(YYSLSC) If only he had known...

“For the third time this year fire-fighters across Britain will go on a week long strike demanding more pay; once more the military will be expected to do the service until the strike ends…”

The television droned on in another room, not that Michael could hear it; though it heavily decided how his next few days would be spent, instead he was talking to the woman he loved. You see, Michael was in the military, and would almost certainly be chosen to serve in the temporary fire-service. The person he loved was a school teacher in a nearby town, he had no real need to speak to her over the computer, for he saw her almost everyday, but his life did not seem complete if he did not speak to her every chance he got and so he would often log onto a computer during any free time and contact her.

Of course, the countries entire fire-service starting a strike on the same day, with only two days notice is sure to cause much confusion for those who intend to replace the life savers. Perhaps that is why Michael was aloud to leave the military compound he was at over the weekend, perhaps nobody will ever find out what happened. Regardless; we can be sure that Michael did not question why he was given such a chance to spend and entire weekend with his love, and so he left within the hour only giving a brief goodbye to many comrades who, having seen the news earlier that day could not quite understand what he was up to.


I think now would be a good time to find out more about this ‘love’ of Michaels. We should start with her name, Lucy, a common name perhaps, but not to Michael. To Michael it was the sweetest name a parent could have ever given to her. Lucy worked as an English teacher at a nearby secondary school; it was the maturity of her students that allowed her to sit back and talk to Michael on her laptop, barely any interruptions would ever cause her to leave her conversations; for she too seemed to need Michael just as much as he needed her. Or perhaps the root of there devotion to using the internet to communicate went back to the way they met, but we’ll cover that later.
Lucy was a young teacher, much younger than Michael; and that inevitably led to many of her friend to believe that Michael did not truly lover her; oh how they would be proven wrong in the days to come. Lucy knew though, she knew that their love was pure and nothing would ever stop them getting married. Oh, did I forget to say? Michael and Lucy are engaged to be married upon the 6th of June, The five year anniversary of the day they first met.

Lucy met Michael completely by accident whilst using the internet, another reason for her friends to not feel Michaels love was pure. Though many people thought she was too old to use social networking sites, Lucy had always felt quite at home using them; one day whilst bored she released her email address to the public in the hope that someone would start to talk to her. It was then, that she first met Michael when he sent her an email, it was nothing special at the time but the relationship quickly grew.


“ Hey, I saw your addy on your profile page… oh noes that your sick  What you up to? Watching tv or just sick in bed. ”
Whilst the email sent does appear to be from a typical teenager, it was from the thirty year old Michael, he had never quite grown out of using the ‘internet language’ that his generation had largely formed. Perhaps another cause of Lucy’s’ love for Michael, he acted in a way that people who surrounded her for much of the day did. He was someone she felt she instantly understood.


Michael waited outside the school gates for Lucy to appear, as she would do promptly on three forty five, every day except Friday; on Fridays she would leave the school at three fifty, something most people would dismiss. Not Michael though, he remembered the times, you may think it was due to his military career, but he was generally noted to have a lacking memory. He just couldn’t help notice anything Lucy did; such was his love for her.
When she saw him her eyes widened, as did his, as did the other mans.


Continued....

Lucy was stunned, Michael was enraged, the unknown man was fearful. He needn’t have been however for Michael turned and walked away. Lucy called for him to stop; she had to explain everything to him, she had to tell him the affair had not been going on long.
She did love Michael though, she loved him more than any man she may have been having an affair with, but sometimes Michael reminded her too much of her students. The same thing which had attracted her to him then repelled her from him at times of intimacy.
Michael walked back to his car, furious, but not with the man, oh no, never with the man. He could understand only too well why the man liked Lucy, to Michael Lucy had always been perfect. No, he was angry with himself, he thought he knew Lucy, but something so major had happened between them and he hadn’t even noticed. He didn’t even know Lucy anymore, he never thought she was capable of something like this, and he wasn’t wrong in feeling this way. It was an act completely out of character for Lucy; nobody could have seen it coming.

It may have been of some comfort to Michael to know how Lucy really felt, but he could no longer convince himself she felt anything for him. He could only see the bad in the situation, and now he had two whole days of time when he would be able to do nothing but think of Lucy, think of the times they had spent together, think of the love they shared, look at the photos from Paris, remember….remember better times…




DAY 1// 0800 HOURS
63 Miller road Sampton

Michael awoke at this time, a single fresh tear sliding down his face, though he knew more would soon follow and so decided it was time for a long shower. He would not notice the tears if he was in the shower, it was a place he might gain at least some respite from the endless tears and depression.

// 0830 HOURS

After the shower Michael prepared a late breakfast, nothing fancy, just some cereal from the nearby supermarket. Usually Michael could not stand the taste of cereal, he only had a box because of… well you know, because of Lucy. He did not care though, he couldn’t taste anything, he couldn’t feel anything, he couldn’t move on.

// 1000 HOURS

It was about now that Michael gave up on possibly hoping achieving anything today; instead he resigned himself to watching day time television. The day went by slowly, with brief periods of normality, grossly overwhelmed by floods of tears and curses. More than once Michael was on the verge of suicide, he had even reached the point of writing a letter.

//2200 HOURS

Michael went to sleep…


The next day was much of the same, though Michael no longer verged on suicide, he was not getting over it by any means. He was merely deciding that this person must have made her happy, and that’s all Michael wanted after all; for Lucy to be happy.



Monday was a culture shock for Michael upon his return to the military base, him having missed the political mess that had caused the fire-fighters to strike. Though he was soon assigned to a ‘fire team’ and sent to do some basic training. He needn’t question why the fire-fighters had gone on strike; he knew the government was only working for the benefit of its own members, and not of the country. It had happened before and it would happen again, perhaps the one good thing that had come from the governments complete lack of leadership was Britain’s troops being brought back home, albeit to deal with problems that the police, and indeed fire-service should have been dealing with.


By Lunchtime Michael and his team were already in a fire station joking about the ‘thoroughness’ of their training and how it would prepare them for whatever they might face. Though secretly of course, this humour was being used to cover the fear they all shared; going into a burning building is dangerous enough, the lack of knowledge and anybody who had done the job before made it an incredibly high risk job. But nevertheless, they knew that many men women and children relied on them to save their lives, and they were all prepared to die for that.

If only it never came to it…

The first call of the day sent horror into ever mans eyes, or the five teams stationed at the fire-station, three had been called out, with a further two teams being called from another station.
The commanding officer gave a small ‘pep talk’ though ended it on a highly serious note.

“Somebody will die today, it might be someone trapped in the building or it might be one of us, but somebody will die today. This fire is too big to claim no lives. You have all been thrown into this situation very quickly and we all know you haven’t had half the training you need. I’ll regret this, but, if you don’t want to come then go now. I shan’t stop you.”

The three teams stood there awkwardly staring at each other, and then back to their commanding officer. The government had made military punishment much harder, it was not uncommon any more for a soldier to be shot for insubordination; the sergeant would be killed if anyone found out what he had just said. Though this did not change any of their minds, innocent people depended on them, and none of them would ever forgive themselves if they did not go on this fateful mission.

The roads were unusually empty, the fire engines the army had stolen from the fire service reached their target in mere minutes, oh yes they reached their target. A large secondary school. The large secondary school Lucy worked at.
Michael’s eyes widened with terror, he didn’t know how, but he knew she was still in the building, just as he knew he would save her… and that he would be the one man who died today.

As the team disembarked the vehicle Michael found a team from the other fire station who were already there, he of course asked if anyone was inside to which the soldier replied with sorrow in his eyes.

“A woman went in to save a kid, she got him out threw a toilets window, but then the frame gave way and she got trapped. The flow above went down on the window after, we can’t get to her… it’s, it’s Lucy, Mike; we can’t save her”

The man did try to apologise to Michael, but he never heard it, he had already started sprinting towards the front doors of the building. He couldn’t hear the shouts behind him, the roar of the flames drowning them out.
As he got through the front doors he was met by a group of small fires but was surprised out how the quickly disappeared. The school hardly seemed touched.

Last one


He reached her within minutes. She was sitting crying on the hard floor, she heard him come in and looked towards him. But it was no use, dirt and smoke had got to her eyes already, they were causing her so much pain and so many tears were flowing from them that she could see no more than a blurry humanoid figure; it could have been anyone. Something Michael realised when she called out for ‘John’; again she called for him begging him to help her. It hit Michael that John must be the man she was seeing, and thinking how John must have made her happy he simply said “Yes, it’s me”.
He slid to the floor next to her and cuddled her; he had to get Lucy out somehow. He went back to the door and checked the corridor he had come down, alas the room had fallen since and it was blocked. The fire was closing in, and fast; Michael and Lucy were trapped by the advancing beast. It occurred to Michael how odd it was to be blocked by something he could walk straight through…His fire proof clothing would protect him long enough, but that blockage stopped all his hopes.

And then it hit him, in the rubble, floor tiles, those cheap pieces of foam schools across the country used. He rushed back into the toilets and there they were, staring down at him, if he could push the tiles away the floor above would surely have some weak points.
So it was decided, he picked Lucy up onto her feet and gave her his fire-proofed jacket, then he lifted her up and shouted at her to try and break through. Se prevailed over the tiles immediately, but the wooden flooring above was harder…she did however get through eventually. And then she screamed, the flames licked around the whole and Michael could see that the room was engulfed in flames.

She called to him that they could still get out and put her arm back down through the hole to grab Mich…I mean Johns hand, but the floor started to break, the combined efforts of Lucy breaking a hole and fire damage to the floor had weakened the area around the hole.
Michael pleaded with Lucy “Go, go now I’ll be fine. Get out of here Lucy!” But she still tried to pull Michael up until a larger section of the floor fell; she started to cry tears of sorrow, called “I love you John” and went…

Michael once more slid down to the floor; he accepted his fate as he had done before he even entered the building. Lucy would get out and be happy, all because of Michaels acts, and so he could die a happy man. He did not scream when the fire reached him, his was long lost into thoughts of Lucy, a small smile on his face that never faded.


If only he had known who John was; you see John was not the secret lover of Lucy’s. John was her cousin. When Michael had first caught Lucy with Steven she had realised what she had done, she had never spoken to Steven again, but could not bring herself to speak to Michael. She was sure he would never forgive her.
John had gone to stay and Lucy’s and comfort her until she could build up some more courage.


Or maybe it was better that Michael never knew the truth, after all he died a happy man sure that the women he loved was happy with this John person. Michael died with no regrets in his life, he only goal in life was Lucy’s happiness and with his last act in life he had assured that.

Writing isn't really my thing, and I have NEVER written in this style before so it probably reaks of pure 'suckishness'.

But ahh well, theres my sort of ruined anti love love story.

It seems rather rusehd towards the end because I started to approach the character limit and had to cut lots out.

well I thought it was beautiful

It's a mix of dreams and some real life bits, I really wanted to go into more detail with it though.

For instance when Michaels life is shattered over the weekend the story starteds introducing it like a military schedule with the time; in the story it makes no sense but it was meant to reflect how how personal life had no meaning and he was stuck in the mentality of being in the army. Though there was not enough room to get all that in.

Oh well Glad you liked it.