Laura's Fire

Laura was a librarian in a small town library. She sometimes thought her life was just as dull as that sounded; at 35 she was single and had always been, lived just outside town in a small house she had inherited from her parents and owned a cat. She was an old maid if there ever was one, and bitterly she thought she might graduate to a crazy cat lady when she got older. She was well on the way as she was seriously contemplating getting another cat from the shelter where she'd gotten Patchy.

Her early childhood had been a happy time. She had roamed the forests and fields around their house with the family dog and hadn't had a care in the world. She had learned to read early on and filled her rainy days with stories, going through the entirety of the town library picture books and moving on to the text only ones before starting school.

School was another matter entirely. She had a birthmark on the left side of her face, covering half her cheek and her ear, and it was reddish and stood out clearly, its surface a little rougher than the rest of her skin. She had never thought anything of it before attending school. It required some maintenance, mainly spreading lotion on it daily, but other than that it was just a part of her, like her hair, which was brown and straight, and her eyes, which were gray. But the other kids weren't used to it, and they didn't seem to get used to it, either; they teased her mercilessly all though primary school. She was socially awkward to begin with, her parents didn't socialize much and she was an only child, made a little strange by her lonely childhood and vivid imagination. Teasing put an end to any and all friendships she might've formed when finally getting to meet people her own age.

The teasing and her insecurity and unhappiness peaked in highschool, then started to diminish gradually as people started to leave her alone more and more. By the time she got to university things were almost alright, the teasing had all but vanished, just its traces remained. She still relied on her own internal world for comfort and entertainment, she didn't have any close friends, she was too wary to really connect with an actual living person. Around the time of her graduation her parents got killed in a car crash and she moved back to their house to take care of the estate, and instead of selling it like she had initially thought she just stayed. She got a job in the library she had so thoroughly scoured in her childhood, settled down, got a cat and a few solitary hobbies such as painting and cross stitching, and stopped anticipating things to ever change.

Sure, she had some romantic dreams. She was lonely and sexually frustrated, unsatisfied by anything she could do to herself, no matter how much toys she ordered from the online sex shop that promised discreet delivery. As vivid as her imagination was it was beyond her to come up with a way to meet a man. She had tried dating while in university, and met a few alright men, had sex with some of them, and some of it had been good and some of it not so much so. It just never had seemed to lead to anything, they'd meet for a while and then it just dwindled down. She hadn't fallen in love with any of them, and she was sure none of them had loved her, either. She just seemed incapable of connecting on that level.

After moving back home things slowed down to a stand still. The pool of available men to draw from simply didn't exist. Most of the people around here she had gone to school with, the vast majority was married, and the rest held no interest, having been amongst the ones to tease her. So she settled on using her toys and her imagination, ordered some of the steamier magazines and books to the library for her to read, wrote some erotica on her own if she didn't find the exact one she wanted to read and just...lived on. Uneventfully.

That early September she was alone in the library. She usually was, their library was a puny one and there was only one other librarian, and their shifts mostly didn't overlap to get to stay open longer. It was a hot day and she was bored, waiting to get home with the latest issue of the magazine she most liked to masturbate to. There was still time until there was likely to be a crowd of school kids coming in to investigate something or other for their homework. The only sound was the whirring of the air conditioning, and she fanned herself lazily with a brochure of the reading circle held at the library on Wednesdays, reading a book which wasn't very good and only held half of her attention.

"Laura?"

She moved her eyes up to the man standing in front of the counter. She hadn't heard him come in, the new electric doors were so quiet. He was tall, bulky, had a stubble of beard on his square jaw. His hair was dark and a bit messy, standing up at the top. She looked at his broad chest, muscles that were clearly distinguishable under his tight black t-shirt, a tattoo half covered by its sleeve, and wondered how he could know her name. She didn't think she had ever seen him before.

"It's Tommy, remember? Tom Holstein."

"Oh!" she said. "So sorry, I didn't recognize you."

Tom had been her neighbor, living in the next house over with his parents. He was seven years older than her and they hadn't socialized all that much, he had been so far ahead they hadn't been in school at the same time. He had moved away from home and the whole town while she still wasn't even in her teens, and they hadn't seen each other since.

Now that she knew who he was she recognized familiar features. Front teeth that were slightly crooked, freckles on his nose, eyes that were the same as ever, hazel brown and lively. She also remembered the rumors she had heard about him, that he had gone wild, done some shady stuff. That he'd been in prison. That he had put his parents to shame, that it was good he was gone and it was better if he didn't come back.

And then it hit her that he hadn't had any problem identifying her. It wasn't very difficult to deduce why. She resisted the urge to draw her hair forward to her face, she knew he knew, there was no point, and yet her mood plummeted.

"What brings you back to these hoods?" she asked, trying to distract herself.

"I'm staying back at the house," he said. "I'm going to renovate it."

His parents had died a few years back and the house had been empty ever since. She wondered why he hadn't come back earlier, to sell it, but didn't ask. Maybe he really had been in prison.

"Oh, we're neighbors again then," she said. "I'm living back at home as well. I mean, it's my home now, I don't live with my parents anymore. They're deceased."

She felt stupid and felt the blush start somewhere at her neck. It sounded like she hadn't gotten anywhere in her life, and well, it was true as well, right?

"Sorry to hear about your parents," he said. "Neighbors, huh? Maybe we'll see each other, then. If we need to borrow a cup of sugar or something." And he smiled.

"Maybe we will," she said and smiled back.

Two women walked in. They stopped at the sight of Tom and then carefully left as wide a gap as they could while passing by. They whispered amongst themselves and glanced back at him, hurrying to go between the shelves. He watched after them and his smile had vanished. He looked thoughtful, solemn.

"So, what brings you to the library today?" she asked.

"Right," he said, turning his eyes back on her. "I'd like a library card. And a few books on renovations if I can borrow them straight away."

"Sure you can," she said and started to set it up for him.

She made him the card and they went to search for the books, and when he had borrowed them he left. She watched him walking out, his boots and faded jeans, and wondered if he was renovating the house to sell it, she had forgotten to ask. She didn't much care of the idea of getting new neighbors. It had been peaceful when his house had been empty.

He visited the library regularly after that, returning books and borrowing others. She noticed with interest that some of the books that were of other topics than renovation were the same ones she had read herself. She would've wanted to discuss them with him but didn't know how to initiate the conversation. He wasn't exactly the type to invite to the reading circle. Nor were the books suitable for the their small reading circle consisting mostly of old women, she supposed.

His presence was noticed around town and not with a good eye. Whenever there was someone in the library at the same time as him they glanced at him with suspicious if not hostile eyes, not making small talk with him. The same was true at the supermarket where she once saw him heading for the registry as she was coming in. She heard gossip, and it was malevolent and sounded like nobody really knew anything. There was also talk of his youth and what a troublemaker he had been growing up. It was clear the townspeople had been glad to see him gone and were not too impressed with having him back.

One week he turned up with a black eye and a scrape on his cheekbone. His eyes warned her not to ask, and she didn't. Later she heard a rumor that he had gone to town on Saturday to grab a beer and gotten into a fight. He really wasn't welcome.

Sometimes at evenings she stood in her yard, listening to the hammering or sawing echoing from the Holsteins. The houses were a few hundred yards apart, but the sound carried clearly in the still of the night. He seemed to be working late most nights.

She thought of going to meet him but decided against it every time. She had no reason, and even though he had been friendly the first time and suggested they could visit each other she thought it had been only small talk. He had pulled back since, he was polite but reserved, and she was the same towards him.

A few times she surprised herself by waking up from a wet dream that had clearly been about him. She couldn't remember the details, but the dreams left her so horny she had to masturbate first thing in the morning. She touched herself in her drowsy not-quite-there state, thinking about him, the muscles on his arms, his brown eyes. She orgasmed so hard it had been awhile since it'd been like that, and the next time he came to the library she almost blushed, thinking he could see it in her.

She got herself another cat just to distract herself from the interest she harbored towards him. It was clearly futile and one sided, and so she tried to push it out of her thoughts.

Patchy hated Kitty. He seemed to think it had been quite alright to be the only cat, and Kitty was too playful for him. It was clear he was annoyed, hissing and clawing at her for coming too close. Laura thought Kitty was a stupid name and that she should change it to something more suitable for an adult animal, but didn't come up with anything sensible, and the name stuck.

The first snow fell in early December and the fields took on a serene wintery look. The hammering noises from his place grew less frequent, and she wondered if he was getting ready. Maybe he would sell the house and be gone, and she would be left in her lonely old maid's life once more. Uneventful. Undisturbed.

-#-#-#-#-#-

Then came that night. Later she was told that it was likely that it was a cat fight that had initiated it; that Patchy and Kitty had chased each other around the kitchen and one of them had managed to turn on the stove. Then they had run up the curtains, pulling them down, causing the fire.

She was asleep in her bedroom on the far side of the house. She had gone to sleep quite late, after a session of restless and quite unsatisfying masturbation. She had left the dildo charging on the nightstand thinking she'd try again in the morning.

"Laura!"

She woke up to a frantic hoarse shout, wondering why there was such panic in it.

"Laura!"

Why was it so hard to see? There should've been the numbers of her digital alarm clock from across the room, she kept it far so she had to get up to turn it off so she wouldn't sleep in. She couldn't see the numbers, it was somehow misty...or hazy...or smoky. She coughed. Smoke, her room was filled with smoke. She tried to shout back, say she was here, but she could only cough.

But now he found her, her watery eyes spotted a stooped figure on the doorway. He came into the room, moving low, something white shining through the smoke and darkness.

"Laura! Thank God, there you are. Come on, we must go!"

It was Tom. He fumbled to the bed and pulled on her arms. He hit the nightstand in his haste and the dildo swayed, and he grabbed it to keep it from falling. He pulled her from the bed, pulled her towards the door with him.

"Stay low! Come, quick!"

She crouched low obediently and they scrambled towards the door. He pulled her towards the hall, out to the snowy yard, well away from the building. She stood barefeet in the thin layer of snow, looking at the house, bewildered and shaken. The kitchen end was burning brightly, blazing. As she watched the kitchen window blew outwards, scattering glass on the snow below. She winced. Flames licked the window sills, climbing and reaching for the outer wall.

"Did you have more than one?" asked Tom. She looked at the fire, mesmerized, how rapidly it grew. She couldn't even feel the cold beneath her feet as she was so occupied with the awful sight of everything she owned being burned away before her eyes, turning to ashes and cinder.

Tom grabbed her arm to get her attention.

"I said, did you have more than one?" he said, looking at her eyes and gesturing towards the house with the hand still holding the dildo. She looked at him, dazed.

"More than one what?" she asked, confused. "Dildo?"

He looked like he didn't understand, she gestured feebly towards his hand, he looked at it and suddenly he burst out laughing. It was a little wild and panicked, like he was barely holding it together, and he threw the dildo into the hellish furnace in front of them in a high arch.

"Oh fuck, I must've dropped my phone in your bedroom and grabbed that instead! I wondered why I couldn't see on the way out, but I just thought it was getting more smoky. Not a dildo, Laura. A cat, did you have more than one cat? One shot past my feet when I opened the door to come and find you."

"No, I had only one," she said. Then she tried to focus, something nagging at the back of her head, and she said, "No wait, I do have two! I just got another one a week ago, I forgot."

He made a move towards the house, but she grabbed his arm.

"You can't go in there," she said. "Can't you see?"

He turned back towards the house and then crouched as part of the roof caved in and a massive flare of sparks flew towards the sky.

There was a sound of sirens in the distance. Later she found out he had called 911 when he was running towards her house, having spotted the smoke as he had been on his yard, but that the firemen had been on another fire site and it took awhile for reinforcements to arrive from the next little town over. And that it was the first time in twenty five years there had been two simultaneous fires in their sleepy little town.

Fire trucks swerved to the yard, knocking her mailbox over. Tom and Laura retreated further out of the way. For the first time she noticed the cold, snowy ground under her bare feet, frosty night air on her skin. Thank God she had bothered to wear a nightgown, so she wasn't completely naked, but it was thin and silky and short and didn't cover much, and now that she thought about it she noticed she was shivering. Her nipples were hard as rocks, showing clearly through the skimpy fabric.

Behind the fire trucks came an ambulance and he steered her towards it, his hands on her shoulders. She noticed he didn't have that much on, either, he had a t-shirt and jeans and socks, but no shoes. The paramedics gestured for them both to come sit inside the ambulance and wrapped blankets around them. They started to ask questions and check their vitals, Tom's as well even though he tried to refuse and make them focus only on Laura.

She sat in the back of the ambulance and looked at her house burning, and strangely she didn't feel anything. She was too stupefied to grasp it, it felt like a dream.

She was taken to the hospital for observation. She was told she was essentially fine, it seemed the smoke hadn't damaged her lungs and she hadn't gotten burned, so she would probably be released in the morning.

-#-#-#-#-#-

She was sitting in her hospital bed in her hospital clothes, eating breakfast and feeling gloomy. She had fallen asleep quite quickly when she was brought in, maybe they had given her a sedative, she couldn't remember. Now she realized for the first time that she had no place to go, she didn't have a phone to call anyone and even if she did she really didn't have anyone to call. She supposed she could ask her fellow librarian, Molly, if she could give her shelter for a night or two. It was clear she couldn't stay with her for any length of time, her apartment was tiny and they weren't really that friendly with each other. Maybe she'd best go to Ed's motel, but then she had no money and no ID to withdraw it from her account. And no clothes to wear to the bank or anywhere for that matter.

There was a knock on the frame of the open door and she looked up. Tom was standing in the doorway, looking at her. He had a plastic bag in his hand.

"Can I come in?"

"Please, do," she said, gesturing to a chair next to her bed, he came in and sat on it.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Seems so," she said. "My lungs are okay and I didn't get burned. And it's thanks to you, you know, apparently I was half unconscious with the smoke. The doctor said he thought I probably wouldn't have woken up on my own."

"Oh, my God," he said and made a move as if to take her hand, but didn't. There was a strange distraught look on his face. Almost like he cared.

"So, thanks for saving my life," she said. "Live to fight another day, huh."

He looked at her closely. "It's almost as if you're not thrilled at the prospect of living to fight another day."

"I am, don't get me wrong. I'm sincerely thankful. It just, it feels like a lot, you know, I lost everything I owned, all my possessions. I've got nothing left. I was just thinking of what to do, I only have the nightgown I had when I was brought in."

"Yeah, about that," he said. "I brought you some clothes. They're mine so they're too big, but I figured it's better than being naked, right?"

"You did?" she asked, surprised.

He nodded and got them out of the bag. Boxer shorts, sweatpants, t-shirt, woolly sweater, socks, even slippers for her feet. He laid them on her blanket and looked at her.

"I, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want to go out to buy anything, because I figured if I didn't catch you here I wouldn't know where you went. Not that I would've known what to buy."

She looked at him and suddenly it was all she could do not to cry.

"Thank you, Tommy," she said. He smiled a little.

"You know, that sounded more sincere than thanking me for your life."

"Yeah, well," she said.

"Where are you going to stay now?"

She went quiet. She almost started a few times, but really she had nothing to say, and eventually she just shrugged.

"You're welcome to stay with me, if you want to."

She looked at him. He looked back, they looked each other in the eyes solemnly for a few moments.

"I have plenty of room," he said. "So really, if you need a place to stay, you can stay over at my place. For as long as you want."

"Really?" she asked, almost dizzy with his offer. She lowered her eyes and fiddled the clothes in her lap, tears stinging in her eyes.

"Please don't cry," he said. "I'm so sorry this happened to you."

She swallowed back the tears.