Shehu ran to the door and grabbed the handle but he did not open it. Instead he looked down to its base, to the cloth he had rolled up and used to stop the smoke entering. Thick smoke now poured into the room from the hole in the ceiling. He let go of the door handle and searched the pockets of his trousers and the sides of his top.
Amaka climbed down from the chest of drawers. She stood and watched Shehu searching in his pockets. He looked scared. His eyes were red from the smoke. It was acrid now and tasted of plastic; of chemicals. Something dangerous was burning. The carpet? Synthetic material in some furniture? Wires? It burnt her nostrils to breathe it in. It gathered in the back of the throat where it festered and built, stealing the oxygen from every breath she took.
Shehu looked at her, continuing to search his pockets. ‘Amaka,’ he said. But that was all he said: her name, a complete sentence, submitting to what was to come. To the smoke. The fire. The inevitable.
‘No,’ Amaka said, looking at him. ‘This is not how I die.’
Calmness came over her like she had never experienced. With smoke clinging to her hair like mist, alarms screaming from behind the closed door, and Shehu panicking right before her, her senses became sharper than ever. She saw everything as it would happen, and she felt it all: the abrasiveness of the mattress against her fingers as she gripped its edges; its weight as she lifted it; the heat of the flames when they opened the door; the bursting pain in her chest from holding her breath through it all.
‘Come,’ she said.
She went to the far side of the mattress and began to lift it. Shehu lifted from the other side. He didn’t ask why. They heaved the mattress on to its side, and moved it to the door. She knew it had to be heavy but it didn’t feel so. There they held it steady while Amaka swiped away the cloth at the base with her leg. Smoke rushed in from under the door and she swallowed a gulp of air and held it in her mouth. She poked her head round the mattress to look at Shehu who was holding his breath as well. Then she gripped the handle, turned and pushed.
The sound of the fire was like hissing snakes slithering over gravel. Together they forced the mattress out onto the burning carpet and let it drop length-wise onto the flames. In a puff, they had gained some ground. They lifted the mattress to its full length. It smouldered from a fresh coat of black soot. They dropped it again, fighting the flames towards the stairs. They lifted again, and dropped it again, and they got closer to the flames leaping up from the staircase. Just then a forceful swoosh of white smoke blew up from the stairwell and engulfed the entire corridor. They couldn’t see a thing. They dropped onto the mattress and crouched, coughing, choking, flames behind them, a thick cloud of smoke around them, the edges of the mattress beginning to burn.