1 Dead Dead

They were dead. Dead dead. Even Lottica could see that. She had never seen a real dead body. Plenty on television, plenty in movie theaters, plenty in shoot 'em up video games.

But never for real.

And it didn't get more real than seeing your dead parents being carried out the door of the torched and tangled ruin of what was once your home-sweet-home.

As a twelve-year-old, she knew she was supposed to turn away from the firemen carrying the bodies. She knew her brother Nick standing behind her wouldn't watch their broken parents being hauled into the waiting ambulances. Even though he was two years older and acted much tougher, Nick would react like most normal children witnessing the aftermath of their parents' gruesome deaths. He'd turn away to shield himself from the horror.

Not Lottica. She stared.

She focused on the blistered and burnt side of her father's face and followed its sad curve down to his left arm hanging strangely aslant of his shoulder. Her eyes traced his calamitously angled arm to his fire-blackened hand.

Even from a hundred feet away where the firemen had herded her, Lottica spotted his wedding ring. The blue stone on the gold band sparkled coolly, in stark contrast to the devouring flames which still flared around the iron spiral staircase her father had designed as the centerpiece of their home.

Stepping apart from her brother, Lottica experienced a sudden pang, deeper and sharper than the loss of her parents. A feeling that she lacked some essential feeling which normal kids have for life, for death, for finality.

Unable to accept the wreckage that was her father and the house that he'd built, she looked beyond him to where paramedics were placing her mother onto an ambulance gurney.

Her mother's crumpled body appeared to Lottica so much smaller than she'd been in life. The thick hair that once crested her shoulders in rich auburn waves was flattened in tangled, lifeless tendrils.

Her mother. Her mommy. She looked like a long-discarded doll, ragged and unloved. Lottica trembled at the thought, and the tremor shook her tightly held emotions loose. Tears welled, her breath caught and she began to sob. Small, orphaned sobs.

As if on cue, a fireman made eye contact and hurried over. He lifted her, and she made no struggle. Nick followed as the fireman carried his sister to one of the many vehicles aswarm with lights.

And that is what Lottica would remember most about the early August evening that her parents died. The backlit brilliance of the sky amid the strobing emergency lights. And a last glimpse of her father's burnt body as he was placed into an ambulance. His crazily hinged left arm swinging over his grim but almost-grinning face. The big, blue gemstone of his wedding ring flashing above his once-sparkling eyes. Thus, he waved to Lottica.

And not, she thought, in farewell.