Explosions!? Smoke!? My eyes burned like it would if I was staring straight into the sun for minutes. My ears would just ring and RING... AND RING. Every time my heart pounded against my chest I felt it in my head.

Get up! GET UP! GET UP!

I could hear the house crumble around me like a loud crackling campfire. Everything was still blurry. I could make out some pockets of roaring flames whipping wooden columns and walls to ash around me. The crumbling stairs were just in front of me, hardly holding itself up with the railing attached to it.

Fire! I remember fire! I fell down here!

Panic wet my pants and fear shook me up but even then nothing worked as it should. Every part of my body feels like it's being pulled up from broken puppet strings. Just weakness and pain everywhere. I think... I could still make-up it upstairs before the stairs completely burned and crumble. I think. Wait! I know I can! Dad could. He always fights. He's probably up there fighting whatever is happening.

I started making my way upstairs. The sound of my sandal flopping onto the ground was like a bolt of slow slapping lightning. Everything is so loud. Even the sound of tiny pieces of wood dropping from the ceiling and onto the ground sounded like a bursting firework. The house - our house- is burning down but... I have to get up the stairs.

Limping was only the beginning. When I reached the center of the staircase I stumbled towards the middle of the staircase, I felt the wood creaking and snapping below and behind me like a shark roaring to pull me under. I was too scared to look down, all I could really think of right now was how close the walls of fire were at snapping at me with their hungry claws of flames and what was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

My mom's alive. I know she is. She's tough like my pops! They fought for the city of Embrace many times. Any fire would have already burned them if it could.

WHY IS EVERYTHING SO LOUD!?

Somehow I made it to the top of the stairs. Down the hall, I caught a glance of the splashes of blood in the pattern of hand-prints along the edges of the door down the hall. That's my parent's door. It didn’t stop me though. It couldn't. I only moved faster. I raced my left hand towards the doorknob, struggling to even open a fist. And just when I thought my body couldn't bother to move any further a burst of energy rushed the doorknob to a violent twist. The doorknob simply fell off with a heavy thud to the ground. I didn't notice at first...but the thing was smashed and dented all over as if it was chewed up by a large dog. Now with just a simple push, the door broke open, crumbling to the ground in front of me.

Mom? Dad? My eyes darted around the room on their own, bouncing from every surface. Even so, I could see nothing. Just smoke, fire, and broken bits of pictures and stuff that was on shelves. I couldn't help but direct my eyes to the center of the room, exactly at my parent's large bed. The bed was usually surrounded by a long beautiful velvet curtain; although now… now it's tattered and gray with ash. I blinked for a moment and didn’t open my eyes for the next several. My imagination was taking over... I had to see what was behind the curtain. I needed to know.

I pushed forward. I had to use everything I had to open the curtains, even my arms seem to refuse to pull the curtain aside at first. Of course just as I was going to touch the curtain, my arms stopped moving. I just screamed at them over and over again, shouting at them like disobedient animals. “PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!” I begged. I could feel my voice painfully crack and boil. Again somehow, I gathered the strength to push the curtain aside and sure enough, they were there. Their limp bodies we’re simply sitting together over a puddle of blood that leaked off the side of the bed like waterfalls. Thick gray ash covered them like a blanket. They're dead. Propped up, just like dolls.

“A murder... here? They were good people. I promised you, God. I did. You didn’t protect them! You didn’t protect anyone! They protected this city! You just watched it. Like always. ” I blurted out with a burst of anger I never even knew I had.

I looked at them up and down for what feels like a million times a second. Both of my parents had dark patches of black where their eyes should be. Their clothes were burned and torn. They didn’t deserve this. “It's too early for them to die. I-its too early. Right?” I couldn’t help but cry. My body shook a million times more. Every word I muttered was heavier than the last. There is too much to say and yet all I could say was gibberish as my tears rained down uncontrollably. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t even mutter a word. I tried. My tears would simply choke me before I could even struggle with my name.

I threw myself onto the bed. I didn't what else to do. Who was I kidding? Everything just seemed to move on its own now. I could feel myself struggling to crawl between my Mom and Dad because my feet didn’t want to move anymore. My body was mangled and I didn’t even care to know it. It was strange; I finally got to wedging myself between them and everything felt better. With them, I could see a little better, my heart calmed a bit, my head pounded just a little less, and I felt safe, just as I would have felt back then when they were protecting me from make-believe monsters as a kid. I need to go to bed again.