A house on fire (part 2)
By: Sahil Katyal
Tags: Love, Short Story, Thriller, Suspense

Photo by Shane Young on Unsplash

Sleep was not Lisa’s best friend. At least it hadn’t been since the day she had lost both her parents in a car accident. Nightmares of the cruelest order painstakingly ate away the ungodly hours of her life. Still, like every human being that gradually moves on from adversity, she was learning to lead her life normally. Paul’s presence had been her greatest ally, being by her side unconditionally.

Paul loved her more than anything in his life and she knew this beyond all doubt. It was two nights to go to their second anniversary and she had a feeling that Paul would be planning a surprise for the coming eve. She was equally excited as Paul’s unfettered care is what had brought her life together and spending time with him in any form gave her bliss and a sense of being alive. The stress at work combined with her personal grief had taken a toll on her and so she had resorted to a sabbatical with an aim of sorting her head and figuring out what she really wanted to do. Paul had been extremely supportive on this. “Peace should not be played with”, he would always say.

Post dinner, they usually sat by the bedroom window with a glass of wine talking about their day. It was a usual night sprinkled with excitement for the day that was to come. At half past 11, they got into bed and Lisa hugged Paul tightly, tighter than she usually did. She wanted to tell him something. Something even she didn’t yet know about. Paul kissed her goodnight and soon fell into a slumber decorated by his pronounced snoring. Lisa couldn’t sleep as usual and got back to reading Kafka by the Shore from where she had left earlier. Somehow, she could associate with Murakami’s magical surrealism really well. Next she knew it was quarter to 8. She wanted to be asleep. She wanted to be normal. Soon Paul would be waking up and she didn’t want him all worried for her yet again. Not today. She closed the book, switched off the bedside lamp and pretended to fall asleep. Half an hour later, still awake, she felt Paul’s morning kiss on her forehead. This was routine and one thing she really looked forward to after her stretch of insomnia. Paul got ready and went to the kitchen to fry some bacon and eggs for breakfast. “You wanna have breakfast right now?”, he called out from the kitchen like he always did, very well knowing the answer that she’d have milk and cereal once she woke up. Soon he left for work. Lisa turned in her bed wondering where to place happiness and where to place gloom in this pinboard of life.

She thought maybe a glass of warm milk would help her sleep and walked towards the kitchen. As she was heating up milk in the microwave, she saw a squirrel by the window sill. She went closer and noticed that it was knocking on the window. Lisa waved but the squirrel kept knocking, unperturbed by her surroundings. As she lifted the window pane, the squirrel rather than running away just stood there looking into her eyes. She noticed that the squirrel had something horridly uncanny about it in the sense that its lips were unusually red as if a cosmetic substance had been applied to them. They stood there for a minute and before she could realise, Lisa had lost control over her eyes. She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t even blink. Slowly she felt her whole self fading away. In a swift movement, the squirrel jumped over her head onto the refrigerator behind her as she fell on the ground with a loud thud. It started running on the refrigerator’s door, scribbling something on it with its face.

Rubbing her eyes, trying to get back to reality, she realised that the effort was all futile and she had already gotten to somewhere else. She smelled fire, but she saw nothing.