It was cold and I was naked as I walked through an iced forest. White snow was dressing tree limbs of great oaks, weeping willows, the frozen earth, and I was shivering as an opaque shawl of white fog grew nearer to me.

As I walked, I felt warmth and the further I moved into the great cloud I grew warmer. The ground felt hot on my bare feet and I was having trouble breathing. I could feel my tears, that just moments ago were frozen on my lips, melting.

The heat was scorching, the cloud no longer a malicious drape on my skin, but now it was grey smoke and it was choking me. Yet, I couldn't stop walking into this furnace for I knew something, something fateful and perhaps odious was waiting for me within the forest.

The towering trees ignited and began to explode all around me.

Fire was everywhere, splashing at my skin, begging me to enter it, to open the door of flames, for it promised me if I did my journey of pain and desperation would finally be seared from my brain.

Blink, Blink, Blink.

My eyes slowly opened. I had been dreaming, but this was no dream.

My loft was filled with smoke. My eyes blasted wide open and I saw that the entire street side of my loft, right near the bay window I had been sitting at earlier, was on fire. Flames were slashing through the windows. I saw blue and red lights pulsating along my face through the smoke. Standing, I stepped on my bottle of tequila and screamed as my ankle twisted and I fell to the floor.

Prone on the floor, I moaned in pain and terror as I went to my knees, tried to stand, screamed from the pain of my twisted ankle, and fell on my rear end. I could barely breathe. To my left, one entire wall was glowing red. I could see flames glowing under my security door, as well as trying to melt their way through the wall.

More smoke approached as I used my good leg to push myself backwards across the floor. After several moments my back was pressed against the only wall where there was no fire and less smoke. I bunched my knees to my chest. I did not feel the pain of my ankle, I was hyperventilating. I felt panic as the fire ate its way towards me.

I knew that this is where I was going to die.

I heard sirens far down below on the street. More blue, yellow, red lights mixing with the ever-increasing smoke on my face. The fire now was so intense that I could do nothing else but leer at it.

I was ready to die, but not like this, not this way.

For some reason I prayed, not to any particular god, as I felt the heated tears of fire begin to touch my murmuring lips. My eyes closed, I was coughing, could barely breathe, and where was God? Where was he or she? I begged, pled, not like this I prayed as the world around me exploded.

Suddenly there was a tremendous hacking sound. My blue eyes opened, and then I heard it again. Hack, Hack, Hack.

The far wall opposite the street seemed to disintegrate, as a hole ripped out of the wall appeared within the flames and smoke. My eyes were stark as a god, or was it a tall giant, appeared. There was an axe in his gloved hand, oxygen bottles on his back, a pith helmet on his head, a clear face plate covering his face, and his tan fire-fighting gear was on his tall, powerful-looking body.

Through the smoke and flames he moved towards me. He reached me, went to a knee, and for a moment, a micro moment, our eyes locked. He was a she. Her eyes were Indigo blue, and what I saw clearly was a goddess, and I was clearly disorientated, choking on the smoke, close to death or unconsciousness as I smiled and whispered, "You've come for me...I have been waiting."

"Yes, I have come for you," she replied.

She smiled and touched my short blonde hair. I could see tufts of her hair under her helmet. She touched my face as she pulled another oxygen mask from the tool belt connected to her tank. She pushed my hair from my forehead and slotted the mask on my head. I immediately felt the rush of pure oxygen as the back walls exploded and fire rushed at us. She instantly fell upon me, protecting me from the fireball. The heat was so intense that her boots were on fire.

The fire somehow was sucked back into the wall as she withdrew what looked like an aluminum blanket from her pack and draped me in it, head to ankles. As if I were a twig, she lifted me in her arms, and with axe in hand, my arms around her powerful neck―she smelled like smoke and fire―she stood, turned, and leered at my iron security door. It was glowing red, and smoke and flames were trying to seep under it. There was no retreat there.

I did not know if I was dreaming still, or even if I was alive, or if this was really happening to me. She turned, looked down at her boots that were on fire, took a small extinguisher from her tool belt and ignited it, extinguishing the fire.

She took a moment, stared across the burning loft, thought, and looked again at my eyes. I could see her clearly. Her eyes appeared to be glowing as she took out the ventilator from her mouth and smiled―God, her smile was remarkable―as she whispered, "Hang on."

Before I could reach out and touch her burnt and black-smudged face, she turned and began to run through the flames and smoke.

She approached a wall―on the other side was my hallway―the smoke was thick and I could hear her breath bellowing out of her lungs. I felt the power exuding out of her lean, six-foot-two body. She looked everywhere, shook her helmeted head back and forth and made her decision.

She laid me on the floor, kneeled along side of me and took her ventilator from her mouth, smiled and whispered, "Stay."

I nodded my head, smiled back, and she smiled at me again. She replaced her mouth piece, and with a ferocity that I did not know that a woman, a real woman, had, she began to hack her way through the wall.

Instantly more smoke mixed with the chorus of sirens I heard from somewhere off on the streets. She returned and lifted me like the noodle that I am. I poured my arms around her neck and pressed my face against her neck, my feet dangling like a marionette that has had its strings severed.

Once in the hallway, she hesitated, for there was a wall of smoke and flames in front of us, and for the briefest of moments I thought I could feel her heart pumping blood through her body.

She tossed me over her shoulder fireman style, and with me banging my head against her back, staring at her cool tool belt, she began to run.

In and through the flames and smoke we dissolved, and along for the ride, I was smiling, for I actually felt safe being protected by this giant of a woman. Caught within the vortex and my body feeling the intense heat, we reached another door, my neighbor's. She hesitated. Why, I did not know, but she did.

She went into a crouch at the side of the door on her knees and protecting my body. She engulfed me entirely with her own body and fireproof tarp as she opened the door.

Instantly flames exploded out of the door past us. After a moment she peeked around the corner, saw something, stood, flopped me on her shoulder and ran across the exploding room to an open window. She stalled at it, and me still hanging on her shoulder, she moved through the window and out onto a ledge.

I could hear sirens and people screaming, and see the colored fireman lights pulsating everywhere.

As she nudged down the ledge, three stories above the street, I could see fire trucks, ambulances and firemen everywhere. Crowds were lining the fire lines and gawking at the death trap they were witnessing.

There were no ladders yet, as she moved to another window, looked through it, saw something and still balancing both of us, she axed her way through the window. We crawled inside and began to run toward another door, me still hanging on for dear life.

For what seemed like a lifetime―my lifetime―she ran, and I could feel the fire and heat on my feet. I thought that I was dreaming as I suddenly felt a blast of ice-cold winter air engulf my entire being.

The smoke and fire parted and I could hear men yelling. Then I saw the brittle black sky filled with stars and a full moon as my giant fell to her knees. Somehow, she laid me gently upon the earth as I heard men running, and then I saw no more.

Red, Blue, Red, Blue.

I awoke on a wheeled gurney. I was covered with a blanket and an oxygen plate mask was on my face and my blistered and burnt feet were bandaged as the paramedics were moving around near their red and white van. I could hear explosions behind me and the roar of fire, so angry, so filled with fate, as well as hate, everywhere.

At the open doors of the paramedic van, the EMTs hesitate as what appeared to be another fireman in a black Captains uniform talks to them, giving them instructions, I assume.

I lifted myself and stared at the entrance to my loft and gasped. There she was, on her knees, paramedics surrounding her smoking clothes, her short blonde-haired head bent into her bare hands. I do not know if she felt me, or sensed me as she lifted her face and stared past the fire hoses and equipment. Our eyes locked, and she smiled at me.

I gasped, for she was Nordic in appearance, with a chiseled face, high cheek bones, sharp nose, and white hair―perhaps the most oddly beautiful female I have ever seen.

For the longest time she simply stared at me. I felt pain in my heart as she seemed to reel and the paramedics, seeing her state, leaned down and lowered her to the asphalt, then began attending to her.

Caught within my beautiful illusions, other giants loaded me into the van, securing me within the courage of their hero hearts.

My eyes closed as the van moved, the lights flashed, and the siren wailed as it stormed into the winter night. My eyes closed and I did not dream again.