Page 57 of Burn
The explosion blows like the Yellowstone volcano at our backs, throwing Marcus and I out the door with a huge fireball that takes everything in its path, including the line of trucks, and the one that Phoenix is in.
“Nooo!” I scream at the top of my lungs as I crash to the sidewalk outside in a crumpled heap.
Consciousness fails me, and the last thing I see before my eyes flutter closed is the ladder truck blow apart into pieces.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Wakey, wakey. I’m bored.
The voice that’s been with me most of my life echoes in my head, his words seeming so far away, yet still there. Everything is dark, and my eyes are so heavy. It’s a battle to open them, and I have to try really hard to force my eyelids to rise just a little.
A crack of light blinds me and I reach up to shield my face, only something on my arm won’t let it rise. I’m stuck on something, and God does it fucking hurt. Everything hurts; except the pain I had when I can last remember. The burn on my chest is the only part of me that doesn’t ache. The burn. The burn from Phoenix. Like a thundering stampede the thoughts of her rumble in my head. Phoenix. The fire. The explosion.
“Phoenix!” I scream, but no sounds comes out.
My mouth and throat are dry, so dry that it feels like I’ve swallowed mouthfuls of sand. I have no saliva in my mouth, and my tongue feels like it’s about to crack.
I can’t move, see, or speak, but I can hear, and I lay still listening to the sounds around me. Beeping, shuffling, people taking in the distance, it’s all there. But where is there?
“Where am I?” I croak out to the voice inside me. He’ll know. He knows everything.
The hospital, you fuck face. You got blown up, remember?
“I’m not dead?”
Nah, you’re not that easy to kill. That pretty little thing you’re in love with though, yeah, sorry, she wasn’t so hard.
“No.” I whisper, the sounds finally coming from my mouth almost loud enough for me to hear them. “No. She can’t be…”
Blown to smithereens?
“Fuck…oh fuck…no.” I whine, my voice hissing from the desert that is my mouth. “No.”
Yeah, yeah, oh fuck yeah.He says, laughing at me, mocking me.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I’m screaming, but it’s mostly in my head, the sounds are still barely leaving my parched lips.
I want them to come out, to break the silence around me in this godforsaken place. I want to bellow out to the heavens the pain that I feel, the unexpected pain at the loss of a life. Something I never imagined would happen. But then again I never imagined I would fall in love, only for it to be taken away from me so fast, and so cruelly.
Agony, that’s how to describe it, utter agony, as I squeeze my eyes closed and see the fire, the explosion, the truck blowing up. She was in that truck; she blew up with it. She’s gone. My angel, my devil, the one who was both pure and filthy.
It's overwhelming, the pain, the hurt, and I can’t breathe. Coughs wrack my body as I struggle to get up. I have to get up. I can’t lay here when her body is in pieces. In pieces because of me, because I took her with me, when I knew better.
I claw at my arms, at whatever is holding me down, and the beeping in the background gets louder and faster. It’s my heart on a monitor; I know that sound. It’s me freaking out, thrashing on a hospital bed, attached to IV lines and machines. I have to get up.
“Hey, easy there. Easy honey.” A sweet voice calls out to me before hands touch me all over, holding me down.
“I…I have…” I start to croak but she shushes me with a finger on my lips.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re in the hospital.”
“I know.” I finally say. “Phoenix. I need Phoenix.”
“Who’s that honey?”
“My… my…girlfriend I guess.”
