PSL - Bought a ticket for a runaway train, like a madman laughing at the rain...

[beyondthisillusion]

There was nothing left of their home. There were bricks and charred palm fronds, broken shards of glass and tattered scraps of carpet. These were the earthly remains of a house, a small ranch style house with a rock and cactus garden in the front and a pair of lawn chairs in the back. But a house, as Danielle had learned, was not a home.

Home was gone. Home was dead.

Around two in the morning, three days after the fire, Danielle limped back to the scene of the crime. She had no real concept of how she'd actually gotten there. Time had ceased to exist for awhile. Absentmindedly, she brushed aside the police tape, walking barefoot over the rubble to where their bedroom had been.

Her heightened senses might very well have suffocated her, if she still needed to breathe. The thick scent of smoke was mingled with blood and burnt hair and the exposed insulation. For one moment, Danielle found the idea of choking to death appealing. One more dream gone, lost to the impossibilities of her impossible life.

She sank down to her knees, picking up a scarred, twisted object. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out what it once had been.