Iris sidestepped to her right and held out her arms. “I got you.”
WHUMP.
Samuel slid right into her arms. She lifted him up and raced at full throttle up the ramp.
“Hold on tight—”
Crunch.
The rooftop buckled once again and, in a brief moment of respite, evened out. The east side of the building crunched down, leveling the surface of the roof - albeit temporarily.
At a reasonably safe distance from the towering inferno, Nicholas and Irene rose to their feet, helpless.
Dozens of bodies crashed to the ground around them. And, at the very top of the building, his wife - and those who had made it to the top alive - were in danger of perishing with them.
He knew it, and so did Irene.
The drones did their best to put out the fires, but all was about to be lost.
“You have to help them,” he pleaded with the nearest fireman.
“We’re doing all we can, sir.”
“But—but—”
“—Please, sir. Stay back.”
The building exploded once again as the fire tore through its central nervous system. The structure appeared to throb like a clogged artery on the rebound.
Most of the drones were caught in the fire and burst into flames. The water jets subsided and roped down the side of the building as the metal devices fell to the ground.
“Christ!”
Nicholas had no choice but to watch as Irene burst into tears. He held her close and did his best to console her.
“It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear, knowing full well he was lying. “They’ll get them. She’ll get down one way or another.”
Iris cradled Samuel in her arms.
She tried to block out the desperate cries from the few who had survived the rock and roll of the burning building on the roof with them.
Samuel opened hi
s eyes and looked into her eyes.
“We’re g-going to die, aren’t we?”
A tear rolled down her cheek. She might have had the courage to lie in any other situation. But now, with the death and destruction erupting around them, it seemed pointless.
Before she could answer, Samuel shivered in her arms and chanced another question.
“W-Why did you kill my mommy and daddy?”
“I d-didn’t,” Iris blurted in half-defense. The question took her by surprise. “I didn’t know you or your mother were there. I just wanted him. He was a bad, bad man.”
“My daddy wasn’t a bad man. He loved me.”
Iris sniffed and held back her tears. “He loved me, too. A little too much.”
Samuel didn’t understand the nuance of her reply, and frowned.
Iris rubbed his head and offered him a smile. “Hey, Samuel?”
“Yes, mommy?”
“It’s j-just games, okay? It’s just a game adults are playing.”
“A game only adults play?”
“Yes.”
Samuel contorted his face and thought over her response. A few seconds drifted by which felt like hours.
“I don’t like this game.”
Iris couldn’t bare to look him in the eye any longer. She lifted her head to the Chrome Valley skyline, and watched as the helicopters abandoned the scene, taking any survivors’ chances of rescue with them.
If it weren’t for the destruction erupting all around them, the view from the top of Tower Three was quite beautiful. An array of tiny, glistening red, white, and blue lights coming from the freeway.
A landscape painting, almost, of the journey she’d undertaken tonight.
Somewhere in the complicated mixture of lights was her house. Her husband and son would be there unaware of her departure, she was quite sure.
Sure, she thought, they’d soon wake up to the news of a burning building and the death of their family member.
But all would be well with the world once again. A peculiar feeling, but one that finally afforded Iris peace of mind.
She bent her knees and dropped Samuel to the ground.
“Get back to the hatch,” she whispered. “Don’t inhale the smoke.”
“What are you doing?”
“It’s time for the game to end.”
Flutter-flutter…
The tattoo butterfly hovered around her head, coming back to offer some comfort. She tried to keep up with its random movements with her eyes, tilting her head from side to side, and up and down.
Samuel climbed to his feet. “What are y-you looking at?”
“Huh?”
“That weird thing you’re doing with your head?”
“The butterfly,” she smiled. “Can’t you see it? It’s so pretty.”
Samuel watched on in confusion as Iris lifted her left hand up and exposed the underside of her forearm to the night sky.
“No. I don’t see it.”
“Hey!” the teenage girl called from the hatch and waved Samuel over. “Little boy. Come over here.”
He turned from the girl and back up to Iris.
She didn’t look back.
“Will I be safe?” he asked.
Iris scanned the butterfly and its movement toward her wrist. “Of course you will, sweetheart. Go.”
“Okay.”
Samuel darted up the ramp and extended his arms, intending to grab the teenage girl’s hand.
“Come on, man,” the girl yelled. “You can do it.”
He grabbed her hand and slid into her arms.
“I got you.”
Samuel pointed at Iris. “But what about her?”
“Leave her alone. She’s going to be just fine.”
A smile of reassurance befell Iris’s face as the butterfly hardened into the skin on her wrist. The two wings settled across her veins and took rest at once.
“No more pain,” she whispered. “It’s just a game adults play.”
“No more pain,” a voice repeated from behind her right ear. She didn’t know who it belonged to, sounding neither male nor female, adult nor child.
A plume of night air filled her lungs as she inhaled which calmed the very fiber of her being.
She closed her eyes. Committed to the act at hand, she extended both her arms sideways, and let the breeze smother her entire body.
Samuel watched on from the rooftop hatch and realized what she was about to do. The girl holding him back from slipping realized what the strange woman in the burnt nightgown might do, too.
“No, lady,” the girl yelled. “Don’t do it.”
“Mommy, no,” Samuel echoed.
But the voice of both who spoke didn’t reach Iris as she took a step forward and placed her right foot at the lip of the rooftop edge.
Had she not closed her eyes and blocked everything from view, she might have seen a waft of smoke forming the shape of an elephant for the briefest of moments, before scattering out into the ether.
Her left foot joined her right.
Iris was now perfectly balanced at the very edge.
Then, she leaned forward…
… and took her final dive towards the ground, below.
***
“Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“What will happen when you and daddy die?”
“How do you mean, sweetheart?”
“Well, who will look after me when you are gone?”
“Oh, sweetheart. That won’t happen for a long, long time.”
“It won’t?”
“No, sweetheart. By the time your father and I are gone, you’ll be all grown up. With children of your own. You’ll be able to look after yourself. You know, perhaps one day, you’ll say the same thing to your own little boy or girl.”
“I can look after myself, can’t I?”
“Yes, sweetheart. You’ll play the games adults play, and you’ll do so well. So, so well…”
***
Iris opened her eyes as wide as she could, given the intense rush of wind blowing against her face.
The skin on her cheek rippled up her face.
Her long, black hair waved across her back.
The ground whizzed ever-closer as she plummeted towards the ground.
Instead of an acute sense of impending doom, she felt peace for the first time in forty years - the ground signaling the denouement of all her pain.
She willed it to speed up and meet her. Embrace her once and for all.
Since I was a little girl, all I ever wanted was to be free.
Free from the pain I can’t shake off.
Free from the shackles of life.
And embrace the end was something she did as the shattered, burnt-out windows rifled, one-by-one, past her face on her descent towards the concrete.
Her arms extended as she somersaulted with glee and enjoyed her fall toward the ground.
I swore I’d find redemption.
I promised myself I put an end to it once and for all.
The ground filled her periphery vision as it continued to race toward her face.
Only a matter of seconds, now…
The onlookers on the ground witnessed something they’d never forget.
The sight of a woman crashing head-first to the sidewalk from a two-hundred-foot drop.
Nicholas and Irene were among them. A moment or two before impact, they realized just who the woman was.
The luminous green nightgown was unmistakable.
So, too, was the flowing black locks trailing up the length of her body.
“Iris?” Nicholas mouthed to himself as Irene tried desperately to release herself from his clutches. “No, keep back.”
Irene wailed through her tears. “No, Iris. No.”
There was nothing anyone could do for her, now.
All the crowd could do was stand and watch as Iris’s forehead cracked and blasted apart across the concrete.
The front of her skull br
oke apart, spitting skin and fragments of bone up into her cheeks and jaw. The bone from the bottom half of her head punctured through her throat which, in turn, punched through her collarbone.
Her chest crammed against the bloodied mess streaking in all directions across the cement like spilled paint.
Her ribcage bust open like an angry, blossoming flower, and made way for her abdomen to spread out and contribute to the magnificent gore-soaked ground.
Her waist and legs followed, reduced to little more than a barely recognizable red-colored watercolor painting of her former self on the grounds below.
She had an audience of hundreds.
Iris died before their very eyes…
As for Iris?
Moments before the ground killed her, she experienced a wave of intense heaven.
Then, something strange happened on her inexorable descent to death itself.
The gray, cemented ground turned a bizarre shade of white… like giant sheets of clouds. Inviting, and comfortable, like a double bed of death.
She twisted her hand around and opened out her fingers, before revolving in mid-air, hopefully that she’d land back-first onto the ground.
And so she did.
An elegant and graceful twist three seconds before impact - now falling horizontally towards the marshmallow-esque ground.
Iris’s shoulder blades hit the sponge-like surface, catching her fall like a giant trampoline.
Her body bounced briefly before settling into extreme comfort on her back…
Snore… snore…
***
“Agh.”
Iris sat up straight in an instant, out of breath, and sweating up a storm.
Her heart pounded against her chest.
She shuddered at the intense cold as she felt around her body wondering what had happened.
The fall?
The impact against the ground.
Surely, she was dead. Right?
But the floods of sweat tearing down her face revealed that she was very much alive, and in a state of shock.
An intense urge to burst into tears was surprisingly easy to fight back.
Before she realized she was in her own bed, a man sat up next to her immediately and pressed his elbows against this pillow.
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