The cries of her baby rang in her ears as she rose from her collision-induced stupor.  Amidst the screams and shouts of the spectators outside the house, her baby’s minute weeping stood out like a blazing star in the pitch-dark heavens of night.  It took only three seconds for her to snap awake and grasp a hold of the situation.  A flaming shower of the crumbling rafters rained down in the next room like brimstone.  Screaming, she shot to her feet and frantically ran down the hall, shielding her face with her bare arms.  She swung her arm in an arc ahead of her like an animal in an attempt to tear apart the shroud of smoke and soot enveloping her and singeing the very air.

Bursting through the closed door of the next room, she scanned every corner hysterically for her baby.  The voice was resounding in her ears, but why couldn’t she find its source?  She silently prayed under her breath that all would turn out all right, she would make it out of this.  As she retraced her steps and dashed into the hall around the corner, she laughed wildly in her mind at the fact that she didn’t know to whom she was praying.  A terra-cotta vessel on a stand trembled and crashed to the floor, piercing her bare feet with broken shards.

Cursing and bleeding, she heard a deep rumble from the core of the house, and suddenly she stood still, paralyzed with fear.  In that moment she grasped two realizations simultaneously: she smelled fresh air, and she could not hear her baby.  Had some angel outside rushed into the house to save her baby from death?  Hope welling in her chest, she sprinted to the wide-open door.  Standing at the doorway and blinking in the sunlight’s glare, she scanned the crowd of people looking on.  One of them shouted that the fire department hadn’t prepared for enough water and would come again in minutes.  She responded with a shriek as to the location of her baby, wildly casting her eyes on each of the bystanders.  As the hope in her chest flowed out, she felt her life and blood leave with it as she realized her baby had not yet been saved.  She cried out to the people, screaming for someone to go back into the house with her and find her baby.  With rage and despair, she exclaimed why they were abandoning her sweet, her baby.  Faced with a decision already made, she closed her eyes, swallowed, and turned on her heel, disappearing into that grotto on infernal flames.  She raced back into the house without waiting for the late shouts from the crowd to return.

She flew through the halls with tears flying this way and that.  The flames seemed to be almost mocking her cruelly, snatching at her, reaching for her fast-disintegrating blouse to tear it away and claim her body.  She gasped as a burst of sparks rained on her from above, searing the flesh on her arms.  She reached the stairs to the basement and hesitated for a moment as she recognized that she had not descended down here to search for her love.  As she tore down the steps, she heard them utter a terrible sound that split her world for a moment like a clap of thunder.  She dove to the basement floor as a section of the stairs collapsed and gave way to the fire demanding its downfall.  From her awkward landing and the strange, wet crunch she had felt, she knew she had broken both of her legs horribly, but she had already been detached from the physical realm.  Her baby, a few feet away, lay dead.

On her hands, she dragged her lower body across the floor to her dearest.  The baby was pinned under a large mirror, its wooden frame steadily corroding.  Grasping its edges and ignoring the flames that scorched her fingers, she heaved it off the little dead body.  The glass shattered instantly, weakened by the intolerable heat of the flames.  She gazed down lovingly at the infant’s closed eyes, stiff limbs, and charred flesh.  The baby’s clothes had long since burned away.  Another rumble ripped through the blazing structure as she hiccupped and smiled down at the helpless little form before her, laughing softly.  A flaming chest crashed to the floor nearby.  She cooed gently her sweet’s name, tears of regret running down her cheeks and dripping on her baby, as if to soothe and quench the fires that had burned and died on the blackened figure, taking its poor soul with them.  She picked up her burnt baby and tenderly cradled her love in her scorched arms as the house fell around the two reverent forms.  Reunited with her baby, she rocked back and forth silently as the flames cheerfully licked at her body and crackled like a warm campfire.  The dancing flames soon whisked them both away as their world collapsed in a glorious finale of color and light, consumed.