Tractor.

Nothing else seemed so important that day. The fires of the inferno filled the fields to the furthest horizon the eye could see.  The sky had a blurred graze that stretched over the town below.  All Vince could think of was his family, his wife Ella, his two daughters Lilac and Penny.  Were they burning right now? He abandoned the thought as quickly as the fire spread.  He was stuck underneath a tractor, the thing wouldn’t move, ‘I’m fucked.  They’re all fucked and it’s all my fucking fault!’, he chastised his feelings as his leg tore underneath the heavy hard rubber wheal. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he tried to pull out his leg, clawing away at his own flesh in hopes that he could bury his hands in deep enough to decapitate his limb.  To no avail he pulled but his leg was caught, there was no way he could release the tractors grip.  Vince remembered stories of people with superhuman strength, how in situations adrenaline would pump through their veins and grant them unheard of powers in crisis.  Vince pushed against the tractor, he heard the wheels move, slowly picking up mud as they did but after what felt like hours the wheel had barely moved an inch.  In the distance were shadows of people on fire, running no different to a frightened heard of cows.  The oils from the factories had made them targets of the fearsome flames, running away into the forest for safety they were spreading the catastrophe more than nature was itself.    Woman and children would sprint past him, some would run over him, oblivious to his existence.  In a moment a thought sprung ‘death is darkness, but I didn’t know I was to die behind a curtain of others. Alone’. His defeatist attitude wormed by every other minute but Vince forced himself to not give up, it was not his life to part from, his family had was to say when he was not needed, not him, not nature, no disaster, no thunder nor storm.
The clouds coated black from the soot, rain poured and dampened Vince, ironically giving him a new lease of energy.  He was a built man, but he had been trapped for hours.  His energy was running low with every failed attempt he had made to move the tractor.  Vince looked into the clouds, hopelessly, looking for something to grant him optimism.  Splashing could be heard, someone was running towards him.  A boy no older than twenty had seen him, Vince recognised him but couldn’t place why the boy’s face seemed so familiar.  ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.  Are you okay, Mister??’  Vince wanted the boy to watch his language, a thought passed through his mind that he wanted to say that to him, but instead he laid flat while the boy pulled his arms and tried to get him free.  A crack was heard, it could well have been a pop.  Vince’s arm had dislocated as the boy hastily tried to get him out from underneath the tractor, pulling too hard he had removed Vince’s bones from their sockets.  The fire moved in closer, no longer leaving silhouettes but the melting faces of those who’ve caught fire running toward him, abhorrent, to stare was agony. 
The boy ran off in panic.  Vince looked on as he ran off, he knew that boy. 
Vince screamed out in pain.  He wondered if this is what a swan song sounded like.  A rhetoric, he knew the answer in his screams.  Flashes on figures coated in black upon a screen of white has he closed his eyes, the boys face reappeared.  He began to curse the boy, it was his fault he had not even the arms to even try and move the tractor.  He resented the boy.   The flames pulled in around him, no longer confined to the forest, no longer confined to the village, they were pulling in on him.  His limb body, his anger at his hopelessness, his resent at his failure to be the family man he prided himself on being.    A roar in the distance flashed in his eyes, what looked like a bolt of lightning struck the tractor and knocked on to Vincent, freeing his leg from the wheel, his body had somehow caught between the driver’s seat.  He had all but to climb away and he could be free, at least from the tractor itself.  He had but one working arm, and a one working foot that seemed to be dead from being rested so long without moving.  He crawled.  Vincent was sure he saw an opening in the blaze, the circling fire of death seemed to give on beacon of hope, he used his strength to leap towards it.  The hours spent ploughing endlessly seemed to be just for this moment and he grasped for his life towards that gap.  The boy stood in the opening, the same one from before.  His face flushed with doubt, but in an obscene act of bravery he ran in and picked up Vincent.  The people who were running in terror stopped in awe.  The boy was barely five foot, scrawny and limp, but carried Vincent, a man who had the muscle mass of a body builder to safety.    ‘Run, you fools’, the boy shouted as his rush of adrenaline hurriedly waned.   He dropped Vincent into a wheelbarrow and hurried him away.  Vincent blacked out.  The boy looked gigantic.  In disbelief Vincent patted on the boy on the back. Though as he walked away he noticed the boy walk off with his wife, his two daughters.  The torment had gotten the better off Vincent.  The women in his life he loved so much were never his, they were a figment, they were the boys.  ‘Boy, pull me back into the flames, I’ve made a grave mistake’.   The boy looked on at his daughters, and turned his back on the old man.  Comforting his daughters he spoke to them ‘some men are just lonely sweetheart, so very lonely’.  Vincent looked on as his family disappeared, hoping, wishing that the flames would hurry up, and black out the figments, and let him return to reality.