Fire Beneath Me

Mary

There is a saying ‘you should never go to sleep angry’ and people often tell you to make up after a fight right away. I think everyone should listen to that advice. I had to learn it the hard way. I could still remember the fire, somewhere beneath me, and I could still feel my daughter’s fingernails sinking into my skin as she hold on to my arm. She was scared. I could still taste the smoke in my mouth and remember how the broken glass had felt when scratching against my naked thighs as I climbed out through the window. The firemen helped us out, me and my seventeen-year-old daughter, but my husband was not with us. I did not know he was still inside the house, I believed he had already been saved. Everything happened so fast. If I knew he was still inside, they would have never gotten me out of the house. I would have never left him in that burning hell. When I realized that he was not with us, the firemen had to use force to keep me from running back in to the flames that reminded me of a midsummer bonfire, burning orange against the pale blue night sky. He was gone.

I was devastated that my last words to my husband had been I hate you. We had been fighting over such a meaningless thing as household work. Everyone had fights like that, I knew. It was stupid. After the fight, Tom had stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch, as I went upstairs into our bedroom. I remember being so upset it was hard to calm down. I had gone through a heated, imaginary conversation inside my head until I finally fell asleep. It must have been one o’clock at night, I think. That is what I told to the police.

I was woken up by my daughter Rita an hour later as I heard how she broke one of the windows upstairs. The noise that the breaking glass made startled me awake and I ran out of the bedroom to see what had happened. But I was met with thick, black smoke and flames roaming beneath me. They were climbing up the walls like thousand red snakes. I feared that the floor would crumble under my feet and I would fall into their hungry mouths. None of the fire alarms had gone off, I realized. I could not recall when they had been last inspected, it was years ago, I knew, and I felt regretful about it now. Suddenly, Rita had emerged somewhere and was beside me now. She grabbed my arm tight and was pulling me out of the broken window. I could hear sirens. They were coming closer and closer.

But the real hell broke loose when the cause of the fire was determined. It had been intentionally started. Fire scene inspectors found traces of gasoline downstairs in the living-room where Tom had been sleeping on the couch that night. I almost fainted, so sick I felt of the thought that Tom could have committed a suicide. And like that, by burning himself alive. I simply could not believe it. But it was even harder to believe what the police told me next. They told me, I had started the fire.

No. I could have not, never. My first reaction was an hysterical snort of pure amuse but soon my disbelieve turned into a shock. The crime scene analysis revealed that Tom could not have started the fire himself. And for my utter horror, my own daughter told the police she had seen me that night, walking down the stairs with a canister in my hand. And I had a motive too, as we had just been fighting with Tom. Actually, past few months, we had been fighting almost all the time, everyday, about everything. I was angry with him that night and I had already admitted that to the police.

However, I could not remember anything. Not then, not even now. I could not believe what the police were telling me. They told me, I had gone temporarily insane and that I had poured gasoline all over our living-room, lit it up and after that I had climbed upstairs and gone back to sleep like nothing happened. The sound of the breaking window had woken me up from my trance-like state of mind. I did not remember anything like that but they would not let me go. After twenty hours of interrogation, I was so tired and in such a shock, I could not realize what was going on. So I ended up admitting, it could have happened that way. They forced me to sign a paper describing my crime. They had me then. My ‘confession’ was the most important evidence in the case. The jury did not believe it had been a temporary insanity as I had confessed, so they ruled that I had committed an intentional killing and I was sentenced to a life imprisonment without a possibility to a parole. When they were reading the verdict to me I felt so nauseous it was indescribable. It felt something like the world was floating in an empty space and I was becoming a shadow somewhere in it. I could not get a grip on reality.

Everyday after that I have been trying to recall what really happened that night. Evidence does not lie, I know, but I still found it hard to accept. I could never take back what I had done and I felt remorse so bad it was difficult to get up in the mornings. I lost everything in my life: my husband, my home and my dear daughter who never came to see me in prison. I could not blame her for that. How could I have taken away her father from her. And her mother as well. She was left completely alone. I was alone as well, as I had lost all of my friends and relatives, everyone. My life had been mediocre, for sure, but I realized now how important even mediocre was. It was invaluable. I had stolen my husband’s future as well as my own. Everyday I stared at the walls of my cell and prayed that God would have the decency to take me away and end this unbearable suffering. But the relief was never offered to me and I was forced to go on living. Every other day I believed I was guilty and every other I was convinced that I was innocent.

Harriet

I was disgusted by it all. I think that humans are animals, cruel beasts and ugly beings in their nature, but some of us are more than others. It is hard to describe what being human really means, but I knew, this was not it. Mary had been my neighbor. I had known her and Tom both. At first, they had seemed normal, decent and nice people. Every time we met on a driveway, they greeted me with a warmth in their voice, and when we had time we engaged in an open-hearted conversation. I had babysat Rita a couple of times when she was little. I adored that child. She was a happy and brave young Missy, so lively and chatty. All that changed when she became a teenager. She started arguing with her parents a lot, often I could hear yelling across the street. I did not know what they were fighting about. I pitied the poor child. She seemed so lovely even in that age. Sometimes she came to talk to me on her own, just because she was thinking of me. I liked that since I was retired and a widow. Not many teenagers cared about older people like she did.

It was hard to swallow when I heard Mary had burned her husband alive. They were fighting constantly, yes, and I would not be surprised if they had gotten a divorce, but murder was another thing. Before that, I had assumed it only happened in movies. When Mary was convicted for life in prison, I celebrated, for it had been justice. At the same time, I grieved for little Rita, who was left to cope alone in this harsh world of ours.

Rita: 20 years later

The sun was shining and the last of the lingering snow was melting rapidly. I would go rollerskating later that day if the walkways were dry enough, I thought to myself, as it had been almost two years since I had last done so. It was a good time to start adding new hobbies to my day in order to keep myself busy and fit at the same time. During winter, it was always too easy to slip from one’s routines. It did not matter too much, though, as I was naturally slim and even without any workout, I knew, I looked better than most of my friends and colleagues.

I was quite content with my life as it was. I worked as an accountant in a fairly recognized law firm, and I had a successful husband with a great reputation and financial stability, and in addition to all that, we where expecting. My pregnancy was in an early state, however. I did not care too much of having children or being pregnant but it was one of the life goals, I felt. I did not want to take maternity leave when it would be time, but I tried to remind myself that I could return to work as soon as the baby was born. It seemed as if everything would be fine on its own and I would have nothing to worry about. My life often seemed to go that way.

But it was common with people like me, I knew that much. I never really worried about others, I took care of myself first. I never felt sad when I got criticism, and it was easy for me to push myself until I succeeded. I strongly believed that quitting was never an option. I took pride in what I did without being modest like so many others. I believed that modesty could carry no one to the top. Audacity and confidence were the ones I could thank for my achievements.

There was something else as well, though. I was aware of it. I chose not to concentrate on what was probably considered something wrong in me. However, I could feel the darkness growing inside me. The scars that life had left in me, or had not, to be precise. It was like an emptiness growling inside, ever so hungry. Nothing would satisfy it, nothing was enough. I had to become always better, more defiant, more powerful. It was like a fierce predator, a mother lioness, that needed to be heard. I needed to be better than everyone else and nothing less would do. Life had come to me easy, but it was often boring, mundane, soft. I craved something that would thrill me so that the adrenaline could be felt with every cell in the body.

I had felt like that only once, that night the fire had consumed our house and swallowed it in its hunger. My mother and father, they had been fighting for years. They hated each others, or it seemed so to me. Then they had started to blame me and argue with me, sometimes about my drinking and sometimes about drugs I had been using at the time. I felt it was unnecessary as every teenager drank alcohol and used drugs in my eyes. And nevertheless, they had been hypocritical as they were drunk every other night themselves. That made me angry. For over a month before the fire, they were arguing every day, every waking moment. It had felt unbearable to me.

At first I had been scared of getting caught. That is why after burning our house down, I falsely claimed that I had seen my mother go downstairs with a canister that night. It had thrilled me to see her suffer. I had felt good, instead of feeling remorseful. It made me powerful, I could do anything. It was the darkness inside me growling like a hungry wolf. I missed the feeling.