Rouge

by Isabella Modra

  Before Liz could protest, he shoved the stone in her hands and she fumbled with it unsteadily. The rock was definitely very artificial looking, with black sandstone crumbling off the outer surface. As Liz held it tight, the stone began to heat in her grasp. Leo was watching her with a smile so wide he looked a little creepy. She handed it back to him and felt a shock go up her arm, as if the stone had some sort of static.

  “It’s wonderful Leo, but-”

  “Ow!” Leo dropped it back on his desk. “Shit that’s hot.”

  Liz laughed. “Yeah right, you can be such a pussy sometimes.”

  “I-” He peered at her and then the stone. “You didn’t feel-”

  Liz pressed her lips against his to silence him. “Later, Leo. Can I please take a shower before we delve into your incredible adventures?”

  He sighed. “You’re a tease, aren’t you?”

  She gave him a cheeky smile. “I’ll be five minutes.”

  Gratefully slipping into the bathroom, Liz stripped and moved under the hot flow of water. The entire room steamed instantly. As she washed away the blood, coffee and stress of her week, a nervous energy rose inside her. They had the entire weekend together to stay in bed.

  She glanced down at her arm. The blood had cleared away, leaving a pathetic cut emitting a slight sting. There was nothing unusual about it, no infection. She sighed in relief. Now she could relax.

  There was a knock on the door and Leo entered. Liz took one look at her husband stumbling blindly around with glasses as foggy as the mirror behind him and cracked up laughing. She wrapped herself in a towel before Leo found her and hoisted her over his shoulder, marching them to the bedroom.

  “You’re gonna get it now Lizzie.”

  Liz laughed uncontrollably and screamed with mock annoyance. “Leo, put me down!”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  He threw her onto the bed where a pile of his papers were scattered across the sheets. In seconds, Liz’s towel was on the floor next to Leo’s sweatpants and T-shirt. His arms encircled her body as his kisses explored her and the heat Liz felt earlier in the lobby began to burn inside of her. She knew what was coming and she welcomed it, relief and comfort washing away every other stress-related feeling inside of her.

  Leo grabbed her waist and threw her passionately against the headboard of the bed. It creaked loudly like the springs on the mattress, and Liz threw her hands out to cling onto something. Her vision blurred and she gripped the bedhead, about to burst like a balloon with passion and ecstasy.

  It was then, when Liz felt as if she really would explode in every cell of her body, that a hard, hot object on the bedside table toppled to the floor and cracked open.

  A pool of bubbling, red molten-lava spilled across their bedroom floor. At first the noise was ignored, the couple so enriched in their passionate embrace that they didn’t see the trail of red liquid squirm towards them, as if it were embodied by something living. The lava shimmied like a snake up the bed sheet which dangled to the floor and onto the mattress, where it wriggled its way through the creases and began wrapping itself around Liz’s legs.

  Liz let out a gasp. Not because she had seen the strange liquid snake making its way up to her knees, but because something inside her reached breaking point and an enriching warmth exploded around her.

  Breathing heavily, Liz smiled, opened her eyes and became instantly blinded.

  A fire had started on the bed. She felt her lungs fill with smoke and gripped Leo’s shoulders.

  “Leo!” she shrieked. But the sticky sheet wrapped around him was already alight.

  Leo jumped back in shock, twisting over and staring, horror-struck at the blaze that surrounded him.

  All her years working in the ER should have prepared her for this, but something about the sight of Leo writhing in contorted agony froze all her muscles as though they were cemented. She watched the flames lick up his legs, his stomach, his chest, his face...

  A scream of pure torture fell out of Leo’s mouth and Liz snapped to life. She leapt from the burning bed – dodging flames that crawled across the floor – and threw open their wardrobe, wrenching from it a thick throw rug. She jumped back to the bed and began slapping the flames from the bubbling flesh on her husband’s body. Call 911, a calmer voice in her mind ordered, reminding her of the steps she had read in her college textbooks. Get him to the ER before the burns become irreparable. Liz threw down the pillow, her breath coming out in short bursts and reached for the cordless phone. That was when she saw that everything on the besides table was ablaze.

  Liz stepped back and turned, watching as the room around her transformed so suddenly, it was as though her life had been put on fast-forward. All she could see now were flames. Golden, deadly, blinding flames. She didn’t cough, she didn’t cry. She simply stood there.

  “What’s happening?!” she screamed, either to her dying husband or to herself. She looked down at her naked body, flames of death wrapping their fatal ropes around her, but felt no pain.

  Perhaps it was the shock that had made her immune to the suffering. She might already be dead, and this was just her ghost watching her husband and her apartment burn. Or maybe it was only a dream and soon she would wake up, wrapped in his strong arms, seeing his smiling face rather than one mutated with torture.

  “This isn’t real,” she muttered, grabbing fistfuls of her hair tightly. “I’m dreaming…”

  Afraid to look at the bed again where Leo lay, Liz backed up against the wall. Her heel crunched down on something sharp and hard and she screamed and fell down beside a broken, black stone. Leo’s stone.

  There was nothing in it.

  Everything was loud. The fire was destroying the apartment, and Liz tore her attention from the rock, realizing with a jolt of her stomach that she was sitting in a building about to crumple in on her. Gritting her teeth, Liz shot a quick glance at the still body of her husband drowning in flames, feeling as though her heart had just been wrenched out of her chest, and ran to the door of the bedroom.

  The fire had consumed the apartment. Never before had she seen a blaze devour anything so quickly. How long had she been frozen in horror for? How long had these flames licked at her own body and not burned her? There’s no time to worry about that now. Her rational voice was back. Get out.

  Before she could make it to the front door, one of the rafters collapsed with a thundering crash, blocking her way out. Sparks hissed at her, leaping at her body and then disappearing within seconds. She hyperventilated and stared wildly around, searching for an exit. The window, she thought and dived for the living room wall, throwing it open and ducking under the frame into the alleyway between her building and the next. She wobbled on a crate before jumping onto the concrete and sprinting to the street.

  An alarm was wailing. As she came to the front of the building, she saw others running out of their homes. They shouted and scattered like ants, on their phones calling the fire department and the police. No one had seen her.

  Not knowing what else to do, Liz began to run. She forgot about her car and her keys, about her clothes and her apartment and ran away, away from her life with Leo. Tears streamed from her face as she sprinted through the cold, deserted suburbs of New York. It wasn’t until she had turned down a small alleyway into a dead end with only a bin full of old unmentionables that she realized she was naked, but still burning up. She fell on the concrete, curling up beside a dustbin and crying silently. The image of Leo’s body danced in her mind. Liz opened her eyes and looked down beside her where a broken bottle lay, a flash of red catching her eyes. She frowned through her blurred vision and picked up the bottle carefully. Her reflection gazed back at her, only it was hardly her reflection at all.

  Liz’s hair glowed, blood-red and ablaze like the fire that had just taken her husband’s life. She threw the bottle down in fright and stared at her skin. Orange vines snaked around her arms, her legs and her entire body, as though she were infested with oversized worms. I
t looked just like lava, coursing through the veins beneath her skin. Not a single burn marked her, and only the tiny slice the homeless man’s fingernails had made in the ER remained as proof she was still human.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  Liz gazed once again at her reflection in the glass bottle and saw that it was real, that she wasn’t dreaming. That her hair had turned red on its own and her skin glowed like the sun. That Leo was really dead. That he had burned in a fire that took her apartment and her life with it. That she was left broken and alone in a dark alley, just like the discarded bottle.

  That she was immune to fire.

  t wo

  Joshua Harrison pulled down the oven door precariously and jumped back as a waft of black smoke blew directly into his face. Spluttering, he flapped the dish towel around without any real knowledge of what to do next, and hurriedly switched off the oven.

  Of course it was burnt. Could he ever make a meal without it over-cooking, missing ingredients or altogether tasting like dog vomit?

  “I’m doomed to starve alone,” he informed the empty kitchen and stared at the scorched and greasy oven. “I can’t even cook myself a ready-made lasagna.”

  Joshua lived near the Chelsea Markets, yet despite the wide range of fresh organic foods and delicacies only a few blocks away from his apartment building, Joshua never shopped there. He hated the stuffy atmosphere and bustling people. Sometimes it became too hot for him to handle. Not only that, but he and his best friend and partner Leo were rarely home long enough to stock up the fridge.

  “I knew I should have stayed at Leo’s tonight,” he said as he poured himself a tall glass of water and fetched ice cubes from the freezer – about the only thing he could prepare for himself. Maybe he was just tired. The taxi only dropped him off an hour and a half ago from the airport after a six hour flight from Guatemala City, and the day before that they had flown in a rickety old airplane over the Caribbean from Manzanillo in Cuba. Leo laughed at him the entire flight back, especially when Joshua threw up on his own arm.

  Joshua and Leo thought it would be a good idea to buy the shack on the beach front outside La Marca del Portillo because it was only a half-hour drive by jeep into the mountains. From there, they hiked up and down every day, looking for rock particles and anything else they could find. Joshua loved geology – more passionately than Leo, in his opinion – but Leo was more at home living in nature. Joshua preferred the comfort of his apartment, equipped with stiff, boxy couches and pristine clean carpets. He was urban and Leo was rural.

  Joshua opened his refrigerator and pulled out a cold salad he had bought from the airport that afternoon. At least he wouldn’t starve completely. Deep in thought over their most recent find, Joshua took his salad down the hall to his office where he would settle down for an hour and look over his notes before bed so that he could sleep on their findings. Like a teenager cramming for a test, Joshua always fell asleep with knowledge bursting inside his mind so that in the morning, his thoughts had sorted themselves and he awoke fresh.

  With his hand on the cool frame, Joshua chewed on a piece of tomato and stepped into his office. That was when a pounding sound came from his front door.

  “Oh come on,” he moaned and hurried back to the kitchen. “It’s two in the morning! Who the hell is-”

  Joshua threw open the door and felt the bowl of salad slip out of his hands. Cold pieces of cucumber and dressing-soaked lettuce went splat on the marble floor.

  There stood Liz, wrapped in a knee-length coat that looked like a homeless-man’s best friend and completely covered in ash. Her face was red and puffy and tears streamed down her cheeks. She was on the verge of hysteria.

  But none of those things came close to what shocked Joshua into complete speechlessness. It was Liz’s striking red hair that made his mouth drop open.

  “Joshua,” Liz spluttered and fell into his arms, retching sobs against his pale blue work shirt. Joshua held her against him and dragged her into the living room where they collapsed on the couch. Liz curled her legs up into his lap and the coat fell open, revealing her completely naked body beneath it.

  “Liz!” he gasped, covering her with the coat. “Why are you… what happened?”

  “L-Leo – and – fire – and – it – I –” Liz’s words were completely incomprehensible, so Joshua held her close and listened to her cry. They lay there in each other’s arms for so long that he began to nod off.

  “Joshua?”

  He blinked a few times and tilted his head down where he met her eyes filled with tears.

  “Yeah?”

  “Leo’s dead.”

  Joshua stared into Liz’s swollen face, completely void of emotion, and found he couldn’t move. She sat up slowly, her hand against his chest, her chin shaking in her effort to stop from sobbing again. And Joshua just sat there, her words echoing in his mind, praying that he’d already fallen asleep and this was just a horrible, post-flight nightmare.

  “Wh-what?”

  “It was a f-fire,” she sobbed, wrapping the coat tighter around her. It reeked of fish and stale beer. “I’d just gotten home… we were making love and… this rock that Leo had, it… I don’t know how it happened but a fire started and… it-it-it…”

  Liz collapsed against him again, her shoulders heaving. Joshua didn’t have the heart to move. He also didn’t want to believe what she’d just told him. He had no proof after all. What if she was just drunk, or they’d had a fight and she was too embarrassed to admit it?

  “Liz, if there was a fire, we should call the police or something-”

  “They already came,” she muttered against his chest. “I ran away, I couldn’t face it. Joshua.” Liz met his eyes again and there he saw it. The real pain, the horror of what she’d seen. “I watched him die. And it didn’t touch me.”

  “What didn’t?”

  Clenching her teeth, Liz ground out two words that made Joshua’s blood chill.

  “The fire.”

  He shook his head. “Liz, that’s impossible.”

  “Then how am I here? How is it that my husband’s body is now lying in a pile of rubble and ash, and I’m naked on your couch? Look-” she ripped the sleeve of her coat up and bared her arm before him. The skin was pale with smudges of charcoal. But what made his blood run cold was the faint glow of orange pulsing inside her veins. It looked remarkably like lava under her skin. “I don’t know wh-what’s happening to me Joshua.”

  Never had he seen Liz so hysterical and angry and traumatized, and it shocked him almost as much as her strange appearance and the news she’d brought him. So he did the only thing he could think of doing; he pulled her to him once again, wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. That way, she couldn’t see the tears that were spilling from his eyes.

  And so it began.

  The grief that consumed him was endless and agonizing. Every waking morning and dark, endless night Joshua felt it eat away inside him. Leo was everything to him. Family and a friend. A work partner. Someone who shared his passion, his life. Joshua wasn’t the type to make friends, and any relative of his lived either overseas, or in a world where Joshua didn’t exist to them. Leo and Liz were all that he had, and now they were torn apart.

  But Joshua stayed sane, for Liz. After the fire, she wouldn’t go back to the apartment. She couldn’t even bring herself to call the police because she didn’t want to have to explain why she ran away from the apartment completely naked, especially when the very mention of Leo made her freeze up and start to cry. She told Joshua – as best she could – what had happened, and then she never spoke of it again.

  Joshua, however, needed answers. This stone that Liz suspected somehow caused the fire was a mystery to him. When he and Leo discovered it in the mountains, what first drew their attention to it was that it looked and felt completely out of place. Secondly, it was far hotter in temperature than the mountain itself. Yet when they took samples back to the shack, the stone became as dull
and lifeless as any other geological substance, and no warmer than a standard cup of tea.

  As Joshua dove deeper into his research, he decided not to include Liz and study in secret. She needed time to grieve and keep the tragic fire out of her mind.

  But Liz was restless, especially after she quit working at the hospital. They started looking at places to move away to so they could forget it all. It wasn’t like Joshua to spontaneously get up and leave his life in New York. In fact, he almost dreaded it. He hadn’t lived anywhere but this apartment on Hudson Street since he finished college three years ago and moved away from home. It was where he felt comfortable and safe. But he would do it for Liz. He would do anything for Liz.

  As February bled into March and winter slowly subsided into beautiful spring, Joshua put his geologist skills to work with the volcanic substance. He tested its temperature – which varied depending on the actual temperature of the surrounding environment – and the particles that coated it. After the fire, Joshua found himself too afraid to crack the stone open, but became intensely curious as to what was inside. No inclusions were found around the stone that might suggest its age. Joshua had never come across such a unique substance before. It was so artificially made that it did not appear real, and yet there were traces of igneous rock crystallized on the surface through the solidification of magma.

  Despite the unique properties of the stone, none of his research could even begin to explain how Liz was suddenly immune to fire, nor how the blaze in their apartment began. Joshua set up a lab in the spare room upstairs where he tried to figure out a formula based on his and Leo’s minimal research on the substance. He suspected that the answer to his question lay inside the stone itself, and so often he caught himself with a chisel in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other, ready to split it in half. Several things stopped him; one, being the memory of Liz’s demolished apartment where his best friend was killed. There, he found Leo’s sample of the stone lying severed open beside the bed, completely hollow, as though whatever was inside it had simply leeched out and crawled somewhere else. The other was the memory of Leo himself. Joshua wasn’t sure he wanted to open such a rare substance without his friend by his side, a tattered notebook in hand and glasses slipping sideways off his uneven nose. Joshua just couldn’t bring himself to do it alone.