Arsonphobia: Our muses are trapped in a burning building.
She could hear her heartbeat loud and clear despite the sonorous ringing in her ears. A mix of deafness and hyper-alerted listening, yet she could not identify any of the sounds filling her head. She was overwhelmed.
But how did it end up like this?
She was only there to renew the license of her father’s car. She stood in line, just like anyone else, when the fire alarm went off, and everyone was directed to the nearest exits. It was rather crowded, and the natural course of panic swept over most individuals.
Sera was at the end of the crowd, she knew of another way, a longer one, but deemed it would be faster, considering she was just one person. And so, she left the anxious marching, and made her way back down the, now, empty hallway, all the way to the stairs across the floor.
Then right as she arrived, a sudden explosion blackened everything around her, and knocked her out momentarily.
She slowly sat up, pressing against an ear, and painfully coughing as smoke filled her lungs. She could feel a warm sensation oozing down the side of her arm, and head, and it certainly was not caused by the fire’s heat.
She got up, gritting at her teeth at the sight of her blocked path. But what was that? Behind that flipped bench, she could certainly see someone’s legs.
She rushed over, checking the female’s pulse before anything else.
“Hey, hey! Can you hear me?”
The blonde reluctantly opened her eyes, and Sera breathed a sigh of relief.
The latter nodded, and Sera helped her up once she came to her senses, all while swallowing her own winces. The female limped, likely had hurt one or both of her legs, and so Sera wrapped an arm around the blonde’s waist, and placed the latter’s arm around her own shoulder.
“We need to get out of here, c’mon!” She stated the obvious, though a small encouraging smile stretched upon her lips, and her eyes darted around to the nearest exit.
But no matter where they walked, fire surrounded them. The fire sprinklers worked at top speed, but they weren’t enough. Soon enough, both of them realized… they were trapped.
Everyone else in the building was cleared from other areas. Firefighters likely did not know their location. Their only chance of survival would have to be the capturing of someone’s attention on the outside.
Though risking getting trapped even more, the two entered a room that they could clearly see a commotion outside the building from.
“We need to get someone to see us. Help me break this window.” They each picked up whatever they could find, and threw it at the weakened glass. Both were lucky to be on the fourth floor of a not so new building; one that did not have the extra-strengthened glass.
The two began waving, and yelling, hoping to capture someone’s attention despite the noise.
Finally, someone noticed them, and it was a domino effect afterwards.
Sera sighed in relief once the firefighters’ took note of them too, then turned to her partner-in-disaster and grinned in relief.
“Good job, partner! Seems like we’ll make it out after all.”