The Body Mafia by Stacy Dittrich Page B

fire crackle interrupted my thoughts. I stood up with the intention of closing the fireplace screen but was thrown against the wall beside me.
    All I could hear was an explosion and glass breaking, and I felt the air being sucked out of the room. My ears felt like they, too, had exploded. It took a few moments to realize what exactly had happened.
    It was only when I crawled to the large hole in the wall, where the windows used to be, that I saw that Michael’s car was engulfed in flames.
    The past had finally caught up with me.

C HAPTER F OUR
    I didn’t realize that I was screaming, or that I might be on fire, until someone pulled me out the front door by my arms. Several of my neighbors had heard the explosion. Everything happened so fast. My screams drowned out all of the voices around me asking if I was okay. Feeling no pain, at least no physical pain, I pushed the numerous arms away and flipped over onto my stomach to crawl on my hands and knees toward Michael’s fiery car.
    Please, God! Let him be okay! my head screamed. At least I think it was my head, but the words may have escaped my lips nonetheless; it didn’t matter. My head felt foggy, like things weren’t real. As the heat of the flames began to burn my face the closer I got, it became all too real. The arms grabbed me again to prevent me from going any farther, and there was no pushing them away this time.
    “CeeCee, no! It’s too hot!” It was my neighbor, Dave McDonald. “Listen to me! Are the kids in the house? CeeCee, please!”
    I shook my head back and forth while listening to the sounds of the wailing sirens, growing closer.
    “At—at Eric’s!” The only words I could manage.
    My eyes were locked on the fiery remnants of the car, looking for anything that would indicate Michael got out in time. I scanned the yard around me, hoping the force of the blast had thrown him far enough away, but I saw nothing. Maybe he was somewhere looking for me. Maybe he thought I was hurt, too. With Dave’s burly arms still locked around me, I began screaming his name.
    “Michael! Michaaael!”
    My voice, hoarse by now, sounded so foreign to me I didn’t even recognize it as my own.
    “Michaaaael!”
    Hearing no response, I began screaming again and felt Dave’s arms tighten up their grip. Time was nonexistent. Things seemed to catapult into fast-forward, and when I looked back at the car, the firemen were putting out the last of the flames, steam rising from the burned-out and blackened shell.
    Feeling the arms around me relax, I pushed them away and attempted to stand up. My legs shook and wobbled but were sturdy enough to get me to the car. When I saw one of the firemen look into the opening of the driver’s side, I knew I should stop. He looked at the coworker standing next to him and began to shake his head in disbelief. Then they all looked at me. Their faces said it all: You don’t want to see this. There were other people around, but I saw none of them. I heard nothing but silence.
    Everyone watched as I made it to the passenger side of the car. The smell of gasoline and burning plastic would have been overwhelming to anyone else, but I was oblivious to it. Focusing on the pool of black, bubbling plastic, formerly the bumper, that lay on the ground, I tried to will myself not to look insidethe car, but it was no use. With my body shaking and my breaths short and quick, I leaned toward the hole in the passenger side, just enough so that I had a clear view of the blackened, charred remains of the body that sat in the driver’s seat. My tongue felt thick, and the bile began to rise in my throat. The sight was too much for my mind to absorb at that moment. It was almost as if my brain kept deflecting the image in an attempt to make it disappear, my mind screaming, I don’t want it! Take it away!
    Unfortunately, the image won. As it sank in and was absorbed, the foreign voice rose again with its horrific screams. It was soon after that I found