Madmen

I race through my grandmother's house, my heart beating furiously in my chest.  Tables are upended, lamps and glassware smashed against the ground.  As I round a corner into the living room, papers flutter silently to a stop and our bookcases kiss the ground, their contents strewn across the trampled rug.  The front door is wide open.  As I run out into the night, I hear their laughs echoing through the darkness back at me.  Their bootheels clicking on the pavement as they run their mad victory run. 

I turn back to the house, closing the door against the cold wind and picking my way carefully around the pieces of broken glass littering the floor.  Other family members are slowly coming down the stairs rubbing sleep from their eyes as they take in the wanton destruction.

I begin to take a headcount as I reassure them. 

"What happened?"
"Who did this?" 

They ask, shivering in the warm house.

I walk into the kitchen, throwing the phone to my brother, urging him to call 911 now.  As the back door lock clicks under my fingers, I look through the window at the wing of the house which shoots out at a right angle from the rest of the building.  I can see the window of the room in which my sister and her two young children sleep.  My mind takes two seconds longer than my eyes to register the dull orange glow bouncing off the pane. 

I run.  Leaping around corners and down the hallway, I burst into the room, throwing the door wide.  The three of them sleep in one big bed.  Finger-like tendrils of smoke curl around from behind the bed as if to pull them all someplace dark and deep, somewhere I cannot get them. 

"Hilary."  I whisper, shaking her shoulder three times.  "Hilary, wake up." 

She opens her eyes, her body jolting at the intrusion.

"Don't worry, but there's a fire."  I tell her, already leaning over to scoop her baby into my arms.  With the urgency only a mother can exercise, she wakes up her groggy little girl, their fingers curling together as she leads her out of the darkness, into the light of the hallway.  I follow them, baby in arms. 

Everyone stands by the door, unafraid of the night's chill even with fuzzy slippers and sleep-warmed pajamas their only cover.  I hurry them outside, passing the baby into the arms of my blood before doubling back into the house. 

Under the bed, two orange eyes spark at me, hissing at my intervention.  Every electrical appliance this side of the house piled in the center of the room and plugged into a single cord, running directly under the bed and minutes away from overload.  I yank the cord and look up, blue and red lights already filling the darkness outside.


I wake up.