Fear & Fire

They’re here.

The girl ran across the lawn as fast as her legs would take her. It was about a fifty foot distance to the car, but it felt like fifty miles. With each step her heart beat through her chest and her breathe came out in puffs in the cold.

She jumped in the car and shut it quick behind her, shutting out all other sounds. It was silent except for the sounds of her heart and heavy breathing. She tried to calm herself down and think clearly. She grabbed the ends of her brown hair and held it tight, not twirling as she usually did.

I don’t see them.

There was nothing around the car, all was still in the night. The neighbors lights were off and the suburbs slept peacefully unaware.

There was someone behind the car. The girl’s heart caught in her throat. She could see one of them in the rearview mirror, behind her green eyes that were alert and wide. She could see her mind calculating, him holding something. A weapon?

The girl’s fingers twitched and her body shuttered. Another appeared. The woman was next to the window on the passenger side of the car. She smiled and waved her gun.

A final jump when the third popped up beside the girl’s window. The one who caused the accident on purpose, who altered her biology. A cruel experiment to quell his own curiosity.

The girl’s fingers tingled and a heat kindled in her palms. She had seconds to decide. They made her this way, she would use it against them.

From her palms burst a series of flames that quickly engulfed the car. She saw the shock in their faces, almost like betrayal that she had used it.

The car exploded, going off like a silent firework. Or was it? Perhaps the girl had tuned it out, tuned all of it out.

The girl sat alone in her pajamas, surprisingly still intact, in the pile of ash in the middle of the night. Some flames continued to lick at her skin and her clothes, but it did not burn, it was warm and pleasant.

Everything had changed.

“Annabelle.” A whisper came through the wind.

That’s my name.

It was one of the others. Anna searched until her eyes rested on a tree where one of the others sat perched, his wings spread wide, his words mere whispers in the wind.

“Are you ready?” He jumped from his spot and onto the ground beside her, holding out his hand.

Anna nodded. She wasn’t ready to leave her ordinary life behind, but she was no longer ordinary.

Silent