Anastasia

As my body is thrown through the wall, the world falls into chaos. Heat, flames, and smoke are suddenly all around me. For several seconds, my ears ring and all I can hear is a high-pitched scream.

I realize finally that it's coming from me. I'm the one screaming like that. Things are happening in slow motion. Adrenaline rushes through me to protect me from the pain.

I need to focus, but I want to stay on the floor. My brain feels as if it has been shaken, like it cannot get a grip on what's happening in reality.

"Ugh," I grunt, trying to roll on my side. Shards of glass seem to be piercing my skin in several places. Smoke rolls through the room, making it impossible to see what's around me.

"What was that?" I wonder, as if any memory of the last five minutes has disappeared. I slowly remember leaving Jacob's house, and the package.

The package! It was a bomb – one clearly designed to do more than just hurt me. Would Medeia really seek revenge to such a level? I don't know. I don't think that she would risk Jacob's wrath by trying to kill me.

But if it wasn't her, then who was it? Who knew that I was coming home tonight, who wants to kill me this badly?

I know that I don't really have time to worry about that. The heat is building to a nearly unbearable degree around me. The ground itself has become hot to the touch. I can't stay here.

The house will collapse on top of me, and I will die. Survival instincts kick in and I try to take stock of how injured I am. It doesn't feel like anything is broken, and the dizziness is lessening.

I am able to sit up, touching different places on myself to see where I am cut. Most of it seems superficial, aside from one wound in my left arm where the glass has sliced to the bone.

The pain is dim and distant, for now. Blood is rushing through my veins at alarming speeds, my fight or flight instinct triggered. I can't smell anything other than smoke, or see anything but flame through the thick gray smog.

"Jacob?" I try to shout, knowing that there is no way anyone can hear me from where I am. I am alone in this house, and I can trust only myself to get out of this.

I need to get outside.

Pushing myself to my feet, I have to lean against a hot, crumbling wall to stop the world from spinning. I touch a hand to my ear. It is bleeding, and messing up my balance.

My first instinct is to get to the front door, despite remembering the struggle to open it earlier.

I try to take a breath before I start to walk, but it's mostly ash and smoke that get to my lungs. It makes me cough and I lean over my knees as it racks my body with force. Shallow breaths, then.

I'm struggling to get enough oxygen. If I don't get out of here, I will suffocate before I burn. The thought of it terrifies me.

"Out, out, out!" is the only thing that my brain is telling me. The single word fills my entire body, limb by limb, as I stumble towards the front door. I am an animal, desperate for an escape, and nothing else matters.

I touch the handle, and my hand is instantly burnt. I pull back, almost shocked at the sensation. Pain trembles through me, but is overridden by the need for survival.

Taking a step back, I ready myself, and whisper a line of confidence. "The wood must be weakened from the heat. I can break it."

I crash myself forward, ramming my shoulder into the door as hard as I can. One panel splinters under the force, but nothing else moves. Something is keeping it in place.

There is no escape this way. I swing around. The dining room has been completely swallowed by thick smoke and flames.

The fire has already leaked across the hallway to the living room, and the kitchen is probably not far behind. The door to the bathroom is slowly being eaten from bottom to top by devouring crimson demons.

I cough again, this time forced to my knees with the fit. My head is swimming, and I am afraid that I might lose my consciousness if this goes on for much longer.

Surrounded by fire, I try to think of my options. Dining room, kitchen, living room, bathroom, front door, all of these are impossible. Smoke hangs between me and the roof, and I don't know how long I have until it collapses.

I lie down on the ground, the one place where there still seems to be some breathable air. It burns as it slips down my throat, scorching my flesh as it goes, but it is the only way that I can keep myself awake.

I will have to go through the flames. The bedroom looks like the only place that has not been consumed. I might be able to make it through the window.

"Gotta make it," I whisper through the sheer burning sensation in my mouth. I put one elbow forward, and drag myself across the floor.

I can't crawl through the fire. It will cook me down to the bone. I have to get up, even if that will make it more difficult to breathe.

My limbs feel weak, like they might not be able to get me all the way to my feet. I have to try. I have to survive.

I take as deep a breath as I can, screaming through my burnt throat at the agony that it causes. I cannot breathe once I am on my feet. It will only be smoke and ash.

I glance around me, trying to orient myself. I can't run in the wrong direction. Seconds will mean the difference between life and death.

It takes every single ounce of energy that I have to drag myself to my knees. I have to pause before I try to stand up. I am out of breath again, and have to bend down to take another agonizing drag into my lungs.

I have to close my eyes. They feel like they are boiling right out of my sockets.

"What did the one volcano say to the other one?" Jacob's joke from so long ago slips through my smoke-ridden mind. "I lava you!"

My eyes flash open again and I scream as I force my body upright. I am on my feet. I have to move.

Dashing forward, the flames lick at my arms, searing my flesh. It fills my nostrils with the smell of cooking meat.

I don't care. I run with everything that I have in me.

It feels like forever before I burst through the cloud of ash and smoke and crash through the splintering bedroom door.

It took almost everything that I had left. I roll onto the ground. Wooden splinters, bits of glass, broken, melted plastic, all melt into my skin. The pain threatens to overwhelm my mind.

The window is just across the room from me. I just have to make it there…

"I am proud of you," Jacob reminds me in another flash of memory, when I'd broken my bond with Derek.

If I had any moisture left, I know that I would start to cry. Instead, the air stings at my eyes. I grasp at the floor, breaking my nails, and drag myself across it.

The window is right ahead. Keep going, keep going.

I can't breathe. It burns. Everything is melting. I am going to die.

"Why are you alive, and not Gisele?" The Jacob in my mind throws an accusation.

Maybe I deserve to lose my life here.

"I'll see you later, okay?" When he greeted me to leave for the event.

I don't want to die.

I've passed the bed. Less than a foot to the window now.

"Sure." It is a promise that I need to keep, too. I will see Jacob again, despite the flames fighting for my soul.

Unconsciousness is flooding through me, beginning to make my limbs numb. I cannot allow it to take over.

I reach the wall. Broken nails, bloody fingers, I drag myself up inch by inch. Nothing is going to stop me.

There is a sound beyond the crackling of burning wood and devouring flame. It penetrates my mind with an insane velocity. It is desperate, begging, pleading.

I am screaming again. The sound is animal rather than human. It is a last hoorah, a wild grasp at straws of survival.

The last of my breath has dried up. It is only smoke now. Only the ash of everything that I have lost.

I drag my head up, over the window sill. I can see the night outside. The stars beckon me, encouraging me to keep moving. I want to lie down. I want to give in.

"No!" Jacob, again, shouting this time, filling my head with a delusional hope, imaginary. "Come on, Ana!"

"Okay." With my vocal chords scorched, it is all I manage.

The window has long since burst. Its sill is lined with shards of sharp glass, threatening me, trying to trap me inside.

The pain of staying would be worse than the pain of going, I decide. I push down with my hands. The piercing shards slice through already burnt skin. The layers of pain don't matter anymore.

I can't lift myself over. I can only lean, and tumble. My ripped clothes tear further as I fall through the window.

Smears of blood are left behind when I crash into the grass, grasping at my body to try and keep my soul inside of it.

I am outside. My lungs fill desperately with half-fresh air. The fire will hunt me down out here, too.

I cannot relax.

"Must. Keep. Moving." I reach, bloody fingers in the grass.

I drag myself forward.

There will be no standing up again, no desperate fight to get on my knees.

I can move, but barely. Another hand forward, another inch away from the house.

I fight the darkness rushing in from all sides.

"A few more feet, please," I beg my body in a fleeting thought. It wants to listen, but it no longer can. My arms will not drag me any further.

This is it. If I stop, I die.

I cannot go on anymore. I have to.

"I lava you!" The flames taunt me, slowly gaining ground from behind.

Is this truly how all of it will end? Will I finally be free?

I tumble head-first into the nightmares, with no way to stop myself.