GOOD FOR FIRE

 

I am walking through a tableau of humans. Everything is still, except for me. A moment ago, I was about to walk through a revolving door of a hundred-storey building to accept an offer for the job of my dreams, and then I was not. As if rapture happened, ripped souls out of people's bodies, leaving shells frozen in odd positions and in all the wrong places, the world has stopped, everything and everyone but me. The sky is turning dark, the way it would if the clouds were swollen with black rain. I frantically look for an open door. The revolving door is frozen shut. I run around the building, trying everything that looks like a door, but all the entrances are locked. Along the road, I try car doors, but none of them open. I am far from home. I stand in the middle of the road, amidst this deadness. I've never been lonelier.

"Hello!"

Desperate tears run down my cheeks. One minute my world is perfect, and the next everything changes, and there is nothing I can do about it. I feel helpless at how little I have control over right now. This job was supposed to give me all the power to do whatever I please with my life. Joke is on me. I gave up so much to climb the ladder that got me here to end up this way.

"Hello!"

The first drop lands on my head. I run for shelter by the side of a building as it begins to pour. I am thankful it's normal rain. Until it proves not. Like concrete has become a sponge, rain goes through it and drenches me from under what I thought was shelter. As quickly as it starts, the rain stops. This cannot be real. I must be dreaming. Perhaps that is how I should treat this- like a dream. I need to wake up.

"Wake up, wake up, Lasi." I slap my right cheek and pinch my arm. 

I feel everything. 

 I am soaking wet.

"I am dreaming. I am dreaming." My voice breaks.

I am shivering cold. Nothing about this feels like a dream.

"Anybody here?!"

From the sky, I see what I can only describe as a ball of fire, then another and another, coming at the speed of missiles. Is this the end of the world? I look around me. There is nowhere to run. So I stand here and watch them come for me. There is but only one thing I can do. I pray.

"Unto you, Lord, I commit my spirit."

I close my eyes, and in a second, a hot wave passes through me as what sounds like bombs go off all around me. I do not open my eyes. The earth beneath my feet shakes as buildings topple over. I don't move until I hear a voice.

"Hello," a young female voice says.

I flick my eyes open and see a building collapsing toward me. I dash to safety and miss it by a few inches. Around me, everything is rubble. Everything is burning, including my clothes, but my skin remains unscathed. I am naked but not burnt.

Who spoke to me?

There is movement behind me. When I look, it's a little girl, untouched by the fire, in a white cotton dress. She takes off, running away from me.

"Hey! Wait."

I run after her and stop where she makes a turn. I notice I am treading on what is supposed to be hot rubble, but my feet do not burn. Under some rubble, I see rags. I pull on them and, to my favour, it's a blanket, touched by fire, burned in places but good enough to cover my nakedness.

"Hello?"

Following after her, I come to the only patch of space that is untouched by the fire, a park as green as if nothing has happened. There she is, sitting on a bench, eating ice cream. I approach with caution. She cannot be over eight years old.

"Please don't run."

She looks at me and smiles, then offers me her ice cream. I reach her.

"Where did you get ice cream?"

She withdraws it and continues to eat it as she scoots over for me to sit. I sit next to her. There is something familiar about her, but I can't quite place her. For a second, I think she might be a younger me. I am trying to treat this as a dream where things like that could happen, but she is not me.

"What's your name?"

"I don't know," she says.

She sounds seasoned, firm, and articulate.

"Where are your parents?"

"That is a question for you."

She is rather snippy and confusing.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you want ice cream?"

"No, thanks. Where did you come from? How come you are not touched by the fire?"

"What fire?"

I look at myself. I am still wearing a rag, and there is still fire burning around this park. There is nothing left standing except this bench and me... and her.

"Why didn't I burn?"

My inner thoughts spill out unwarranted. I don't expect this child to know the answer to that.

"What did... burn?" she asks as she continues to lick her ice cream like she couldn't care less that she is sitting with a stranger in rags who has been through a fire she does not see.

"Everything. Everything, but me."

"You must be special."

"No, I'm... Wait, where did you come from?" I ask.

"I don't know."

"Okay. Do you know where home is?"

"Home. No. I don't. I never get one," she says

"You never get what?"

"A home. Do you have a home? "

"I hope so."

"If it's burned, where will you go?" she asks.

My heart sinks. I have not thought that far. Where will I go?

"Why are you here?" she asks.

She is no longer eating her ice cream. Her little brown eyes are staring at me. I cannot help but wonder if we have met before. Her eyes look so familiar.

"I came for a job."

"What's a job?"

"Work. You work, get paid, then work again until... you retire."

The idea of this thing that has been my plan all along begins to sound like robbery as I say it out loud.

"Where is your job?

"Um... the company burned down, so I don't have an office right now."

"So, things just burn?"

Her question feels like a gut punch.

"Apparently."

I stand and look around me, watching black smoke rise to meet the clouds as my world continues to burn.

"It's all good for fire. Isn't it? " I say.

A deep sigh escapes my throat. "Just like that."

Suddenly, everything seems so meaningless. I feel both sad and relieved. The standards of the world do not mean much in the end. I look up at the sky. After all is gone, reduced to rubble, it remains.

"Only you remain, God."

I look back, and the girl is gone. It makes sense that she was never real.

I gasp as I snap back to where it all started, disoriented like I've been shoved through a time machine.

"Are you going in or not?" says a female voice behind me.

I am still by the revolving door, dressed in a black pantsuit and 4-inch heels. No time has passed. I step aside.

"Sorry," I mutter.

Around me, people who were shells a moment ago have resumed their movements, going up and down, building...what?

My phone rings. I fish it out of my purse, and I am taken aback by this familiar number.

"What are the odds that you would call me on one of the weirdest days of my life..."

"Hi, Las. I just woke up from the weirdest dream."

"Was the world on fire?"

"No, is your world on fire?"

"Sort of."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. What dream did you wake from?"

"You and I were married, with a girl child. We were in a church, sitting before a cross as a family. It was the most beautiful and meaningful thing I've ever experienced... I hate that it was a dream. The little girl looked so much like you, Las."

The image of the little girl I saw resurfaces in my brain so suddenly, I gasp. It was him I saw when I looked at her. It was his eyes.

"Was she in a white dress by any chance, eating Ice cream?"

"Wait, did you dream about her too?"

"How is this happening, Khaya?"

"It's a sign, Lasi. We made a mistake, and it changed everything." He sighs deeply, as if collecting his emotions. I can almost see him blink away tears. "God, I've been roaming this world looking for you in everyone. I need to come home. That little girl has no home without us, Las," he says.

I look at the revolving door, as men and women in suits slide in and out. I left him because I chose that door once. I swore off having children for that door once. I don't remember the last time I was in a church; too busy chasing promotions. I keep choosing what's good for fire at every turn. This feels like a second chance I do not deserve. But we never did deserve anything the Lord gives.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"On my way to you. Are you still at your old office?"

"No, but I'll be home waiting for you."