Coughing violently, Ricardo Sanchez awoke in a panic. A disconcerting sound filled the room with a threatening ambience . After a short while, he recognized the sound as the sound coming from his own smoke alarm. His eyes burned as he peered into the darkness that had engulfed his once tastefully designed bedroom. He could see nothing, and still disoriented from the disrupted sleep., Ricardo instinctively rolled out onto the wooden floor where the smoke was less concentrated. He pulled his shirt off of his body and covered his mouth and nose.'Where's the door?', Ricardo thought, crawling about and colliding with the furniture in his studio apartment.
"Calm down hombre or you are going to die in this motherfucker.'
With the adrenaline pumping, it was hard for him to remember the layout of his room. The noises from the fire alarm did not help either, it was adding fuel to the pounding of his heart. Ricardo crawled back to the side of his bed and closed his eyes. Collecting his thoughts, he pictured his location and where it was in relation to the door. In his mind’s eye, is where he finally saw it.
He crawled over to the far left side of the room until he reached the door. His free hand slowly crept up the face of the door and began to unlatch the first of several locks. When all the locks were undone he stood back up into the smoke and pulled the door open with a giant heft and immediately slammed it shut, all within the same motion. In that moment of opening the door, a wall of unbearable heat had hit him and his reflexes did the rest Unsure of his next move, Ricardo slumped down to the floor in a defeated posture.
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Ricardo, estranged father of seven, wept quietly to himself.
'I don't want to die like this man...I am too young to die.'
As he sobbed, he came to a terrifying conclusion.
'The window, its the only way out.'
Ricardo lives on the fifth floor of an aging apartment building in Brooklyn, New Yok. His side of the building lacked a fire escape, a feature Ricardo actually liked because it provided, 'better security.' He knew a jump from the fifth floor would be suicide, but to him it was either; do that or burn, and burning was not an option.
He made his way over to the window in a roundabout way. Bumping into his pool table and then a lamp that he knocked over. When reaching the window, he dropped his rolled up t shirt, and began to pull up with both hands. After a few well placed pulls, the window slid open in a herky-jerky pattern. The smoke in the room poured out through the opening, finding its path of least resistance. As he leaned out, he looked up into the sky at the smoke rising.
Out in the cool night's air. RIcardo made deep breathes to replensih his oxygen reserves. Feeling the comfort that the night provided, all in the world seemed well at the momen. He escaped into the delusion, and in the process, ignored the growing threat that was behind him. Behind a fire grew unrelentlessly.
'I could wait here until a ladder truck rescues me. that sounds like a good plan.' he thought as his assessing eyes opened and peered onto the street below.. To his dismay, there wasn’t any fire trucks sight. Only a medium sized crowd of onlookers.
'Shit', he thought to himself.
Exhausted with his energy reserves depleted, he flopped his head into his arms. 'I'll just have to wait here. That's all I can do.' In the distance the sound of sirens grew.
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The situation did not change much when the fire trucks finally pulled up to the burning building. They sprang instantly into action. Pulling hoses and connecting them to hydrants. Pushing the crowd back into what they deemed a safe distance. They also started to raise a ladder towards the trapped man. Looking down, Ricardo could see a news crew filming the whole thing.
'Shit, now everyone is going to see this.', he thought, embarrassed at the possibility of being on the news. He reached back inside and grabbed his shirt to cover up his gut. He also smoothed his hair down.
All the while, fire seeped up through the wood behind him. Camouflaged by the smoke, the fire began to take control of the bachelor’s pad. Ricardo did not notice, until there was an increase in the amount of heat hitting his backside. He glanced back and saw the light from the flames peaking out through moving holes in the smoke.
‘Shit!’. he cursed to himself.
He pulled one leg out and sat on the window sill as he would if riding a horse. When the heat on the inner leg became unbearable, he pulled that one out too. The position that resulted in him sitting on the very edge of the window. To him and the laws od physics, the position was awkward. He began to slip forward some.
He could see a ladder rising from fown below. A fire man was on it, ready to rescue.
'Lord, if you are there, now would be the time. Now would be the time.'....a silent prayer from the devout catholic. He heard some shouts from the street.
"Don't jump!" "Be calm, we are coming to get you!"
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Down below, the crowds saw a desperate man leaning from the edge of his window. A solitary figure, surrounded by a billowing cloud of smoke. They told themselves, they did not want this man to fall, yet they kept watching with an unconscious morbid hope they he would. And then they saw the flames burst forth from behind him like something only witnessed in movies, bright and horrific. The man’s arms coming behind his head as if to protect himself. And then, he fell. Past a rising ladder in the foreground and behind the tops of some sidewalk lined trees. Many looked away and many did not. ‘Where did the man go?’ they thought. “He’s over there!”, exclaimed an over-exuberant child. And they all looked and saw the crumpled body of what was once a man.
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"Shit, that hurt like a motherfucker!", exclaimed the body.
The crowd, fell back a few steps. The body slowly arose from the grassy patch, where it had fallen. A rescue worker rushed to his side and told him to remain still.
"Get the fuck off me!" Ricardo said pulling away. And wincing in pain as he slowly brushed the dirt from his clothes.
He slowly craned his neck to look up at his apartment. Pain shot through his neck, but he managed to get a glimpse of his window as fire shot out of it. Without a thought in his head, no opinion of what had just occurred. Unable to grasp, the fact that it was near impossible feat that was done. He looked away, easing the pain in his neck. He limped over to the rescue worker he had shunned earlier and let her work on the burns on his back. Sitting in the back of an ambulance he leaned up against the wall and fell into a deep sleep.
His last thoughts were, "All my shit is gone."
