The Burn Unit

Flashing. Ringing. Searing. Every sound is piercing. Screams echo in the distance, perhaps the wallowing cries of my own agony. Voices skitter around me like maggots over a corpse, or rather like doctors over my burnt flesh. I desperately want to open my eyes and make sense of what’s happening, but I’m not even sure if I have any. All I can remember is my bones snapping against the guardrail, the putrid smell of gasoline, and then, the flames. I can make out pieces of conversation… Can she hear us?... 98% of her body… I doubt she’ll make it through the hour… Dying seems like a precious gift, a neatly wrapped package adorned with a bow. Out of everything in life I once feared of losing, I never expected to be clutching so tightly to death. The only breaths I can take from my smoke-filled lungs are jagged. Slipping. Falling. Fading.