The First Fall by Daniel Willcocks

Author:Daniel Willcocks [Willcocks, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Devil's Rock Publishing
Published: 2020-06-27T22:00:00+00:00

6

Tori Asplin

Tori sat at the foot of her bed, basking in the heat of the open fire. The flames cracked, occasional pops exploding as the fire found the knots in the wood and fought to overcome them. Tori had always marvelled at fire. In her world of ice and snow, fire was the yin to the yang. The only force powerful enough to allow people to live this far up north. Fire was the great equalizer, the destroyer of all things. She was almost certain that, over time, fire could eat its way through anything.

Raising a shaking hand to her lips, she tasted the ashen tang of smoke. She drew a deep drag of her cigarette and expelled a grey plume into the air. As the smoke worked its way through her body, she felt a nauseous calm fall over her. A steady beat of belonging mingled with the guilt that her fallout with Karl tonight had drawn her back to her old habits.

Yet another thing to hate him for.

It was easy to hate when you were in the confines of your own mind with no one to break you free or show you another perspective. To Tori, in a matter of moments, Karl had gone from the man of her dreams to the great monster of her fairy-tale. The antagonist who broke her heart, only for her to fall in love later with her true prince.

Good riddance to bad news.

Though, did she truly believe that? Her eyes darted occasionally to the frosted window towards where the clouds had grown dark and the snow whipped across the town with energetic fury. As much as she wanted to hate the man, she hoped that he was okay. She hoped that he arrived home safely. She had been out in storms of this magnitude and the snow had been akin to metal pellets shot from a child’s BB gun. A volley of them striking the skin at once was enough to flush your face pink and cause a numbness that would later hold the possibility of bruising. In her lifetime at Denridge, she had seen some storms, had braved small journeys in hurricanes and blizzards, and even she wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on her worst enemies.

“Let her have him.” Her words barely audible, clamped out as the cigarette met her lips again.

She should have thrown away the pack. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t, as though at some point she knew she’d need a safety blanket at a time in her life where her heart was in turmoil. She glanced down at her phone—a habit she had yet to realize she had developed—and tapped the screen. The signal was still dead. A hundred notifications teasing her with their serotonin hits. Each message, like, and follow an ego boost designed to keep her afloat on a raft sailing across a lake boredom and misery.

Now there was nothing more than Tori, alone, with a burning fire and her cigarettes.

She supposed that perhaps once the storm had blown over in the morning, she would feel different.

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