wave.
The boy’s voice echoed in the tub. “It’s on my leg. I can’t move.”
The tub had saved him from getting crushed, but Sean needed to get him out before they both burned. He stood and ran toward the bathroom.
He had that empty floating feeling again that signaled his life coming apart in a familiar way. This time though, Sean pushed off and his feet left the ground. His legs kicked up over his head and he spun once in the air before floating above the floor between the hallway and the bathroom.
He stared down at the boy in the tub. The kid stared back with eyes wide and his hands up at Sean. Sean wondered, Am I already dead? Am I losing my mind?
He had taken Oxy enough to hallucinate before. In rehab, the hallucinations had gotten really bad enough during withdrawals that they almost sent him to the hospital. Sean had pretended everything was fine, so that he wouldn’t be found out as an addict outside the facility.
The kitchen table and burning sofa were doing tricks in the apartment too. The yellow tablecloth spread out along the top of the floating table like wings ready to fly away.
Sean swallowed and muttered. “Foster isn’t the only one hitting the ceiling today.”
He shook his head inside his helmet and mask. He reached out and grabbed a piece of wood sticking up from where the wall had broken. The board snapped in his hand and the piece floated away. He clawed at the air more until he caught a section of drywall. It crumbled into dozens of tiny asteroids that cut through the smoke in trails, but finally he got enough of a grip to pull himself forward.
Sean soared forward and down to the tub. He grabbed the beam and yanked with his feet up in the air behind him. It didn’t budge. The boy was unconscious now.
Sean braced his feet against the tub and pulled with little hope that he could move the beam. It popped loose from where it was wedged in the tub and floated up like the kitchen table.
The boy floated up with his arms and legs out and Sean caught him. The ceiling came loose above them from the shifted beam. Sean watched the debris come down, but then pause and spread out in the air above them.
Sean kicked off the tub and floated through the air with the boy in his arms. He kicked off another section of wall in the hall. His boot went through, but he changed his direction and floated out through the wall of burning objects across the room. Sean swept them out of his path to avoid burning the boy.
He saw the cup still spinning and Sean whispered. “What now?”
It suddenly fell to the floor at full speed. The rest of the debris crashed down as well washing flame out across the carpet with the impact. Sean felt his own weight return and he shifted the boy’s body to keep from landing on him. He slammed to his knees.
The entire building rumbled around him in its violent return to reality. Sean charged into one of the bedrooms as the apartment above came crashing completely in.
As the entire building shook, Sean kicked out the glass from the window. He clicked his radio and said, “This is Grayson. I’m at the window. Second floor. East side. I need an exit.”
“We see you,” Carter said over the radio. “I’m putting a portable ladder up now.”
The top rung hit the window frame and Sean looked out to see Carter climbing. He took the boy from Sean and Sean climbed out too.
As they passed the boy off to paramedics, the ground rumbled again and Sean grabbed a lamppost to keep from floating away. The interior floors collapsed inside the brick shell with flame torching up through the windows. The companies blasted water into the ruined building to try to finish it off.
Sean turned and saw Carter staring at him. Sean realized he was still clutching the lamppost.
Carter tilted his head. “You okay, man?”
Sean let go of the post and pulled off his mask. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
There was no chance that Sean was going to confess to hallucinating that he was flying.
They