Jen sat on the roof of the prison house, trying to forget about the war. The stale loaf of bread she had managed to steal from the kitchens sat by her feet, covered in ash. The foul smoke that filled the air burned at her lungs and throat. It made her eyes sting, or was that just her guilt bubbling up through her tear ducts?
Down below her, thousands of gas-masked soldiers marched in perfect time to a vicious drum beat. Right, left, right, left. Jen breathed in deep to stop the tears, but the effort made her cough. The general at the head of the soldiers’ death parade stopped and looked up. He shouted something and pointed at her. Jen struggled to her feet, her lungs rejecting the poisoned air. She wondered feebly if she could stay conscious long enough to get back to the air vent that led back to her camp. She doubted it.
Down on the ground, the soldiers had stopped marching. A few of them pointed their guns at her and one popped the top of a grenade. Her smarting eyes tried to make out whether they had set them to stun or kill. She blankly doubted that it mattered; this air would kill her far more painfully than even the most torturous of their little toys could. Even so, she tried to limp towards the small hole in the chimney that would lead her to the air vents again. She knew that she wouldn’t make it, but she was still surprised when the arc of electricity hit her in the back.
It was less painful than she had expected it to be. She might not have even noticed it if she hadn’t smelled something burning. The blast must have hit some of her clothes, where the fabric had been made so flammable by the gasoline filled air that they had burned at once. Strange. It didn’t hurt. It sort of felt like a warm bath. That was probably because the sharp electric current had overloaded her brain’s pain centers. Still. It felt kind of nice.
She coughed on the jagged air in her throat. It didn’t hurt anymore, but she was still struggling to breathe. The caressing flames were almost at her head by now. She knew dimly that she was already dead, but she didn’t want her head to go under. She strained, like she used to do in the swimming pool as she dog-paddled out of the deep end. She strained to keep her head up in the air, where it belonged.
But this wasn’t the swimming pool. There was no paddling out of this. Fire is fire, and flames always burn.
The fire then engulfed her head. She tried to inhale, and the flames rushed joyfully down her throat. They blistered the inside of her lungs, and she felt them burning through. She fell to her knees, and tried to cry, but she couldn’t seem to find the energy. Either that or her tears had been boiled away by the intense heat of the fire.
She started to panic, and tried to raise her arm to brush away the flames. Through the flames, her bleeding eyes saw why. All of her skin and muscle on her arms and legs had been burned away. As she watched in horror, her tendons began to blacken and burn before falling off.
Jen fell down upon her face. Her neck twisted in a strange direction, in a way necks were not supposed to bend, and she found herself facing the forest, towards her old camp. Maybe someone would see her. Maybe they would save her and let her breath again. She wanted air; she needed it. But her lungs were long gone. The fire was inside of her. It was burning her away from both sides.
Her eyes had the fire all around her. The fire started to eat away at her eyelids. They finished them off easily, but, ever ravenous as it was, it wanted more. It began to devour her eyes next, taking its time, knowing that she couldn’t escape.
She knew she should have been dead by now, why didn’t this ceaseless torture end? Give me air, or give me death! It almost made her laugh, but she had no air to laugh with.
Her sight was beginning to develop splodges, the fire was eating them away much more quickly now, like it was done savoring her, or was that just her brain, lacking oxygen and blacking out for the last time.
The spots grew wider and wider, until only a tiny smudge of light could make it into her line of sight. She looked into the forest, hoping desperately to see someone – anyone!  As the crack in the darkness closed, she finally gave up. Her nonexistent lungs groped for the oxygen she knew wasn’t there, trying to catch hold of a ray of hope. Hope that was fluttering just out of reach. And then that hope was extinguished, as the last little smudge of light she would ever see was blacked out, and she knew no more.
In the woods, a small boy sat on a log. Jen had said she would be right back after she got them some food. She said so, and Jen never broke a promise. He would stay right here, until his sister came back.