Flash fiction #2: Faces

It’s another day in the old neighborhood.

        The sun is setting slowly behind me in colourful hues I had never seen before, and I find myself staring at the old house again as the world fades to black. And my mind turns back the clock to a sweeter time, a better time before the nightmares began.

        I’m alone, again. I always expect I’d find more people standing beside me on the corner, opposite what’s left of the house, but there’s not. Not one. There are flowers, though, left beside the mailbox. There is a card too, poking out of the top of the colourful blossoms. It probably says something like in loving memory or never forgotten. That’s what people usually write.

        And as I watch my mind loops back a little and I hear the screams over again. In my mind ’s eye, I see the frightened, awful, scorched faces pressed against the immovable windows as the flames lick through the house. I hear the sirens on the horizon ... and I want to puke ... I want to puke because I can still see them roasting alive. Flesh reduced to blistered, bloodied, masses.

         It’s not something you can easily forget, believe me.

         I shuffle uneasily on the sidewalk as the cold begins to bite through the soles of my shoes. A weary old man stares at me curiously as he walks his dog. I wave. My hands are numb even though I have had them pushed tightly into my pockets for ten minutes. My nose begins to drip.

        They tell me the fire started because of a cigarette. That it caught on the carpets or the furniture and simply ate the house whole in no time at all. I’d like to believe that, I really would, because it’d make the whole sorry incident so much easier to suffer. But I don’t believe it at all. I can’t.

        Personally, I think they wanted them dead.

I think they wanted them roasted and out of the way.

And then, just like that, the memory fades and I say a silent prayer.

I do not stop thinking about it, but I do stop seeing those helpless faces pressed against the blackening windows. I do stop hearing their agonising wails as they’re undone.

They tell me I did all I was able – all anyone was able – but that doesn’t sit quite right with me. I could have done more. I should have done more because that’s my job, right? I fight fires and save people. That is my job. At least, that’s what I thought.

I kiss the silver crucifix around my neck; wishing each of the three children a fond goodnight, and turn back towards my car.

Maybe one day I’ll learn to live with it.

Maybe.