The door swung open as my body hit the floor. Flames burst up from doorway and started to climb their way up the walls of the building, edging their way along the walls of the hallway. I glanced down at my left arm, seeing the now red skin blister and bubble after its exposure to the flames. Cradling my arm to my chest, I used my right arm to push myself back along the hallway, moving away from the flames as they continued to lick their way up the wall. Smoke started to fill the hallway, a thick, black smoke that grew heavier and heavier. My lungs were burning, my arm was sore from taking my body weight.

As I shuffled back down the hallway, the smoke started to choke me, my lungs tightened, and I couldn't stop the cough that tore through my throat, causing that to burn also. The smoke was suffocating me. With the smoke filling my lungs, I started to feel a little faint, the dark hallway now illuminated with flames began to spin. I pulled my left arm tighter against my chest and used what little strength I had left to drag my way through the hallway until I reached the privy. Shuffling back into the small room, I used my foot to close the door in front of me, hoping it would, in some way, block the flames from reaching me.

I pressed my back against the door, taking a deep breath as I tried to clean my lungs from the smoke that had infected them so heavily. My left arm had turned a deep red, the skin blistering, but I didn't feel the pain I thought I would. It was as though my arm had gone completely numb, the fire having done more damage than was visible. I flexed my fingers out, finding it difficult because of the burns that wrapped themselves around my fingers, stopping shy of my palm. When the door had flung open, my first instinct was to put my arm across my face to stop it betting burnt, but my arm had received the damage in the process.

"Rosie? You there?" a voice called from the hallway. There was no doubt in my mind that they had seen the smoke in the factory. The foreman was going to enjoy punishing me for it.

"I'm in here!" I replied, struggling to yell because of the burning sensation in my throat.

"Come away from the door, the fire might flash through when I open it."

"Okay."

I pushed myself away from the door and towards the chamber pot in the corner of the room. The thick smoke started pouring under the door, filling the room with a smoky haze that made it almost impossible to see. Through the gap under the door, I could see the orange flickering light of the fire as it ebbed its way down the darkened corridor. With my free hand, I pulled the front of my dress up over my mouth, to stop any more smoke from making its way into my lungs. I took several deep breaths, trying to clear the smoke from my lungs.

Huddled up in the corner of the room, my eyes fixated on the door, I waited for whoever was on the other side to come through and help me. I made myself smaller against the wall, shielding myself from the flames that licked through the top of the doorframe and threatened to spread to the little room. The cloth from my dress did little to shield me from the smoke as it continued to pour under the door in a cloud that started to fill the room. There was little I could do to shield myself from the smoke or the heat that felt as though it was suffocating me. The smoke and the heat combined and started to choke me, constricting my lungs and causing my breathing to become more ragged and unsteady.

My eyes stung from the smoke, beads of sweat trickled down my forehead and landed on the burnt skin of my arm. The skin appeared to have sizzled from the sweat, like a fire when you pour water on it. I didn't want to acknowledge that the skin had become so hot it was turning liquid to steam, nor did I think it was possible. I put it down to the smoke playing with my mind, making me see and hear things that weren't there.

With my knees pulled into my chest my mouth and nose covered by the thin cloth of my dress, I waited for my savour to knock through the door, only they were taking their time. I began to wonder if I had imagined it if my savour really existed. If the smoke and had me see things that weren't there, then had it caused me to create a person as well? Create someone I wished would come to my aid and pull me away from the fire? It was possible, but I sat tight and hoped, prayed for someone to knock down the door.

"Are you away from the door?" the voice said again. This time, I was certain they were real.

"Yes," I struggled out. My throat ached from the smoke and the cloth muffled the sound.

"Good, stay there. I'm coming in."

I pulled myself tighter into a ball to shield myself from whatever flames may erupt through the door the moment it was opened. Even with my head turned away from the door, I knew the second it was opened. The blast of heat shot through the room, the same way it had done in the corridor only minutes before. It brushed past me, causing more sweat to run down the side of my face. Smoke poured into the room from the now open doorway, but there was no crackling, no sign of the flames themselves.

When the heat subsided, I turned my head towards the door, the thick smoke blocked my vision but through the darkness, I could see two silhouettes standing in the doorway, their faces hidden. One of the silhouettes lifted their arm, seeming to place it across their face as they crossed the room to my huddled position in the corner. Even as they approached, their body remained as a silhouette. The smoke was too thick to see through. When they got closer they reached a hand out towards me gesturing for me to take it. I did as asked, reaching my good arm forward and placing it in theirs. My dress dropped from my mouth, but I didn't care, I just wanted out of that small room and away from the impenetrable wall of smoke.

I let the person drag me from the room, the calluses on their palm told me it was one of the girls, but beyond that, I didn't know who my savour was. I didn't even recognise their voice. The pulled me from the room and back out into the corridor where the orange haze of fire had turned into a cloud of smoke. The fire had been extinguished leaving nothing more than the choking smoke with only the gaps in the wooden roof for it to escape from. The person pulled me through the corridor, through a door off to the side and out into the fresh air of the courtyard. The moment I took a breath of fresh air, I started to hack up whatever smoke had settled on my lungs.

"Here, drink this." I was passed a small, metal cup of water which I gulped down as quickly as possible. The water soothed my sore throat, but the coughing took a little while longer to subside.

"Thank you," I said, dropping my arm and the cup to my side. I glanced up from the floor and finally got a good look at the person who had dragged me from that room. Suzanna.

"What happened? I thought you just went to put the cloth in the storeroom?" Suzanna asked, her hand resting on my shoulder.

"I was. When I opened the door, the fire threw me backwards, I didn't have anywhere to go other than the privy," I said, my voice scratchy and dry despite the water I had just drunk.

"We heard the door from the factory, thought you'd banged it to show the foreman how annoyed you were of something."

"No, I didn't even have a chance to open the door fully."

"Didn't think so. The foreman made us put the fire out before I could get to you, said the cloth was more important than you were." Suzanna rolled her eyes. "Course, most of it was destroyed in the fire. Ain't got a clue how it started, though I think the foreman's looking at you."

"No surprise there," I said.

I glanced up from Suzanna, my eyes scanning the small courtyard we had entered. It was the same courtyard we had eaten our porridge only an hour or so beforehand, only this time it was empty. The sun appeared to have been covered by the clouds and now a cold wind whipped through the space where we stood. Smoke rose up from the roof of the corridor we had just been in, small wisps escaped through the cracks of wood and brick and rose up before disappearing amongst the cloud. An eerie silence descended on us, the only sound being my ragged breathing which had yet to rectify itself.

There was no noise from the factory, no banging of machines or movement of people, there was no one in the courtyard. It was as though everyone had vanished into thin air the moment the fire had been put out. I knew that the foreman and Mr Thompson would have moved everyone out of the factory and to the dormitory rooms. If the smoke had been spotted beyond the gates of the building, the constable would have been summoned and the secret exposed. They would do whatever it took to protect themselves against prison time for using illegal practices.

"Where is everyone?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

"The dormitories. Right after we put the fire out, the foreman told everyone to leave, in case the constable turned up. I stayed behind to get you. We should go, though. If he does turn up and see that burn a lot of questions are gonna be asked," Suzanna said.

In truth, I had forgotten about the burn. It didn't hurt, and I was a little focused on getting out of the room then reversing the damage that had already been done. Over time, the burn would heal but the damage from the smoke would likely have never been reversed. Fires had been commonplace in the factory when I first arrived and the children who breathed in too much were later dismissed because they couldn't catch their breath. The fibres from the cloth made us cough, our throats and eyes itch, but the fire made it difficult to breathe and being on our feet most of the day only made the damage worse. I hoped the burn wasn't bad enough to warrant a dismissal, but that was up to the foreman.

"Come on, Agnes can have a look at that." Suzanna wrapped her arms around my shoulders and steered me across the courtyard.

Together we entered through a wooden door off to the side of one of the small buildings. The door led to a set of old, wooden staircase that wound themselves up towards the tower, a brick building built to watch over London. We climbed the stairs, avoiding the ones that were caving in and by the time we reached the top, my chest was heaving once again. I stood at the top of the stairs to catch my breath, worried that I had breathed in too much of the smoke. Suzanna waited beside me, her hand rested on the small of my back.

Once I had regained my breath, we walked down the small corridor, passing the boys' dormitory door on the right of us, where loud noises and what appeared to be fighting echoed from their room. How they never got in trouble for noise level was beyond me. Eventually, at the far end of the corridor, we reached our dormitory, a small wooden door in between us and the rest of the girls. Suzanna pushed it open, half expecting it to be locked and the door swung open, narrowly missing the back of someone's head as it opened. Inside, the girls were perched on the small, thin mattresses we called beds.

"Rosie! Are you all right? What happened?" Isabel's voice was the first to reach me. She was standing near the doorway, pacing backwards and forwards. The moment she saw me, she stepped forward and reached her arms out to hug me but was quickly intercepted by Suzanna.

"She's fine, Isabel. Where's Agnes?" Suzanna asked.

"Over there," Isabel said, gesturing to the far end of the room.

"Thank you. Keep an eye out for the foreman, he ain't gonna be happy if the constable comes sniffing."

"Okay."

Suzanna and I left Isabel by the door, her eye peering through the small hole in the wood to watch out for the foreman. We always used the small hole to predict when the foreman or Mr Thompson was coming to tell us off to deliver a new worker. They never told us when a new girl was coming in, so it was up to us to assume and make the necessary arrangements. It was always a hectic time when new girls arrived, especially as they were more likely to get hurt in the coming days.

With Isabel watching the door, Suzanna and I crossed the room, stepping over the other girls and trying to avoid standing on the mattresses. The girls turned and watched us, some muttered, some pointed at the burn on my arm. I knew exactly what they were all thinking. The burn alone was grounds enough for dismissal because it would hinder my work, but if the foreman thought I had started the fire it just added to the pressure. If I survived the next day, it would have been a miracle. The foreman had been looking to get rid of me, he proved it when he made me crawl under the machines and the fire gave him probable cause for dismissal.

Everyone knew it.

"Agnes! Is there anything you can do about that?" Suzanna said, gesturing to the burn.

"I can try. Pass me the sheet," Agnes said, gesturing to the pile of abandoned sheets on the floor. "Does it hurt?"

"No, I didn't even know it had happened at first," I said glancing down at the skin on my arm which was still a nasty shade of red.

"Okay. I don't know if there's much I can do. The burn is one of the worst I've seen in the nine years of being here and I've seen a lot of burns."

"Just do what you can," Suzanna said, lightly tapping Agnes on the shoulder before leaving the two of us alone.

Agnes gestured to the small wooden stool leaning against the wall before tearing a strip off the bedsheet, the ripping sound echoing through the room. I took a seat on the stool, my injured arm resting on my lap. As I watched, Agnes continued to tear up the bedsheet making methodical strips of fabric to use as makeshift bandages. For as long as I had been at the factory, Agnes had been like a doctor to the injured, but still able to work, and those who had come down with any illness. She was the first one to try and help and often workers were able to remain in the factory because of her quick thinking. Burns were the most common injuries she treated.

Without Agnes, more of the workers would have been dismissed or have died from the minor injuries that were a part of factory life. She was the one we always went to with a scratch or cut, or even just a cold. In the condition we worked in, a cold could turn into influenza rather rapidly and spread through the workforce within days. There wasn't much Agnes could do about a cold, but she tried her hardest to stop it turning into something else and if it did, the person was isolated. After nine years, she was the doctor of the workforce and without her, most of us would have been dismissed years before.

After she had torn up the bedsheets into makeshift bandages, Agnes took my hand and started to wrap the bandages around the burn. She was careful and methodical in the way she wrapped them, trying not to pull too tightly, but making sure they weren't going to unravel. The bandages were frayed from being torn from the bedsheet, but the time my arm had been wrapped, it was impossible to see them as bedsheets. The only sign of the burn was the small red blisters on the very tips of my fingers, but they weren't as bad as the burns on the rest of my wrist and hand.

"There. We'll need to change those to lower the risk of infection, but they shouldn't hinder your work too much," Agness said.

"I doubt the foreman will see it that way," I muttered, wiggling my fingers as much as I could within the bandage constraints.

"You'll be fine, for as long as I've been here, the foreman has never sacked someone for having a burn. Just make sure you're not late, he'll forget about when someone else is late."

"It's not just the burn, though. He probably thinks I started the fire and won't want me around in case it happens again. Besides, most of the work days been lost because of it and the constables poking around. The burn is the least of my worries."

"Just forget about the foreman for now. He ain't worth it, especially since he's tied up with the constable. Even with the fire, Mr Thompson won't let him dismiss you, you've never been in trouble before now," Suzanna said.

"I suppose so."

"No supposing about it. You're not going anywhere, especially if we have anything to do with it. Who knows, maybe this is what we need to finally stand up to the foreman."

"Now that would be worth the burn," I said, laughing.

"That's more like it! Come on, the extra hours off work means we can actually sleep for longer than five hours. I don't know about you, but I'm taking all the extra sleep I can get."

One thing we could all agree on was that we never had enough time to sleep and whenever an accident stopped production, our first reaction was to try and get as much extra sleep as possible. Even if the sun was still shining through our small window, we decided to sleep until we were awoken by the foreman to continue the work that had previously been disrupted. As much as we hated people being hurt and later dismissed, the idea of sleeping for an extra few hours always put the person to the back of our minds. In truth, it was a rather selfish thing to do, but if we didn't make the most of the extra time we had, more people would have gotten hurt.

After Suzanna reminded us all that we did have an extra few hours to sleep, everyone settled down to bed, two people to a mattress. The mattresses were thin, straw-filled things that were kept on the floor since we lacked any sort of bed frame. They were covered in a thin, itchy blanket that did nothing to block out the cold chill when Winter hit. The only warmth we had was that of the person we shared a mattress with, and for me, that was Isabel. She had a habit of stealing the blanket during the night, but I wouldn't have wanted to share my bed with anyone else.

That night, I lay on my side, facing the brick wall. Beside me, Isabel lay perfectly still, the soft sound of breathing being the only thing I could hear in our small, confined space. A thin strip of sunlight came through the high window at the far end of the room, slowly fading as darkness descended on the factory and on London. Knowing that Isabel was asleep, I slowly pushed myself up from the mattress and slipped out of the blanket, trying not to wake her up. I pushed myself up and carefully tip-toed across the room; stepping over everyone else in the process. I grabbed the stool from where we had left it and placed it directly underneath the little window, using it to stand on so I could look out across London.

The sun was just starting to slip between the countless buildings, the sky turning a deep shade of red as it set. Smoke rose from chimneys, the occasional sound of a horse echoed through the streets and the faint sound travelled to the window. London always looked so peaceful from the window. We never got to see beyond the factory gates and I often wondered what London really looked like. What the people did in their free time, what games the children played. I just wanted to see what London was really like, what the people were like. I knew dismissal was the only way I would be able to see these things.

Dismissal was either a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, we had a chance to escape the hard life of a factory worker, but on the other, we had nowhere to go, no one to look out for us, nothing. Most of us knew that survival beyond the factory gates was impossible unless someone was willing to take in an injured child who hadn't bathed in a very long time, our lives were short. That's why most of us tried to stay out of trouble, tried to avoid being dismissed. If we were careful, we could survive factory life without injury, if we weren't, our lives were likely to be cut drastically short.

Sighing, I jumped down from the stool and put it back before crossing the room back to the mattress. As I sat down just beside it, Isabel muttered something and rolled over, her body spreading across the entirety of the mattress. I laughed slightly, knowing that I was going to have to wait for her to move again if I was to stand a chance of actually going to sleep. I would never tell her, but it was annoying when she took over the bed, especially when she knocks me off in the middle of the night. With no other option, I lent myself back against the wall and closed my eyes, seeing if I could get any sleep. Even the wall wasn't very comfortable, after a few minutes I dropped off into a sleep that was far from peaceful.

"Wake up!" A hard push jolted me awake. I fell back against the wall, my arms flailing around as I tried to stop myself from hitting the ground too hard.

"Was goin' on?" I groaned rubbing my eyes. As the adjusted to the light or lack thereof, I realised the foreman was leaning over me, a candle in his hand. His voice was hush, as though he didn't want anyone else to hear him.

"Come with me," he demanded, pulling on my arm and forcing me into a standing position.

"What? Why?"

"Don't talk, just come with me."

The foreman grabbed on to my arm and dragged from my small corner against the wall, pulling me to my feet. His fingers wrapped around my upper arm, pulling it tightly as he dragged me from the room, my feet stumbling over corners of the mattresses, but no one woke up. I tried to fight against his grip, but the more I fought against him, the tighter his grip on my arm. Nothing I did was enough to pull away from him, but I continued to fight against him as he dragged me down the spiral staircase and out into the courtyard.

From the courtyard, the foreman dragged me over the cobbled stone and through the twisting and turning back alleyways. His grip never once wavered as he pulled me towards the big black gate enclosing the factory. With one hand on my arm, he fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out the keys, the jangling sound echoing through the empty courtyard.

"What are you doing?" I cried, the pain in my upper arm growing stronger with each passing minute.

"After your little stunt this afternoon, we think you're a bad influence on the other girls. You destroyed a days' worth of product and we're going to lose profit after today. We're using you as an example to the other girls."

"You're dismissing me? But I didn't start the fire!" I exclaimed.

"I don't care what you did or didn't do. You had two infractions today, your work will be slow because of the injury and we do not have time to worry about you with all of today's profit having gone down the drain."

"You can't do this!"

"I can, and I am!"

The foreman jerked me slightly as he put the key into the lock and unlocked the gate that had kept us enclosed for so long. With his free hand, he pushed the gate open and shoved me through. I stumbled on the hem of my dress, almost falling to my knees as I struggled to regain my balance. I turned around and ran towards the gate just as the foreman slammed it shut, locking it. Mockingly, I stowed the keys away in his pocket and looked at me, giving a small smile and wave as he turned his back and walks back to the factory.

I grabbed the bars and shook the gate, trying to get it to open but I knew it was impossible. The gate was locked. I dropped my hands to my sides, struggling to let him have the satisfaction of seeing me cry, but I couldn't help it. Tears dripped down my cheeks at the realisation of what had just happened officially set in.

I had been dismissed from the factory, nowhere to go, no one who could help. It was night time in London, and I was on my own.

~~~

A/N - We are back with Chapter Two! I am so excited to see the build-up of this book, especially as we will see some more character introductions within the next few chapters so make sure you stick around! 

What a way to dismiss her! Do you think the foreman was being fair with his actions or were his reasons legitimate? I want to know your thoughts in the comments below!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to ReallyMadiLeigh who is a fabulous person and you should all go check her and her works out! 

First Published - July 17th, 2018