Ashes Read Free

at the operating bed at an unclothed, pulsating victim.
    Â  Her tears resembled hot coals. Smoke rose from her center, all of the glass in the room melting or shattering. Steam thickened the air. The doctor was motionless. One of the nurses fainted, sliding onto a table of sharp instruments.  
    A trail of spit had formed between Frances’s crimson smile, as she stretched her jaw one last time to call out a name: “Stephen.”
    Then she collapsed, her head dropping back, eyes spiraling into emptiness. In a blink, the flesh on her belly peeled, a growing fire eating and folding the skin away from whatever was moving underneath, blistering the ripped flesh. All they heard was a slight murmur, one that came off the lips of a baby who couldn’t have weighed any more than five pounds. Its skin appeared grainy, bits of ash and liquid mess wrapping the frail skeleton within what remained of the mother’s womb. Slowly, it moved and bent its fingers, as Isaac saw its hands briefly surrounded by tiny, gloved flames. It didn’t cry or long for breath . It simply lay still, silenced perhaps by the wind scratching at the window from the outside world.  
    Isaac flared his nostrils and fought to catch his breath, slowly moving closer to her body. There was nothing holding her head up, nothing to honor her. Smoke engulfed the dark room. The tops of her fingers had melted off at the nails, hands charred. He imagined the emotions Kay and Henry were enduring outside those swinging doors and down the hall. Imagined what it was going to be like telling them how she…. No, he couldn’t even bear the thought of her being gone, let alone conveying the terrible news to them. They never had been too welcoming of him, sure, but he did love them, at least enough for her.  
    But now she was gone? Now she was spread open and soaking in this mess of life, pieces of her fingertips missing. What happened?
    Isaac thought his insides were going to explode. He glanced down at her, noticing that the thing still connected to her body did not even stir. “Stephen,” Isaac mumbled. “Stephen Gable. My…s—” He couldn’t say it.
    Isaac forced his eyelids shut. He reached for it, but something stopped him midway. Its hands no longer glowed, but Isaac didn’t wish to hold it. He remained disturbed by it.    
    â€œWhat…just happened?” Dr. Raymond whispered hoarsely, lip quivering.
    Isaac stared at him, barely able to make out the holes in the old doctor’s face. The alarms blared, but the sprinklers above their frightened, awestruck heads spun out of water, puddles of red and pink and clear fluid dampening their feet.
    Isaac looked one last time at the doctor but not at the quiet, stained menace that had replaced the woman he loved. Perhaps this had been a mistake. Falling in love, getting her pregnant, being in this room at this moment. All of it. That’s what he would have to tell himself in order to live without regret, if such a thing were possible.  
    â€œ It burned through her.” Dr. Raymond coughed, the dark realization culminating all at once.
    Isaac breathed deeply and wiped his hands against his shirt. Then he moved back, every wary step pulling him closer to the exit, closer to escape from Salvation Hospital, and whatever had burned through.
    He couldn’t stay. Isaac couldn’t be a father to this thing.
    There was a beating in his chest just then. Perhaps it was his heart, or maybe it was something else entirely, a gut kind of thing. It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that he was leaving this place. He needed to. He wouldn’t tell a soul where he was going. It was safer with Henry and Kay anyway. They’d know what to do.

2
    Â 
    17 years later
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    ARSON LISTENED TO THEIR whispers. He struggled to make out what was said, but it was all muffled ; blending shapes and words looming over him.  
    Is this the hospital?