Longer Than She Had

Fire, explosive, violent, vicious.

In fact, it was barely a fire, more like a blinding flash of murderous light, the heat overpowering unlike that of mere flames. The unholy light pulsed through the apartment, hardly contained by the slowly melting concrete confines, heat instantly ridding the apartment of its glass panes. The ceramic of the toilet and the sink reached fever pitch. The gray ceramic, once solid and unbending, caved under the oppression of the heat, flowing and bubbling, losing its shape.

The wood furniture was not spared from the wrath. Once with intricate details lovingly carved in, the surfaces were reduced to nothing but a rough, charred surface, unidentifiable of its former glory. Light linen sheets of the bed and heavy cloth of the curtains were eaten up by the light, only signs of it ever existing were the smoked bits of torn cloth drifting through the stale air, full of heat and void of oxygen. But by far the most horrific sight was the cooked resident of the house. The limp body's torso was chewed into ribbons of disfigured skin, muscle and bone, the blackened ribcage bones stabbing into empty air. The pelvis of the woman was completely reformed, the heat melting the bone completely to lead to a hardened, blackened, and still smoking mass of keratin. The legs, bitten with burn marks in various places, twisting in unnatural positions, a broken shin bone tearing through roasted flesh and muscle, the tendons of a foot exposed by sharp sears in the skin. The hands of the victim, a few fingers missing and replaced by fresh spot, the skin on the backs of the hands burnt and damaged by the ravaging fire. However, the head of the woman was a nightmare inducing level of morbid horror. Patches of her scalp were burnt off, and even the remaining parts of her rich raven hair flaked. Her glassy eyes stared off into the distance, expression one of horror and unexpectancy, edges of her mouth seared badly, one of her earlobes reduced to ash. The collarbone of the woman was exposed, brittle white bone a stark contrast to the darkness of the burnt flesh, with a little bit of her limp esophagus - stiffly burnt, needless to say - exposed from tears in the flesh on her throat. Her beauty before this must have known no limits, but now she was nothing.

She lay limply at what could be assumed to be a table, body slumped forward and laying on the surface which she had lovingly resurfaced with firm, but now melted, glass, guaranteed by the manufacturer to last another three years.

Longer than she had.