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This is a creative writing assignment. I am swamped with school and it will take me a moment to get my bearings. Can I post my homework as a peace offering? 😉
I did not know what was happening when I heard the faint shouts from the street. I ran to the sunroom at the front of the house. I lifted the window first, and then pressed the rusty tabs that released the screen and lifted that up too. As I knelt down onto the cool, hard wood floors a smell reminiscent of a million ancient chalkboards filled my nostrils. I looked warily at the ropes and weights on either side of my head and then carefully leaned half way out of the window. I craned my neck and gripped the windowsill in an attempt to see past the forty-foot pines that obscured my view.
Several of my neighbors were scurrying about as frantically as ants suddenly evicted from their hill by the sneaker of a wayward boy. “Try the back door!” “Where is the fire department?” “Somebody do something!” Their actions, their expressions, the hysterical tone in their voices were so unusual it made no sense to me. This scene was as unintelligible as a foreign film sans subtitles. “What the heck is going on?” I wondered. Then I saw the thick, black smoke pouring into the clear, blue, June sky like so much spilled ink. The smoke was coming from Mrs. Cleaves’ house.
“Mrs.Cleaves’houseisonfire!” I shouted as I ran from the sunroom, through the bedroom, and past my mother and siblings in the living room. I barely made the corner as I slid across the gleaming floors and out the door. I galloped down the stairs two at a time. My footfalls were thunderous, the sound of a battalion not a nine year old girl. Everything was thundering and pounding, my feet, my temples, my heart, my lungs. I ran into the street and stood helplessly with the spectators in front of number 48 West Elm Street. I anxiously asked several people who was still inside as a slide show of faces flashed sickeningly in front of my mind’s eye. Eventually I found out that only Mrs. Cleaves was inside, none of her children, my friends was at home.
The billowing smoke flowed ever upwards, winding snake-like towards the sun. The smoke stung our eyes and we blinked back tears. The smoke kissed our lips and we licked the char. The smoke invaded our nostrils and we collectively held our breath and waited for the siren song of salvation. I imagined the smoke smudging the walls of the home that I once spent the night in. I envisioned the flames consuming the piles of newspaper that were stacked ceiling high. The flames hungrily lapped up the newsprint like greedy children eating cake and ice cream. I could almost see the fire and smoke race each other upstairs like naughty siblings and then force their way into Mrs. Cleaves’ bedroom. The fire and smoke had their way with poor, dear Mrs. Cleaves, as she lay inebriated upon her bed.
A brave neighbor scaled the front of the house and broke open her bedroom window, until the thuggish fire and smoke beat him back down to the ground. We all stood cowed and chastened by the supremacy of the conflagration. In one, last attempt at escape, Mrs. Cleaves’ thrust her arm out of the window. Her arm was limp and ghastly white, smudges of soot rung ‘round it like hand prints. A lone, white arm dangled like a flag of surrender at the end of hopeless battle. After an eternity, the fire department arrived. I overheard the adults saying Mrs. Cleaves sustained burns over 60% of her body; she died in less than a fortnight.