Ashes

There is only one light in my house. If I'm being technical, it's not even in my house. It hangs from a hole in the plaster above the peeling grey-green paint of the doorframe. The wires connecting it to whatever is inside the plaster sheets are visible and fraying, threatening to turn anyone who makes a single wrong step into fried human. There's no other electricity in my house. Just the flickering, dismal floodlight that barely sheds enough light to check a watch.

I'm more than used to the dark, though. As a kid, I couldn't bear it. My mother would routinely tuck me into my bed, her subtle golden locks framing her elegant smile as she told me goodnight. I would lay there, frozen, anticipating the next movements; she would flick the light switch, my vision would dissipate. The walls around me would start to creep in and my imagination would run as erratically as my heart pounding against my ribcage. And then I would scream. I would scream until I couldn't feel my throat. The screaming usually barred the sound of my father yelling at my mother over the commotion I was causing. It deafened me to the sound of his palm connecting with her cheek, and her falling back against my wall. My father quickly figured out that the screaming ceased once his fist found my face. That induced the tears, and the gut-wrenching sobs. But they were diminished into an almost silent whimper when I was dragged from my bed and his belt was brought down on my body.

That was when I was five. I finally gave into my fight against the dark around the time I turned nine. I figured that less pain came from letting my fear silently embrace me than copping the anger of my drunken father. By the time I'd reached eleven, the darkness had let go of its hold on my lungs and nestled into a special spot in my heart. It had become my escape.

My pencil ardently scrapes at the A5 sketchbook in front of me, its products illuminated by the semi-regular flickering of the light. I lie with my front pressed against the splintering deck lining the front of the house, my legs crossed in the air behind me and my hood right up, protecting my head from the wind. Inside are my younger brother and my younger sister, – ten-year-old identical twins – asleep. My father, the last time I'd seen him, had himself locked in the makeshift shed he'd constructed that adjoined the three by four metre room he'd claimed for himself. If his door is closed and the candlelight evident through the gap between the door and the carpet, he is likely drinking. Otherwise, he's at the bar. Or someplace no one can find him.

My face twists as a yawn breaks across my expression. I shut my sketchbook, pencil inside. I stand, hearing my shoulders crack as I roll them backwards. Smoke is heavily weaved throughout the air around me, probably because Australia is presently on fire. Bushfires littering the coast and it isn't even summer yet. Sirens scream in the distance, but everything can be heard from my neighbourhood, as no sound but silence fills it. As I move away from the wreck of a house that I reside in, the smoke gradually eases. Maybe the wind's changed again. I tuck my sketchbook under my hoodie as I walk, shoving my hands into the pocket that stretches across the bottom of the jumper. Another yawn encapsulates my countenance and I blink hard, flinching as pain shoots through the left side of my face, courtesy of the black eye I'd been rewarded by my ever so loving father. I remove my hands from my pocket, breaking into a run in the middle of the 'street with no streetlights'. No one came this way. Ever. I could lie down across the narrow road and fall asleep and I'd wake undisturbed.

My father has decided that I run to get away from my problems and everything I'm afraid of. He loves to openly express how weak he thinks I am, and how pathetic and selfish I am being when I leave him to fend for himself. Even if that were the reason I run, it's a little hypocritical coming from him as he's drunk away every problem he's ever had to face. I guess he just has some very unconventional methods of professing his need for help.

The sirens haven't stopped wailing. If anything, it sounds as if they're quickly approaching. I brush off the thought, condemning the silence for my split second of paranoia and continuing to run down the very middle of the road. But the sirens only get louder and before long, the street is a landscape of blue and red flashing lights. Two fire trucks speed through the desolate neighbourhood as I seek refuge on the side of the road, watching the emergency vehicles. There are only three occupied houses on my street. One belongs to a hunched, grey-haired little man who never ventures past the front doorstep. The second's inhabitants are unknown. The only evidence of their existence is the light in the top left window. Sometimes, I swear I can hear screams coming from the oversized cabin. The third and final is my house. It's basically two caravans stuck together with dad's shed out the back and the poorly manufactured deck at the front.

Maybe the hunched guy had heard dad yelling and smashing things and called the police again. But that wouldn't explain the fire trucks. I begin running again, this time back in the direction I came. Both an ambulance and a police car passed by as I ran, sirens blaring and at full speed, only watering the anxiety cultivating in the empty pit of my stomach. Maybe they've finally obtained reason to break into the quiet house. Maybe whoever lives there really is a wifebeater–as my younger brother Tyler hypothesises—and is being detained for the murder of the poor fictitious woman. Maybe the hunched guy went on an arson rampage and started burning all the deserted and uninhabited houses in the tiny neighbourhood.

And then I see it. My heart is in my throat as I stop dead in my tracks, my eyes wide. It was the most likely out of all the possibilities I could've concocted in my head, but it was by far the worst of them. The quiet house is still quiet. The hunched man lingers on his front doorstep. Instead, the emergency vehicles surround my house, attempting to control the blaze that has consumed it.