Poor little Miss 1565 – Part 2

Vicki paused, shaking her head sadly. “If only I had said no.”

She sighed softly as she went on. “We lived out in the country, about five miles from town, so the kids and I piled into my old ’38 Chevy and off we went, quite late; in fact barely in time to get a parking space. Fifteen minutes later we were squeezed onto the second from the bottom bench of a grandstand, packed into a huge tent along with 7,000 people, but almost at the main entrance, thank God!

“The show was already going on, and two lion cages were being taken out through the exit. All eyes were on two acrobats high above the ground on aerial swings when there was a low whoomp way up there and a ball of yellow flame burst out right behind the acrobats. Before I could even think, the flames had swept partway across the top of the tent and were almost above us. The kids yelled, and so did I, standing up as the entire tent filled with yells and screams.

“You can’t imagine what the next few minutes were like. Before we could even make a move the entrance was packed with a thousand people, all fighting to get outside and away from hot flames which could already be felt, and all of them yelling at the top of their lungs. The people in our stand were all on their feet, trying to force their way into the screaming mob fighting to get to the entrance, but even at that early moment I could see that there was no way out – not through that mob and past those lion cages.

“How I thought of turning and looking under the stand I will never know, but holding onto the kids to make sure they didn’t try to squeeze themselves into that solid mass of fighting adults, I swung down as low as I could go and looked through the stand. What I saw was just another aspect of the nightmare in which we were trapped. People were leaping down from the higher benches in our stand, some of them landing on the wooden supports that held it together and injuring themselves in the process.

“I quickly dismissed that direction as a means of success and turned back to the mob in front of us, but that was now even worse. The flames had spread across the whole tent and people everywhere were screaming in fear and pain as the scent of burning flesh began to fill the tent, which I afterwards found out had been ‘waterproofed’ with wax dissolved in kerosene, and was now immersed in flames from end to end.

“There was no other choice. We either got out by going under the stand, or we sat there and burned to death along with everyone else in that massive roaring conflagration.”

Next week – As close to death as it gets!