Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

La Mujer La Negra

The Narrator

It was 10:30. Eduardo Rodriguez left the camp at 6.00 p.m. After dinner, everyone had gone to sleep early before bedtime. Kirt was the exception. He was at the campfire with Sergio Abrigo, who was cleaning up the area, while smoking a cigarette. The night was calm. The smell of the trees and flowers nearby wafted through the air. The air was crisp, and the sky was clear. 

Except for those in Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Seagale's capsules, the lights on the bus had been off. Kirt sat on a log by the fire, staring into its flames. His eyes reflected the light of the fire.  The flames were leaping as if they were creatures trying to flee the blaze. A fly came by and sat on Kirt's right arm. Kirt was too immersed in observing the leaping flames of the blaze, listening to the cracking and popping of the burning wood, disinterested in swatting the fly that was laying eggs on his finger.

As he looked deep into the fire, scenes of his father screaming, shrieking and groaning in those flames flashed before his eyes. He recollected the fire that night, or at least his imaginations of that night.

Kirt was born to an American mother and a German father, both of whom were professors at the University of Wyoming. If only Kirt's parents hadn't perished that night in the fire, he would have been living a comfortable life. He would never have had to bear the name 'orphan,' or 'bastard.' 'Bastard' was a word children of other schools used to stigmatize Wolfgangers during inter-school games.

On the night they perished, a fire had broken out after his father, Liebhard Heinrich, had turned on the gas for an extended time before smoking. The flames had engulfed Libehard as it tore through the cabin, consuming everything in its path. But, Kirt's mother, Melissa Heinrich (née Askolesen), survived. Instead of fleeing when she could, she had thrown herself between the baby and a collapsing beam to protect him, making the ultimate sacrifice. They were far from firefighters, so the neighbors watched in horror as they saw the holiday cabin go down. The lack of screams coming from the house horrified them; for, they feared that the baby and the mother might have died.

An hour later, when the firefighters came, they found the cabin reduced to ashes. Yet they were glad to witness a miracle that night. Despite the fire consuming everything in the house, Melissa's corpse lay unburned. Just a few meters from her was the charred remains of what used to be Liebhard but was then a pile of ash. An autopsy later revealed that Melissa had died not due to suffocation or the blaze but the blunt force trauma she had taken to her head from the falling roof while daring to save her little son. Baby Kirt was alive, breathing, and well, enclosed in her hands when they had found him. He had been sleeping peacefully, indifferent to the fact that his Momma had perished, never to come back again. That incident earned him the nickname Harry Potter had; the next day local headlines called him 'The Boy Who Lived.' This was when Harry Potter had been popular.

Kirt didn't remember the nitty-gritty details of what had happened that night. His 'memories' of the incident were often mental-constructs based on what various journalists firefighters and policemen released about the case. Yet these constructs seemed realistic enough to torture him now and then.

Even though he was grateful to his mother for her sacrifice, he always blamed himself for her death. If only she didn't care about him, she could've escaped alive.

A sharp "thud" startled Kirt. The fly, disturbed by the movement, flew away and in desperation towards the fire, getting burned in the process. 

Sergio stood in front of Kirt with a spear stabbed into the ground."You've got to be careful. It's a bushmaster." 

Kirt looked at what the spear had pierced: a snake that had tried to strike his leg. He froze. His senses blacked out while he thought of his parents.

"One bite from even a little one of this species could kill you," said Sergio as he twirled the serpent into a nest with the same spear he had used to stab it.