Justice

Raelynn and Michael were cuddled up on the couch when suddenly they smelled something burning from the other room.

“Are you cooking something, Babe?” Michael knew how notorious his wife was for leaving things burning on the stove.

“No, I made sure to turn everything off when we finished dinner. Where is that coming from?” As she spoke, a flamed shot from the stairs leading to the attic bedroom. “Oh my God! Michael!” Michael practically bounced up the stairs telling her to get out as he did.

Raelynn began seeing flames spike through the floorboards like lightning torching the ground in beautiful electric hatred. “Michael! Get down! We have to get out!”

Michael shouted something about the Bible, forcing Raelynn to leave her husband in their crumbling paradise. She watched the bedroom, heaving in the dew-wetted grass, she watched her husband throwing books and clothes around the room, as an anger took over her at his persistence to retrieve that damn Bible. When the door to the bedroom caught, panic flew across his face before he vanished into his fiery horror.

The air filled with the stench of burning skin and wood. When combined with the restrained and gagging screams of Raelynn, the scene seemed surreal as if everything within the house was furious at the tenants for having dared to live there in the first place.

The midnight blackness blended into a hellish picture with the flames raging against the stars. Raelynn searched frantically for someone who might have seen the flames and come looking, but found only a darkened figure making his or her way to Raelynn’s mangled form on the ground, a gas can in hand. The figure wrapped its slender arms around Raelynn’s shoulders, stroking her hair in comfort. Before leaving, the figure shoved the Bible from their dresser into Raelynn’s hands and pulled a single finger to cover her lips. Raelynn forced the holy weapon as close to her chest as she could manage and watched as screaming sirens raced to be the first one to her now demolished future.

When she was finally released, she got in her car and drove to the city to find a hotel. She watched the blackened smoke disappear from her mirror, the Bible and a gas can in her passenger seat.