529 Commercial Street - Flash Fiction Contest

Someone was knocking at the door. He withdrew into his bathrobe, sinking back into his cigarette-burned, whiskey-splashed loveseat to avoid detection. It had been 11 weeks since his last bitter taste of sunlight, yet it still hung in the back of his throat like a vomitous lump, not letting him forget, not letting him heal. January 15^th - a day that'd rolled into Boston's North End unusually hot and sticky, seeping over endless rows of particleboard and faded brick low-rises like pooling syrup, and would remain scalded into his memory forever. The last day he saw her alive.

He'd clocked out from under the wet, heavy funk of the Distillery's steam, stepping out into the street's welcoming wintry chill. The irony was sickening, looking back, but at the time nothing could have distracted him from that closing-time rush as he strutted toward North End Beach to meet his wife and infant daughter, whistling Fred Astaire tunes like a man with a brass ensemble playing at his heels.

He'd remembered tasting apricot preserves on Susane's lips, kissing her goodbye before she gingerly trotted toward the bus-stop for her nightshift over at Mass General. And pulling little Brigitte from her carriage for one of the bottles her mother always left with little lovey-dovey notes attached to keep him smiling all day. "Uh-uh! None for you, Mister Thorwald, your supper's in the icebox so you'll just have to walk!" - that sort of thing. The baby had only just finished when they were both startled upright by their park bench shivering with a low, violent rumble.

Before he'd finished wondering what it could be, deafening, tinny bursts of what he could swear were machine-gun fire echoed around the corner, snapping him to his feet with instincts he'd thought he'd forgotten since that shattered kneecap sent him home from the wars. He'd barely finished sliding Brigitte back into her stroller before the blast hit. The groan of twisting steel and shattering glass announced the shockwave of pungent dust and debris that came rippling down the street toward them, followed a split second later by what turned out to be the real danger: a monstrous, fifteen-foot wave of foaming, snuff-colored death, hurtling in their direction at what seemed like the speed of a freight-train, a racecar, or what else he didn't rightly know. All he knew about the details was what the papers told him afterwards.

His last memory was of regaining consciousness on the stretcher, watching the paramedics' horrified faces as he tried to shriek the names of his wife and daughter, only to realize his lungs and throat had been filled with too much viscous fluid to utter a sound.

TNNK TNNK TNNK. Whoever it was pounding hadn't given up yet. "Christ, alright already," he mumbled, "anything to get rid of you." He undid the deadbolt and cracked the door, whiskey tumbler still in hand.

"Mr. Thorwald-" the man barely had time to choke out before having to jam his hat in the doorframe to keep it from slamming shut, "Mr. Thorwald, please. For the last time, are you sure you won't testify? The owners of Purity Distilling Co. are willing to pay handsomely-"

"You sonsabitches got a lot of nerve coming back here."

"We're sorry, Mr. Thorwald, we heard what happened to-"

"Shrapnel, from the bus she'd been trying to catch - fractured her skull. And she was lucky, they said - bus ended up in Boston Harbor, just picked up and flung by the crest of that wave, like every other damn thing in its way. Well, not lucky enough to have found her way out of that coma yet, near 3 months later."

"Sir, we feel for your loss, and the losses of all those brave souls caught up in this Molasses Disaster, tha-"

"But lucky enough not to see Brigitte's burial. Drowned right in her carriage, the one I...Molasses Disaster, you say? HAH! That's what the papers are calling it, are they. Burnt roast? That'sa disaster. Running out of whiskey? That's a disaster. This is a goddamned nightmare. A nightmare you fine gentlemen and those owners of yours CAUSED."

"Sir, you know just as well as any of our employees that safety re-"

"Oh, that's right! It was anarchists, hm? That's what you put on your best coats and jackets to come 'remind' me to say. 'Treason!' Well if memory serves, you two are the only shady figures I've seen lurking around, and you'd better believe I'll be pointing you bastards out in court. Last safety inspector I knew was Will Stewart - boiled to death, accident last December. Wanna go talk to his widow next? She lives right up the block."

He slammed the door, lighting up a fresh cigarette. He never tasted anything sweet again.