Electricity
By: Mckayla Eaton
Tags: Fantasy, Short Story, Fiction, Fairy Tale, Writing

He smelled smoke. It must be the lingering cobwebs of dream. He shook his head, sat up, struggled to recall where he was. The room was dark.

He fumbled for his watch. The luminous dial showed four minutes after three.

He remembered, then. The tiny apartment was all he could afford in the new city since his last episode. Rumor had it there were jobs here. Awake, he still smelled smoke. It was stronger now, the harsh, cutting stench of electricity and burning carpet, painted walls in flame, and the dry tinder of old furniture instantly alight. He heard the roar of flames in the hallway outside the door.

He almost touched the door knob, then tried to recall what people were supposed to do in these cases. Stay and wait for help, because there was no escape through the hall? He ran to the window, stumbling over the room’s only chair in the darkness. Pushing aside the curtain, he stared at the silent, half-empty parking lot. No sirens, no flashing lights. Nothing moved. He was on the fourth floor, the rusty death-trap fire-escape fallen away long ago.

He turned away from the window, pulled the blanket from the end of the bed, and wrapped his hand. The heat of the knob scorched his hand through the cloth, but he wrenched it open anyway, ready to mask his nose and mouth with the blanket and run. Too late, he recalled the blanket should be wet.

The hallway was dark and quiet. The EXIT sign flickered and buzzed at the end by the stairs.

He went back in the room, back to the window, saw the fire trucks and ambulances, their furious lights strobing the darkness into a hideous, psychedelic nightmare. Flameless smoke choked him, and he fell on the bed, gasping for breath.

Dawn broke at last. In the the tiny bathroom, he ran water over the burned hand and found disinfectant and bandages to wrap the blisters. The medicine stung and throbbed where torn skin had already cracked and leaked.

The building supervisor’s office off the corner of the lobby said he would be in by eight. He arrived at a quarter after. His name was Hensley. They’d met when Masters rented the apartment. Masters waited, sitting in the chair by the dusty window while Hensley unlocked the door, turned on lights, and sat in the creaking chair. The man turned when Master’s shadow blocked the light from the hall and cast a shadow on the opposite wall.

“Mr. Hensley,” Masters began. He took a deep breath, as if he would have to hold it for a long time, and then exhaled. “Mr. Hensley, this building is not safe.”

Hensley stared at him. “Why do you say that?”

“There’s no fire escape.”

“Sure there is. They’re called stairs. Front and back.”

“You know what I mean. And the wiring is ancient — when was the last time an electrician looked at anything in this building?”

“What, you thought you were getting a suite at the Taj Mahal for what you pay here?” Hensley’s face twisted in a crooked grin. “I don’t live here. It’s not my building. Just a job. But the boss gave me strict orders — no troublemakers. You want to hit the streets, or you want to keep your big ideas to yourself?”

“I’m only warning you. I have to. When — if — if there’s a fire, many people will die.”

So of course, after the fire, nine days later, the super had told the detectives, and the arson inspector, and the reporter, and anyone else who would listen. Masters was questioned by the police, but the inspector concluded faulty wiring had caused the fire. Eleven people died, four of them children, and there was talk of criminal negligence on the part of Hensley and the building owner. By then, only reporters wanted to talk to Masters. Headlines ran along the lines of “Psychic’s Warning Unheeded! Deadly Inferno! Dozens Die Needlessly!” or even more sensational language.

It had happened before, time and again, the vision, the attempt to warn, to explain, the disaster followed by suspicion, by questions he could not answer. So he’d left that city, all cities, and come here to this lonely, rocky outcrop where sky and land and water thrashed through their eternal love triangle, settling nothing, solving everything.