Decisions

The flames were large, poisonous and bright against the dusk sky. But it was the noise that was overwhelming. The roar of the blaze, the yells of our neighbours, the approaching sirens from the fire engines and the weird clicking of our water meter as Blair from next door played the feeble stream of our garden hose through a kitchen window.

I was dazed and my lungs hurt but thank God Marion, David and I were out and safe. So why was Marion screaming in my face.

“We’ve got to go back inside. We have to get the chairs! “

In the confusion and the noise I didn’t understand.

“What, what, why,” I babbled.

She stood up to go somewhere, back to the house I guess.

I grabbed her arm.

“Marion you can’t go back in, you’ll fucking die.”

“The Featherstone chairs. They were Mum’s, I can’t lose them.”

I yelled, “You’re crazy, the house is on fire, listen, the brigade is coming. You want to risk our lives for bloody chairs.”

Her face was twisted with conflicting emotions. Anger, or was it hate settled on her face.

“Not our lives! Yours, you’re getting those chairs!”

She pointed at the house.

“You have fucking time. The den is at the other end of the house from the fire. But you need to go now before the brigade gets here.”

 I knew the tone so I took a few deep breathes. What was the point of arguing?  I stood up before she could look at me like that again.

“Fine,” I mumbled.

I checked to see no one was looking but everyone was watching the tongues of flame flashing out through our kitchen windows.  Marion ran over to David and I ran down the side of the house through the incandescent heat to the back veranda doors. Picking up a pot plant I hurled it at the sliding glass door which promptly crazed but did not break. I screamed expletives and tried again, this time at the picture window in the den. It shattered with satisfying crash audible above the fire’s roar and the sirens. I clambered into the smoke-filled room and in the dim light saw the two Featherstone chairs bracketing the den’s wall shelving which held my turntable, amp, speakers and all my albums.

I stopped in my tracks, my breath hitched in my throat. I could feel little heat but the air was getting smokier and the sirens were very loud and then they stopped. Soon either the fire or more likely the water from the brigade’s hoses would ruin the chairs and my records.

Original New Order and Cold Chisel 12-inch singles, Bowie and Beatles boxed sets, signed Nirvana, Pavement and Billy Bragg albums, coloured vinyl limited editions of The Smashing Pumpkins and You Am I, picture sleeve singles of the Hoodoo Gurus, three thousand and seventy albums versus two chairs and an unloving wife.

I started grabbing armloads of records as fast as I could.

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash