Women Are Hell

The bodies fell to the floor in a heap, the man kicked them into a pile. He walked around the makeshift bonfire, pouring gasoline onto the corpses. The sound of a lit match echoed against the walls. The flame illuminated his shadow in the tiny window on the door. He dropped the match into the collection of bodies. 1

Within minutes the pile was burning. The flames grew and spread as the fire caught the gasoline. He stepped back, away from the heat. He laughed as he turned his back on the sizzling flesh. The laugh turned to a cough and he covered his nose against the smell of decaying flesh. 2

Confidently he walked to the metal door. The door was already beginning to get warm to the touch. He wasn’t worried as he grasped the handle. His smile slipped as he realized the door was locked. He pulled again, harder. Sometimes these old doors got a little stuck. He began to panic when it still wouldn’t open. 3

“Sir? The door is jammed.” 4

“No.” The man on the other side replied. 5

He blinked, confused. He stared at the door. What did he mean no? Surely the door couldn’t have locked its self. His boss wouldn’t have locked it, that was the sole reason he had come- to make sure he could get out. 6

“Sir, the door is stuck.”7

“No.” The man replied again, calmly. 8

“Sir, open the door please.” He yanked on the door. The door had gotten hotter, and he burnt his fingers. He cursed at the burns, forgetting the dull ache in his shoulder. A glance back at the bodies revealed that soon the fire would reach for his own flesh. He needed to get out of here. 9

“No.” 10

That one word froze him to the ground. It chilled his fearful soul and made his heart thud with panic. He had to have misheard him. He wouldn’t really kill him, that was murder. 11

“Sir, I’ll die if you don’t open the door.” His voice was hoarse, and fading. He began to cough and sputter on the smoke from the fire, he was having trouble breathing. 12

“Always destroy all the evidence.” That was the only response he received. He banged on the door, screaming and begging to be released. 13

The door was too hot to touch, and there was no oxygen for him to breath. He was dying. The flames finally reached for his body, and he threw himself against the wall beating to get away from the fire. His screams became on long piteous noise, broken only by his coughing. He was alone. The only one to witness his death were already dead. 14

No one came to his aid; the door opened long after he had joined death. A prisoner among prisoners, his body had turned to ashes like the others. The man stared into the room from the window on the door. Through the remaining flames, he could see the burned skeleton. There was nothing left but ashes, and corpses too fragile to move. 15

He slid the latch from the door, walking away as the door swung open. Slowly the fire spread from the room. It grew on the rotted wood and oxygen. 16