Trial By Fire, Sentenced By Water

With a dramatic flick, the classic lighter bursts to life, the fierce glow flickering in the subtle wind. The woman’s auburn hair matched the flames colour, and her ambition matched its potential for growth and destruction.

The log cabin ahead, strongly built by her grandfather eighty years ago, stood solum next to the lake. All was quiet as the mist rolled in over the tall damp grass; the cabin made no sound but aged creeks.

The occupant inside was dead asleep.

The heel of her knee-high boots crunched as the woman began a leisured walk out of the forest, onto the gravel path, in the direction of the lake.

The lake bared itself in the clearing, allowing the moon and the stars to gaze down upon it just as it gazed up at them. When the sun was out and bright, the lake could only be best summed as the paramount of picturesque; during the night it held no obligations, its deep waters dark and repressed to the naked eye.

Eighty years ago, the grandfather built the log cabin next to the lake for one reason alone: how still the lake was. With hills to the East and the thick, tangled forest to the West, it was protected from most elements. When it rained – as rarely as it did – the water remained unfazed, blobs falling from the sky.

There was an unprecedented stillness to this lake; it hung in the air like cigarette smoke clung to unwashed curtains. You could inhale and feel it in your lungs like a sickening case of pneumonia. The mist that rose from it clogged your brain like sticky fog on the marshlands.

Her grandfather picked this spot for the cabin because of the lake’s picturesque stillness, complete and utterly unaware as to the consequences that would come from that.

About ten yards from the porch of the cabin was a floating dock that extend out into the lake. Walking straight past it, the woman marched herself right up to the cabin and stopped at the first step up to the porch.

She flicked open the lighter again.

Breath shaky, she closed it. Flinging the rucksack off her back, ripping the zipper open, revealed four clear liquid bottles, with cloth stuffed into the necks. Placing each one on the step in a neat row, she flung the now empty rucksack onto her back.

Holding the square lighter on her open palm, she took a moment to be as still as the lake, reading the engraving.

We Burned Brighter

Love Tess

With no second thoughts, the woman picked up the first bottle, lit the cloth and threw it with vigour through the left-side window. The sound of the glass shattering was deafening, the noise enough to wake even the dead; the disturbance echoed like water rippling across the lake. Flames grew instantly, glowing. Moving fast, she did the same with the second bottle, throwing it through the right-side window. Quickly again the third, throwing it up through the second story window.

Finally, the fourth bottle she picked up and lit. Stepping backwards, admiring her work as the flames flickered and glowed, the heat starting to become unbearable to be near. Nonchalantly, she tossed the last bottle spinning and watched it crash across the porch.

Walking further and further backwards, until she was parallel with the floating dock, the woman with auburn hair stood there and watched the fire grow and morph throughout the cabin, engulfing every inch. It was perfect. Flames dancing, destroying something that should have never been built.

Suddenly, there was a disruption in the perfect moment, as a window on the second floor facing out towards the lake, exploded open as a person desperately threw themselves out of the burning cabin and fell into the lake with an ungraceful splash. The ideal stillness was tainted, as the disturbance to the lake’s surface caused ripples to spread outwards.

Eventually, the water grew still again, and the woman waited to know if her desire was complete.

It was not.

The person – another woman – burst through the water’s surface, gasping and spluttering. Winter pyjamas tried to sink her with the new weight, but she was an excellent swimmer. Once the internal panic of venturing from one extreme temperature to another in a blink faded from her mind, she gathered her sense and began to swim towards the floating dock.

Tutting, the woman with auburn hair made her way in the same direction, looking to finish things.

The woman in the lake focused on her breathing as she swam in the direction of the floating dock, so focused on making her destination, she didn’t notice the figure in a long coat and knee-high boots walk down the dock. She wouldn’t notice until she’d start to climb out the water on the ladder.

The women started at each other, one on the dock, the other half in the water standing on the ladder. The flames from the cabin birthing an illuminating light in the darkness, as mint-green eyes started back at the same mint-green eyes.

“Becca?” The woman on the ladder gasped from shock and cold, trying to calm her breathing.

“Hi Tess,” the woman with the auburn hair spoke, voice as icy as the waters. “You dyed your hair.”

“You always said we should try not being identical.” Tess’s voice was laced with bitterness as her consciousness was starting to comprehend the reality of the situation on front of her.

“Well… Least I know what I’d look like blonde now. Have to say, you should have tried being a brunette, might have suited better.”

“It was all you, wasn’t it? Grandpa’s missing will, Ericson’s accident, those threats to the Willow sisters.”

“I can’t believe you’re only figuring it out now. Maybe blonde does suit you.”

“Why? WHY?” Tess screamed from her gut, the anxieties, the desperations of the past weeks climaxing into this moment, coursing into her veins.

“Its like Mummy always said,” Becca leaned down, producing a gun from behind her. Tess froze, staring up with a blazing hated. “'We burned brighter than them, so their fires went out first.' And now, my fire will burn brighter than yours, and you want to know why?” Kneeling, gun pointed at her sister’s face. Tess didn’t take her eyes off the barrel. “Because you were never fire. You’ve always been too soft to even be mere embers to warm someone’s hand. I’d call you simply ash, but you couldn’t get hot enough to leave any behind.”

“You’re right,” Tess whispered, looking down.

“Oh, say that louder to fuel my flames.”

Tess snapped her head up, the world silencing. “You’re right,” she rasped sternly. “I was never fire.”

“Exactly!”

“I was always water.”

“Wh-?”

Becca was so caught in the possibility of having her ego fuelled by her twin, she let her concentration slip for just a moment. That moment was enough, for Tess, to push the gun upwards was she flung her arms around her sister’s neck, and then pulled both of them back into the lake.

The sisters submerged into the darkness of the icy waters, the glow from the cabin’s flames a distance above them. Under the water felt like a whole new world. Murky vision, muffled hearing – all sense mulled. Ignoring the frost growing on her bones under her skin, it was almost like home to Tess; the waters were so much calmer than her life above it.

Not for Becca though.

Becca was drowning.

Clawing her way to the surface, Becca broke through first, gulping for air, splashing, panicking. Realising her sister had not broken the water, a sinking feeling crept through her, starting in her gut and ending in her throat.

Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? Where was she?

Suddenly Becca was yanked downwards, gurgling water into her lungs as she went. Tess used her sister’s body to pull herself upwards and then pushed down on her to help break the surface. Filling her lungs with enough air, Tess then drove her sister and herself down under the waters together.

Becca struggled, a muffled scream ripping from her under the water as she thrashed, attempting to get out of the chokehold she was in. Kicking, clawing, hitting – Becca fought for her life, but unfortunately, fire had met water and after some time, eventually Becca’s flame went out.

Feeling her sister’s body go limp, Tess let just her face go above the water for a little sample of air. Going under again, she held the body down. Finally sensing the numbness from below, Tess let go. Without looking back, she swam up for air. Treading water as she watched the cabin go up, she contemplated how it all ended up this way.

Their entire lives had been trial by fire and now their sentence was by water.