This is my entry for Sue Vincent of Daily Echo #writephoto.
There it stood, in the early morning mist. Nothing but a shell, no heart or soul left. The mist concealing the true horror of what was left. Even after all these years I could hear the crackle of fire and the screams of those trapped inside.
They had built the house here in the middle of nowhere to impress on those incarcerated in there, even if they got through the locks or the bars on the windows that there was no where to go.
I had been there ten years before James arrived . He was so beautiful, in soul and body. He was a nurse on my wing and I soon fell in love with him. He, to his credit, did take over a year to fall for me. Yet fall for me he did and we planned to leave the house and be together forever.
We bided our time, this was good because we needed to lay our plans well.
Finally the night we had decided upon to leave arrived. James finished his shift at 11pm and he came to my room where I was packed and waiting.
James had everything planned to a tee. We were to leave as the staff handover was taking place, he had already made his excuses to get away without attending the meeting.
All went well and he hid me under a blanket in the back of his car. We were three quarters of a mile away from the hospital when he spotted the fire. I begged him not to stop I begged him to drive on but he told me to stay hidden in the car and he left me.
He ran back to the hospital and I followed him. I never saw him again, he died along with everyone else that night. No one survived, no one escaped. It took the fire brigade an hour to arrive by that time the screams had stopped and only one wing of the building was left ruined but standing.
I come back here every year on this day, the day the fire happened. I only wish the fire had not spread so fast, that the fire had not killed the electricity that locked the building down…that they all had died.
As 11.15pm arrives I see them coming out of the ruins they all walk hand in hand past me. I reach out to touch James, as I do every year, but he doesn’t look at me. Over his shoulder he calls, “I forgive you.”
I know I set the fire too well.
willowdot21 