100TWC - Day 38: Burning

Sheelagh was subconsciously aware something was wrong even before she awoke. She had been dreaming about petrol. About filling her car and the nozzle coming off the hose and splashing the thin pungent liquor all over her clothes and face. The boundary between dreams and reality blurred as she woke up, because the air in her bedroom was redolent with the heavy, intoxicating smell of the petrol from her nightmare.

A loud "whooomp" from outside her door brought her fully awake. Shadows danced through the crack of the half-open door.

"Bernie! Bernie!" she nudged her snoring husband. "Wake up! Somet'ing's wrong!"
"Mmm? Whassat?"

Sheelagh threw off the covers and ran to the door. The sound of crackling, faint at first but swelling quickly, echoed through their sparsely-furnished hallway. And the smell. Woodsmoke. Its first tentative tendrils already creeping up the stairs, looking for airways to choke. Sheelagh slammed the door shut, grabbed the top sheet from her bed and ran to the sink in the next room.

"Get up Bernie for God's sake! We'll be burned alive!"

Their danger slowly filtering through his torpor by a combination of Sheelagh's voice and the cold from lack of a sheet, Bernie sat up in bed.

"What you? What the hell is going on?"
"There's fire in the hall," Sheelagh shouted from their bathroom as she plunged the sheet into cold water. "Don't open the door."

Bernie started towards the door but Sheelagh shoved him roughly aside, plugging the gap between door and floor with the sodden sheet. She rounded on her husband.

"Will you wake up properly yer feckless eejit? Help me tie these sheets together." She was already retrieving spare sheets from the divan drawer when the smoke alarm went off.

MEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEPMEEP

The loudness of the staccato siren finally penetrated Bernie's consciousness. He grabbed two sheets from Sheelagh and began tying them together. Sheelagh ran to the window. Opened it. A chill November gust blew in. The sudden influx of fresh oxygen elicited a roar from the landing beyond the bedroom door as the fire greedily sucked new fuel, climbing the stairs at a lick. An ominous orange glow shone around the cracks of the doorframe, encircling the door in a fiery halo.

"Hurry Bernie!"

Her husband tied one end of the sheet rope to the radiator pipe while Sheelagh flung the rest through the opened window. She peered out into the dark. The streetlights were out at this time of night and there was no moon, but the garden below was illuminated redly by the flickering light of the blaze in their hall. It had already crept into the living room and begun consuming the sofa. Acrid chemical smoke billowed out of a crack in the window immediately below her, stinging her eyes.

"Come on!" she cried, "It's in the lounge already -- we've no time!"

She grabbed hold of the sheet rope and swung her legs over the sill. The last sheet flapped dangerously far from the ground but she had used all they had. She knew she'd have to jump the last few feet. Swallowing her fear she slipped off the sill, gripping the sheet as tightly as she could, and held her breath against the clouds of smoke from the window below.