House Bound

Ashes to Ashes

A Report

Dr. Sean Green felt numb as he kicked his shoe through the ash, watching on absently as it plumed through the air before settling back among the debris, covering the blackened brick like snow.

He puffed out a shaky breath, averting his eyes to the discarded bottles of alcohol and red plastic cups that littered the sidewalk near where the line of police tape had been established.

Owen Blackbourne stood behind him, surveying the small army of Academy members cataloguing the scene. They combed through every inch of the ruined house, though it could barely be identified as a home anymore. Everything before them was cast in tones of black and grey. The smell of smoke was thick and acrid in the air, inescapable.

After the first body had been discovered under the crumbled ruins over an hour ago - bones that were charred beyond recognition - something important had splintered and broken inside of him. It felt irreparable.

No witnesses, they claimed. Over a hundred kids at that stupid party, and not a whisper of what had happened. All of the students attending the party had woken up on the streets outside as the flames were devouring the last remnants of the house.

       Well, almost everyone.

A gas leak, they suggested, had sent the party goers stumbling outside where they passed out, before the whole house promptly combusted. A massive leak, presumably, that had left not only the attending teenagers, but the entire street's occupants, entirely oblivious and unable to account for the several hours in which the inferno raged. In short, no one knew anything.

Sean turned to his oldest friend, lost for words or a plan of action. He found Owen blank faced and frozen where he stood, his phone in a white knuckled grip.

"Owen... don't look like that. They can't be in there, they just can't."

Owen took a deep breath. "They haven't answered their phones since their last check-in before the party. Everything is offline. Corey says their phones are either off or..." He trailed off, staring at the blades of grass by his feet that were dusted with ash. Broken glass shone like crystal from the dirt, probably from a window blown out in the explosion.

A silence stretched between the two young men, one that grew more suffocating by the second. Their lungs constricted, feeling heavy and agonised as though someone had torn their skin open and stuffed their chest cavities full of smoking debris.

"I can't tell you they're fine, Sean. I will not promise you that. I sent our brothers in there, and now they're missing." His voice hitched, he sounded almost breathless. "There are bodies in that house... and I don't know where they are."

The young doctor shook his head, wanting to deny it, squeezing his eyes shut as the pain rolled in. He had never wanted the great Mr. Blackbourne to be more wrong than he did in this moment. But as usual, he knew that Owen rarely spoke without careful consideration of all the facts. And he would never be so cruel as to crush someone's final hopes, if he truly didn't have a single grain left of hope in himself. He thought they were dead, and if Sean was really honest with himself, he was starting to think they might be, too.

Owen was holding onto his composure by a thread, but the second Sean broke, letting out a gasping cry, he shut his walls back up and savagely shoved away his own grief. He caught his friend as he stumbled towards the ground. They held onto each other as the Academy personnel worked through the wreckage of what used to be a suburban home, sifting for more remains.