With A Vengeance

Chapter 2

2 Present day

Freddie Galloway took the stairs two at a time, the thick black smoke filling his lungs. Even though his joints were telling him to take it easy, his mind was alive and his heart was pumping, telling him he had to get out of here — quickly.

He didn’t want to die by being choked to death by the smoke, nor did he want the flames to take him. He’d worked hard enough his whole life, been shat on from the start, and he wasn’t about to succumb like this. The one thing he’d always had was control, and he wasn’t going to give that up now.

He reached the top of the stairs and crossed the wide landing, before closing his bedroom door behind him. The fire was coming from the front of the house, leaving him with very few options. He paused and turned for a moment, watching the smoke starting to billow under the door and rise, dispersing to fill the room with a thick haze.

It wouldn’t be long. He could see the light changing underneath the door. The fire had already begun to climb the stairs and it wouldn’t be long before it would consume the bedroom door, the flames licking underneath it, blackening the wood.

He blinked, and immediately his eyes reverted back to what was in front of him: billowing smoke, and plenty of it.

The heat was becoming unbearable. If he was going to get out of here, it wasn’t going to be back through the bedroom door: the fire was now too close and the door had begun to radiate immense amounts of heat. He swore he could see the colour of the wood beginning to change as it was charred from behind.

Almost as if he hadn’t noticed it up until now, he started to become aware of the sound of the fire. Not just the crackling and snapping of his prized possessions succumbing to the flames, but the vast roar of the inferno as it consumed every available molecule of oxygen in the building.

And it was a big building. Freddie Galloway had worked hard all his life. He wasn’t a grafter in the conventional sense, but at least he’d worked hard at working smart. He knew a lot of people who’d spent their whole lives doing twelve-hour days and who were now struggling to get by on the state pension. You couldn’t expect anyone to do anything for you in this life. Freddie had learnt that early on.

He had always been proud to tell people he was a stubborn bastard. He made no bones about it. It was what had got him where he was, he’d say. Business was no place for faint hearts. Real men made decisions, and they stuck to them.

Without thinking twice, Freddie hobbled over to the french windows on the far side of the bedroom and flung them open. Immediately, he could hear the fire roaring behind him, gulping down this fresh, pure oxygen that had just been let into the furnace.

With the flames now rising up the inside of the door, Freddie knew he had to act fast. Grunting and groaning, he pulled one of his wicker chairs across the tiled balcony and climbed up onto it, his head giddy with the smoke as he peered over the edge of the railings and down onto the grounds of his house below. The fire had started at the front of the house, and looking down now it would be hard to believe there was a fire at all. The patio furniture stood gleaming in the moonlight, the cool, still swimming pool reflecting the profile of the house he’d worked so hard for.

He knew he couldn’t give his decision another thought. This wasn’t about to be the first decision Freddie Galloway would regret in his long, tough life. The pool was reaching up to him. Unsteady on his feet, he clambered up onto the railings and swung his legs over them, holding on with shaking arms. Pushing his feet off the edge of the balcony, he took one last breath before jumping, watching the image of his falling body reflected in the pool below.