( december 24th )

[firegap]

She woke up to the sound of someone screaming. Only with her eyes wide open, did she realise it was her own voice, rising and falling and breaking on the way. Pauline Ernestine was engulfed on every side by flames, they were sucking on her bedlinen, on her hair, on her clothes. She was bright ablaze. She was aflame.

I have entered Hell, she thought to herself at the edge of consciousness, where every outline looked black and the smoke seared, the heat suffocated. She stumbled out of bed, throwing herself at the floor, hard parquet, unforgiving stone, but it could not quench the flames. The granite and the wood. It was all burning, it burned, it burned.

Like a match in the night, she ran to the doors, threw them open with her whole body's weight. The stairs at the end of the hallway seemed unreachable, but she kept moving forward, desperate, thinking, if Hell is here, the descend must surely lead to death, to rest, to peace.

Soon Pauline Ernestine would learn, there is no fall that annuls fire.