Love and Other Foolhardy Hobbies [On Hold]

Chapter III

The chaos that ensues freezes me in place. Doors crash open and the pounding of feet thunders from the hall. 

My door slams open. I yelp in surprise as four girls dressed in nightgowns race in, their screams of terror almost worse than their gossiping: high, trill shrieks. 

I watch them from my bed for a second as they cower against the back wall, their wails piercing the air. What on earth are they doing?

I slide out of bed and stand up in front of the fearful girls, my bare feet tingling from the cold wood.

"What on earth are you girls doing here?" I ask.

For a minute none respond. None even seem to have noticed my presence or acknowledged my question. They huddle on the ground, clutching each other and sending up first-time prayers for safety. 

Finally, one tearful girl, Evangeline, meets my eyes, her lip quivering and sobs breaking out every few seconds. "We're being attacked!" she manages to muster up before her entire body starts shaking with bawls. 

I roll my eyes. This isn't the first time that the girls' over imaginative minds have played tricks on them.  I kneel down in front of Evangeline, take her hands and pull them away from where they cover her eyes. 

"Evie... there is no attack. I'm sure it was simply one of the men getting too rowdy. Listen... no other gun has fired. I'm sure that if we were under attack, the entire ranch would be rained on by bullets and suffocated with smo--"

My words hit a wall when an ear-splitting crack sounds out from the window. 

But I can't move. My eyes wide in shock and disbelief, I can only stand transfixed as more gunshots and smoke suddenly fill the air.

A particularly loud gunshot sends me flying out of my stupor. I race for the window and peer out. In the clearing between all the buildings, through the smoke and dark of knight, I can make out a group of men. They stand beneath the single tree in the middle of the courtyard, their guns drawn. Bursts of light flash with every shot and the air seems to be filled with firecrackers. 

Something crashes through the window to my left and I yelp, jumping back and guarding my face from the flying glass with my arms. When the shattering shards settle, I open my eyes to the sight of a glass bottle, strangely stuffed with a piece of cloth.

The entire room quietens. 

Suddenly, a girl jumps to her feet. "Bomb!" 

My gut grows cold.

All at once, the level of noise in the room sky-rockets. The girls start screaming at the top of their lungs and scramble over each other to get to the door. I follow the group as they push themselves through the doorway. But I'm too late. The bomb detonates and I am flung out of the room and into the hallway wall. My back explodes in pain and I struggle to find a breath. Smoke pours out of the bed chamber. Flames lick the outside wall. 

I stumble to my feet, and throw myself towards the stairwell. I nearly topple down the stairs but somehow, I manage to stay on my feet as I bounce back and forth between the walls bordering the stairs but nothing registers in my mind other than the blazing fire that seems to be racing up and down my back. Within seconds though it dulls out. I peer over my shoulder to my back and am shocked to see that my nightgown is merely singed into spots of black and brown. But throbbing pain still follows me with every movement. Something must have cut me as I flew out of the room.

The footsteps of the girls thunder throughout the house as they race back and forth, panic gripping them so tightly that they can't even tell where they're going.