Fallon died in a fire.
No, seriously.
No, seriously.
The Fire in Barren Pines
It was 1am. For most students, that meant sleep – a dream, perhaps, some snoring. For others, it meant sneaking out of a bedroom to dart down happily to the room of some other student, to do things that should probably not see the light of day. It was the normal heartbeat of a school full of teenagers; it bubbled with hormones and awkwardness like a babbling brook of prepubescent carp.
For Fallon Iva Novette-Naim, it meant only one thing: organizing marbles.
Ever since the wave of bacterial meningitis had swept through the school in a deadly wave, Fallon had been… off. Her usual puzzle regime was stepped up to two puzzles a day. She cooked so much that the skin on her fingertips had worn down from handling hot pans. Her blouses were starched so thoroughly they were practically cardboard. Entire Tupperware containers were filled to the brim with painstakingly cross-stitched flowers and leaves and small paisley shapes. She even decided to purchase a steam cleaner for her rug and habitually vacuumed her entire room, applying twice the effort in the spot where the rotted corpse had fallen out of her closet during her date with Serenade.
Kneeling on the carpet, she let her eyes flicker to that spot. The closet. The blood in the sink had been terrible, but it was not so serious that Fallon couldn’t partition it off in her brain with large DO NOT CROSS emergency tape wrapped around it. The skull faces on her puzzle had been a cruel surprise, but no more jarring than when Andeon did any number of stupid pranks at Fallon’s expense. No – it was the body in the closet. Serenade had been there too, and from the look of terror that the two girls shared, Fallon knew that this was not a hallucination. When she was a child, Fallon used to imagine things all the time – things that weren’t there. It would be silly things: a giant red stain on her parents white carpet, splattered red sauce all over the stove, something red and puffy dragging a thick trail from her bedroom to the back porch. Always red, always filthy. Her head would grow hot, heart thumping wildly, and Fallon – as young as five years old – would rush to the pantry to grab every cleaning supply known to man so that she could scrub until her finger bled. Then her parents would come home to find their little girl trying to clean up a stain that wasn’t there, all the while dragging her own blood across the carpet. With time, Fallon learned to control her impulses, but she still saw things from time to time, things that weren’t there.
Lifting one hand to the tall clear vase that housed 1/3 of her marbles, Fallon felt her fingers tremble. She curled her hand back to her chest, rubbing at it with her thumb. No. Don’t shake. Get it under control. A woman in control does not shake. Three tall vases sat on the ground in front of her, each filled with different amounts of sage, turquoise, magenta, and clear marbles. Any time someone might visit the room, the marbles would be in a different order, seemingly random, based on whatever mood Fallon was in at that time. She raised her eyes to the vases, fought to smile. So perfect, so orderly. They always did what she said, they always were waiting for her, they never disappointed. Beside Fallon on the pale purple bedspread, the remaining marbles sat in four neat Tupperware containers and waited for her attention. Once she organized these, Fallon was certain she would feel better, more in control. With each dropped glass marble, she felt a weight slip out of her fingertips, a comfortable feeling settling back into her chest. Yes, this was what she needed. She needed this.
Stretching her hand wide, Fallon lifted the marble again, dropping it with a sharp c***k in to the waiting vase. Behind her, the electric kettle began to whir. The girl hopped up from her position by the marbles, long pajama pants covering most of her bare feet, and crossed over to her desk. She set a single clear mug on the counter and dropped a few pinches of leaves into the cup. Her hand reached for the electric kettle – and then she stopped.
Fallon tilted her chin up ever-so-slightly and sniffed.
Once, twice, three times.
Her eyes fell back to the electric kettle.
Fallon resumed pouring her cup of tea.
The building was on fire, and Fallon knew it the moment she allowed herself to focus on the wafting drizzle of smoke feeding slowly into her vents. She had the nose of a bloodhound; it was almost supernatural. Without trying, Fallon could name the ingredients of every meal that her schoolmates cooked – regardless of what floor they were on. It was a freakish thing, and as a teen, her uncle jokingly gave her the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind. It told the story of the boy who had such a strong nose that he had the ability to make the best perfume in the world – using the essence of murdered women. Uncle Laurents had meant it as a joke, but Fallon did not take it as one. She loved every word of the book, dog-earing all the pages in the manic way she always did and subjecting her parents to nightly readings at the dinner table. The family had to endure months of Fallon highlighting the skill and beautiful creative thought of Jean-Baptiste, the story’s young anti-hero, who understood that great art takes sacrifice. Fallon would never forget the way her mother looked at her and said, “Yes, my love, but Jean-Baptiste is a murderer.” It was as if she believed that fact could actually undo the genius of his work. Standing beside her desk, sipping tea, Fallon wondered idly what Jean-Baptiste would do if she smelled his home on fire. Would he run? Or would he remain to sample the bouquet? It was a silly thought, and one that kept Fallon from dealing with the helplessness of her current predicament.
This was not a good time for a fire. She had already started her tea, and so there could be no stopping. She had already started her marbles, and so there could be no stopping. She was already in her pajamas with no makeup and would need to dress properly before exiting her room. These were all things that took time – and Fallon never rushed. The corner of her mouth twitched uncomfortably, heart beat rising steadily. She sipped at her tea for a few painful moments and then set it gently on a hand-knitted coaster. In the background, the smell of smoke rose in plumes in her unconscious, and she felt it whisper closer and closer like the hand of death.
Freed from her tea regime, Fallon crossed briskly to the marbles. She lifted the first one, hand shaking and paused. Breathe, breathe. She tried again, hand steadied, and began to distribute each marble one at a time. The two people who lived inside of Fallon battled with each other. One told her to run – and to scream for those whose lives she cared about: Leonette, Andeon, Serenade, Yvette, Pierrette… Fallon wasn’t sure she could call all of them friends, but she was not ambivalent to their deaths. That was enough for her. And then – standing beside that voice, there stood another. A louder voice. It told her to organize marbles. It told her to keep her breathing even. It warned her in a voice low and ominous of all the terror that would befall her if she did not keep her system, if she did not preserve order. When she tried to take a step back, it slid up beside her, wrapping its cool hand around her wrist and forcing her to lift each marble and drop it in a specific place. A deadly dance, and one that she lived with every day. The other part of her mind faded quietly into the background, replaced by nothingness. Fallon was not a person. Fallon was a meat machine driven by an internal operator who did not care about who Fallon was, or about the value of her life. It told her to do things a certain way, and to punish those who did not follow her. And like a leaf reaching toward the sun, the young teen bent easily under its sway.
The smoke was rising thickly now, reaching in from the vent in her carpet. It had started on the first floor? That was no good. The heat that cooked the floor beneath her began to warm her carpet, bringing drops of sweat to her forehead. She reached for her nightstand and pulled out a white rag, padded lightly at her forehead. In the minutes it took Fallon to organize her marbles, the fire had crawled up through the stairwell and invaded the second floor. By the time she rose from her spot, fingers trembling, and crossed to her door, it was already too late. She touched the metal once, and her fingers hissed. Her hand jerked backward, but Fallon could not stop. She had to touch it twice more. The second time, tears stung her eyes from the pain, and on the third, she gripped and tried to turn. Flakes of her skin stayed behind on the doorknob. Lifting her marred hand to her face, Fallon watched as ribbons of red flowed freely from the wounds, encircling her wrist like a bracelet. There would be no exiting through the door. Glancing to the window, she could see the orange-red blur of flame licking up the window frame.
There were no other exits.
Fallon stood there for a moment, hand trickling blood onto her shirt where she held it. Okay, okay. The fire was coming. She could not control that. But there were others things here, other things for her to do. Moving slowly to the desk, Fallon retrieved an ace bandage and slowly wrapped her hand, neck prickling from the waves of heat moving in through her bedroom. The smoke made her cough, but she did not react other than a few shudders, covering her mouth gently. Next, she moved to her closet, stripping down out of her bloodied pajamas and sliding into a purple dress – her favorite. She had worn it the first time she met Leonette and was certain it was the only reason the girl had paid her any mind. Slipping in to a pair of heels, Fallon crossed to the mirror, slowly applying makeup. All around her, the walls seemed to hiss. It took her a matter of moments, and then she crossed back to the center of the room, looking at the paradise she had created.
Everything was just where she wanted it. Everything was in its place. And there she was – dressed perfectly in the center of a perfect room. She was imprisoned by this place, by the compulsions that made her create it, and now – by a fire. It made sense, she thought, in some perverted reality. Fallon did not think of her parents. She hardly thought of her friends. She thought only of her rising heartbeat, the fury burning behind her eyes. A fire was going to destroy it all. There was no fire extinguisher in her room; it had not been allowed. She did not have enough flour to snuff out the magnitude of the flames. Everything she had worked to create would be consumed by flame.
Her chest rose unevenly, and her fists clenched at her sides. The movement made Fallon let out a quiet whimper, her hand bleeding through the bandage. What else could she do? A puzzle, maybe. Start some needlework. As if in response, the floor fell away in the corner of her room, taking with it her desk. The electric kettle hung from its cord attached to the wall, thumping out an uneven beat. The floor swayed, and Fallon jumped toward her closet, landing on her knees. The room took on an unnatural rhythm, a beat that Fallon could not follow, and she clamped her hands over her ears and screamed, ”STOP IT!” to an empty room. She could not die in discord. She could not spend her last moments losing her mind.
Staggering to her feet, Fallon stumbled to her nightstand, to the metronome that sat beside it. It always calmed her down. A painted nail unhooked the metal lever, and it began to tick steadily in the background. Yes. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Fallon's eyes dropped to half-lids, her breathing slowing. She could not move from the metronome, could not watch her paradise melt around her. Another shattering crack, and her bed slid down into the hole in the floor, half her room sucked down into the flame. She gasped and grabbed the metronome from the nightstand moments before it too fell down. Fallon scooted backwards on her knees, back pressed up against the closet door. The metronome sat like a heavy weight in her hands, adding a beat to the disorder plaguing Fallon. She closed her eyes; she tried to put herself in to the metronome, to imagine herself as a tiny beat on a sheet of music.
Her eyes popped open sharply, only to glance down at the metal ceiling fan that had skewered her through the stomach. Oh – when had that happened? Fallon let her mouth fall open, blood rushing warm and fast down her dress. Flames climbed up the walls and crawled across her ceiling. The marbles she had organized were thrown to the floor, scattering wherever they could. Most fell down the slowly growing hole in her floor. Fallon wanted desperately to release her rage, to tear someone else limb from limb, but there was no one here. Only her and the flames.
Tilting her head back to the closet, Fallon tried to laugh, but stopped short, the pain in her stomach sucking out the sound. She had never thought much about how she would die. Consumed by flames and cooked alive? If there was a God, it was a cruel, ironic, uncaring figure. A person who was willing to force her to watch the thing she cared most about dismantled before her eyes, to force her to be burned to death, and to give her no companionship. Fallon set the metronome down on the ground beside her. There was only one support beam left, and when it burned enough to fall, Fallon would plunge in to darkness. She just had to wait.
A stray hand reached up to her neck, fingering the silver Star of David charm that always dangled there. Fallon loved Judaism as an institution, but it was the God behind it that she had some misgivings about. Moments from death, would she find her utopia? Would she feel a hand wrench her from the darkness? Sitting there in the burning room, she thought now of the God that she struggled with, the uncomfortableness of being controlled by another being. In Judaism, there is gigul and ha'atakah – reincarnation and transmigration. Before returning to God, a Jewish soul may be transmigrated and reincarnated anywhere from three to one thousand times, continuously moving until its work is achieved. Fallon believed her life had not been fulfilled. For one, she needed to reorganize her room once the fire was out, and for two, she had a purpose, a drive, a desire. She had no idea what it was towards, but passion boiled beneath her icy exterior, a passion that needed to be released. There was dybbuk too; perhaps she would just possess the body of another? Perhaps she could live inside of Serenade, or Miss Johnson, or Leonette?
Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine herself out of her surroundings. She tried to put herself in a plain white room full of things to be organized. In that place, she tried to add the faces of those women she adored. Beautiful faces, beautiful people. Miss Johnson crouched behind her, pulling back her hair. Leonette came to her side, resting a hot hand on her shoulder. Serenade came to her other side and repeated the motion. Quiet little Yvette hovered timidly at her feet. Then Pierrette came in, and Abeline was there too. Even Laney Sutton with her stupid potted plant. They all surrounded her, kneeling beside her. They smiled and pressed scorching fingers into her flesh. They smiled and dug in their nails. They smiled and wrapped their arms around her. Together, Fallon and the women fell into darkness, the splintering of wood echoing around them, wrapped in each other's arm.
Fallon fell in to the room below her. The metronome had melted. Her necklace, too, had melted, fusing onto her skin as a silver star in the center of her chest. Would it serve as a pass into a heaven? Fallon could not find it in herself to believe it to be true. She could not find the reserves to hope anymore, not when everything she had created was destroyed, not when all control was lost to something as simple as fire. As the last whispers of life drifted from her, Fallon fought to tap her fingers against the ground to keep the pace. Her heart beat slowed, fell out of rhythm. Her chest sputtered weakly. Blood gurgled in chunky pops from her abdomen. Her own body rebelled against her. When Fallon finally felt the whiteness in her head pop, she did not feel peace. She did not feel sadness. She felt only disappointment, and the look froze in her eyes for a moment before her entire body was swallowed up by the fire.
For Fallon Iva Novette-Naim, it meant only one thing: organizing marbles.
Ever since the wave of bacterial meningitis had swept through the school in a deadly wave, Fallon had been… off. Her usual puzzle regime was stepped up to two puzzles a day. She cooked so much that the skin on her fingertips had worn down from handling hot pans. Her blouses were starched so thoroughly they were practically cardboard. Entire Tupperware containers were filled to the brim with painstakingly cross-stitched flowers and leaves and small paisley shapes. She even decided to purchase a steam cleaner for her rug and habitually vacuumed her entire room, applying twice the effort in the spot where the rotted corpse had fallen out of her closet during her date with Serenade.
Kneeling on the carpet, she let her eyes flicker to that spot. The closet. The blood in the sink had been terrible, but it was not so serious that Fallon couldn’t partition it off in her brain with large DO NOT CROSS emergency tape wrapped around it. The skull faces on her puzzle had been a cruel surprise, but no more jarring than when Andeon did any number of stupid pranks at Fallon’s expense. No – it was the body in the closet. Serenade had been there too, and from the look of terror that the two girls shared, Fallon knew that this was not a hallucination. When she was a child, Fallon used to imagine things all the time – things that weren’t there. It would be silly things: a giant red stain on her parents white carpet, splattered red sauce all over the stove, something red and puffy dragging a thick trail from her bedroom to the back porch. Always red, always filthy. Her head would grow hot, heart thumping wildly, and Fallon – as young as five years old – would rush to the pantry to grab every cleaning supply known to man so that she could scrub until her finger bled. Then her parents would come home to find their little girl trying to clean up a stain that wasn’t there, all the while dragging her own blood across the carpet. With time, Fallon learned to control her impulses, but she still saw things from time to time, things that weren’t there.
Lifting one hand to the tall clear vase that housed 1/3 of her marbles, Fallon felt her fingers tremble. She curled her hand back to her chest, rubbing at it with her thumb. No. Don’t shake. Get it under control. A woman in control does not shake. Three tall vases sat on the ground in front of her, each filled with different amounts of sage, turquoise, magenta, and clear marbles. Any time someone might visit the room, the marbles would be in a different order, seemingly random, based on whatever mood Fallon was in at that time. She raised her eyes to the vases, fought to smile. So perfect, so orderly. They always did what she said, they always were waiting for her, they never disappointed. Beside Fallon on the pale purple bedspread, the remaining marbles sat in four neat Tupperware containers and waited for her attention. Once she organized these, Fallon was certain she would feel better, more in control. With each dropped glass marble, she felt a weight slip out of her fingertips, a comfortable feeling settling back into her chest. Yes, this was what she needed. She needed this.
Stretching her hand wide, Fallon lifted the marble again, dropping it with a sharp c***k in to the waiting vase. Behind her, the electric kettle began to whir. The girl hopped up from her position by the marbles, long pajama pants covering most of her bare feet, and crossed over to her desk. She set a single clear mug on the counter and dropped a few pinches of leaves into the cup. Her hand reached for the electric kettle – and then she stopped.
Fallon tilted her chin up ever-so-slightly and sniffed.
Once, twice, three times.
Her eyes fell back to the electric kettle.
Fallon resumed pouring her cup of tea.
The building was on fire, and Fallon knew it the moment she allowed herself to focus on the wafting drizzle of smoke feeding slowly into her vents. She had the nose of a bloodhound; it was almost supernatural. Without trying, Fallon could name the ingredients of every meal that her schoolmates cooked – regardless of what floor they were on. It was a freakish thing, and as a teen, her uncle jokingly gave her the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind. It told the story of the boy who had such a strong nose that he had the ability to make the best perfume in the world – using the essence of murdered women. Uncle Laurents had meant it as a joke, but Fallon did not take it as one. She loved every word of the book, dog-earing all the pages in the manic way she always did and subjecting her parents to nightly readings at the dinner table. The family had to endure months of Fallon highlighting the skill and beautiful creative thought of Jean-Baptiste, the story’s young anti-hero, who understood that great art takes sacrifice. Fallon would never forget the way her mother looked at her and said, “Yes, my love, but Jean-Baptiste is a murderer.” It was as if she believed that fact could actually undo the genius of his work. Standing beside her desk, sipping tea, Fallon wondered idly what Jean-Baptiste would do if she smelled his home on fire. Would he run? Or would he remain to sample the bouquet? It was a silly thought, and one that kept Fallon from dealing with the helplessness of her current predicament.
This was not a good time for a fire. She had already started her tea, and so there could be no stopping. She had already started her marbles, and so there could be no stopping. She was already in her pajamas with no makeup and would need to dress properly before exiting her room. These were all things that took time – and Fallon never rushed. The corner of her mouth twitched uncomfortably, heart beat rising steadily. She sipped at her tea for a few painful moments and then set it gently on a hand-knitted coaster. In the background, the smell of smoke rose in plumes in her unconscious, and she felt it whisper closer and closer like the hand of death.
Freed from her tea regime, Fallon crossed briskly to the marbles. She lifted the first one, hand shaking and paused. Breathe, breathe. She tried again, hand steadied, and began to distribute each marble one at a time. The two people who lived inside of Fallon battled with each other. One told her to run – and to scream for those whose lives she cared about: Leonette, Andeon, Serenade, Yvette, Pierrette… Fallon wasn’t sure she could call all of them friends, but she was not ambivalent to their deaths. That was enough for her. And then – standing beside that voice, there stood another. A louder voice. It told her to organize marbles. It told her to keep her breathing even. It warned her in a voice low and ominous of all the terror that would befall her if she did not keep her system, if she did not preserve order. When she tried to take a step back, it slid up beside her, wrapping its cool hand around her wrist and forcing her to lift each marble and drop it in a specific place. A deadly dance, and one that she lived with every day. The other part of her mind faded quietly into the background, replaced by nothingness. Fallon was not a person. Fallon was a meat machine driven by an internal operator who did not care about who Fallon was, or about the value of her life. It told her to do things a certain way, and to punish those who did not follow her. And like a leaf reaching toward the sun, the young teen bent easily under its sway.
The smoke was rising thickly now, reaching in from the vent in her carpet. It had started on the first floor? That was no good. The heat that cooked the floor beneath her began to warm her carpet, bringing drops of sweat to her forehead. She reached for her nightstand and pulled out a white rag, padded lightly at her forehead. In the minutes it took Fallon to organize her marbles, the fire had crawled up through the stairwell and invaded the second floor. By the time she rose from her spot, fingers trembling, and crossed to her door, it was already too late. She touched the metal once, and her fingers hissed. Her hand jerked backward, but Fallon could not stop. She had to touch it twice more. The second time, tears stung her eyes from the pain, and on the third, she gripped and tried to turn. Flakes of her skin stayed behind on the doorknob. Lifting her marred hand to her face, Fallon watched as ribbons of red flowed freely from the wounds, encircling her wrist like a bracelet. There would be no exiting through the door. Glancing to the window, she could see the orange-red blur of flame licking up the window frame.
There were no other exits.
Fallon stood there for a moment, hand trickling blood onto her shirt where she held it. Okay, okay. The fire was coming. She could not control that. But there were others things here, other things for her to do. Moving slowly to the desk, Fallon retrieved an ace bandage and slowly wrapped her hand, neck prickling from the waves of heat moving in through her bedroom. The smoke made her cough, but she did not react other than a few shudders, covering her mouth gently. Next, she moved to her closet, stripping down out of her bloodied pajamas and sliding into a purple dress – her favorite. She had worn it the first time she met Leonette and was certain it was the only reason the girl had paid her any mind. Slipping in to a pair of heels, Fallon crossed to the mirror, slowly applying makeup. All around her, the walls seemed to hiss. It took her a matter of moments, and then she crossed back to the center of the room, looking at the paradise she had created.
Everything was just where she wanted it. Everything was in its place. And there she was – dressed perfectly in the center of a perfect room. She was imprisoned by this place, by the compulsions that made her create it, and now – by a fire. It made sense, she thought, in some perverted reality. Fallon did not think of her parents. She hardly thought of her friends. She thought only of her rising heartbeat, the fury burning behind her eyes. A fire was going to destroy it all. There was no fire extinguisher in her room; it had not been allowed. She did not have enough flour to snuff out the magnitude of the flames. Everything she had worked to create would be consumed by flame.
Her chest rose unevenly, and her fists clenched at her sides. The movement made Fallon let out a quiet whimper, her hand bleeding through the bandage. What else could she do? A puzzle, maybe. Start some needlework. As if in response, the floor fell away in the corner of her room, taking with it her desk. The electric kettle hung from its cord attached to the wall, thumping out an uneven beat. The floor swayed, and Fallon jumped toward her closet, landing on her knees. The room took on an unnatural rhythm, a beat that Fallon could not follow, and she clamped her hands over her ears and screamed, ”STOP IT!” to an empty room. She could not die in discord. She could not spend her last moments losing her mind.
Staggering to her feet, Fallon stumbled to her nightstand, to the metronome that sat beside it. It always calmed her down. A painted nail unhooked the metal lever, and it began to tick steadily in the background. Yes. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Fallon's eyes dropped to half-lids, her breathing slowing. She could not move from the metronome, could not watch her paradise melt around her. Another shattering crack, and her bed slid down into the hole in the floor, half her room sucked down into the flame. She gasped and grabbed the metronome from the nightstand moments before it too fell down. Fallon scooted backwards on her knees, back pressed up against the closet door. The metronome sat like a heavy weight in her hands, adding a beat to the disorder plaguing Fallon. She closed her eyes; she tried to put herself in to the metronome, to imagine herself as a tiny beat on a sheet of music.
Her eyes popped open sharply, only to glance down at the metal ceiling fan that had skewered her through the stomach. Oh – when had that happened? Fallon let her mouth fall open, blood rushing warm and fast down her dress. Flames climbed up the walls and crawled across her ceiling. The marbles she had organized were thrown to the floor, scattering wherever they could. Most fell down the slowly growing hole in her floor. Fallon wanted desperately to release her rage, to tear someone else limb from limb, but there was no one here. Only her and the flames.
Tilting her head back to the closet, Fallon tried to laugh, but stopped short, the pain in her stomach sucking out the sound. She had never thought much about how she would die. Consumed by flames and cooked alive? If there was a God, it was a cruel, ironic, uncaring figure. A person who was willing to force her to watch the thing she cared most about dismantled before her eyes, to force her to be burned to death, and to give her no companionship. Fallon set the metronome down on the ground beside her. There was only one support beam left, and when it burned enough to fall, Fallon would plunge in to darkness. She just had to wait.
A stray hand reached up to her neck, fingering the silver Star of David charm that always dangled there. Fallon loved Judaism as an institution, but it was the God behind it that she had some misgivings about. Moments from death, would she find her utopia? Would she feel a hand wrench her from the darkness? Sitting there in the burning room, she thought now of the God that she struggled with, the uncomfortableness of being controlled by another being. In Judaism, there is gigul and ha'atakah – reincarnation and transmigration. Before returning to God, a Jewish soul may be transmigrated and reincarnated anywhere from three to one thousand times, continuously moving until its work is achieved. Fallon believed her life had not been fulfilled. For one, she needed to reorganize her room once the fire was out, and for two, she had a purpose, a drive, a desire. She had no idea what it was towards, but passion boiled beneath her icy exterior, a passion that needed to be released. There was dybbuk too; perhaps she would just possess the body of another? Perhaps she could live inside of Serenade, or Miss Johnson, or Leonette?
Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine herself out of her surroundings. She tried to put herself in a plain white room full of things to be organized. In that place, she tried to add the faces of those women she adored. Beautiful faces, beautiful people. Miss Johnson crouched behind her, pulling back her hair. Leonette came to her side, resting a hot hand on her shoulder. Serenade came to her other side and repeated the motion. Quiet little Yvette hovered timidly at her feet. Then Pierrette came in, and Abeline was there too. Even Laney Sutton with her stupid potted plant. They all surrounded her, kneeling beside her. They smiled and pressed scorching fingers into her flesh. They smiled and dug in their nails. They smiled and wrapped their arms around her. Together, Fallon and the women fell into darkness, the splintering of wood echoing around them, wrapped in each other's arm.
Fallon fell in to the room below her. The metronome had melted. Her necklace, too, had melted, fusing onto her skin as a silver star in the center of her chest. Would it serve as a pass into a heaven? Fallon could not find it in herself to believe it to be true. She could not find the reserves to hope anymore, not when everything she had created was destroyed, not when all control was lost to something as simple as fire. As the last whispers of life drifted from her, Fallon fought to tap her fingers against the ground to keep the pace. Her heart beat slowed, fell out of rhythm. Her chest sputtered weakly. Blood gurgled in chunky pops from her abdomen. Her own body rebelled against her. When Fallon finally felt the whiteness in her head pop, she did not feel peace. She did not feel sadness. She felt only disappointment, and the look froze in her eyes for a moment before her entire body was swallowed up by the fire.
