Cal's Something Old Contest (0.46 [Kiss])
This is a scene from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which can be read abouthere
As I looked up I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror. A young man at a window helped a girl to the windowsill; then he held her out, deliberately, away from the building, and let her drop. He seemed cool and calculating. He held out a second girl in the same way and then let her drop. Then he held out a third girl. They didn't resist. I noticed that they were as unresisting as if he was helping them onto a street car instead of into eternity. Undoubtedly he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames and his aid was only a terrible chivalry. Then came love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw him put her arms about him and kiss him. Then he held her out into space and dropped her. But, quick as a flash he was on the windowsill himself. His coat flattened upward: the air filled his trouser legs; I could see that he wore tan shoes, and hose. His hat remained on his head.
- The Cleveland Press, 1911
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Wings of fire and embers were outstretched in an expectant embrace. Hissing at me. Calling to me. Tossing smoldering glances my way and motioning towards me with taunting, flickering fingers. Eating at the support beams and caressing the walls with evaporating passion, the flames smiled at me. They laughed at me as I stood in that eleventh story room, wreathed in boiling, writhing smoke and upheld by the conflagrant arms of some demonic Atlas.
I smiled back and checked the time.
Beneath me, outside the window and clustered together like so many black-shelled insects, were firemen and bystanders and family members and the shocked and the horrified. Somewhere underneath the rumble of the factory – it's pulsing, sweaty heart being methodically incinerated – I heard their cries. Thrown up from the street and through the window.
But I ignored them.
After all, the moment had arrived.
Covering my mouth with the back of my sleeve, I pushed into the blooming brimstone, weaving my way around propped up rafters – discarded cigarettes that glowed with angry embers – and under the groaning ceiling, searching for a survivor. It seemed to me like the building was staggering forward, it's knees buckling, it's chest hollowed out and it's lungs poisoned with fire. It was going to fall at anytime. A structural Goliath, chopped down by the smallest, smoothest stone.
I made my way into the hall and sprinted into a second room.
Sweat dribbled down my cheeks like tears.
There.
There in front of me, kneeling on the floor and tossing prayers towards heaven, past the smoke, like paper cranes, was a woman. Her face was soot stained and she gasped for clean air. She groped for it underneath an overcoat, freckled with snowy ash. Around her the flames roared. They roared at her like they had roared at me.
I almost paused to take a better look at her. Something about her position – her penitence, her resignation – was incredibly...poignant. She knew this was the end. She knew this was her last stand. These gasps, these whispered supplications were the last she would ever fashion, laced with goose feathers from the suffocating down pillow of smoke descending on her shoulders.
I didn't pause.
I didn't wait.
I didn't want to make this more difficult than necessary.
She was my sixth and probably my last. I couldn't stand to breath the smoke-corrupted air any longer. Or see shadows dancing on the walls; lunging, weaving, twisting like something exotic and oblique and sensual. They were mocking the all-too-delicate memory of the recently departed.
I crouched by her side and placed my hand on her shoulder gently.
“The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want,” she whispered frantically, ignoring me, massaging her hands.
I shook her her and she glanced up at me, tears making tracks in the soot on her oven-baked ceramic face. Her lips mouthed voiceless things. Voiceless questions. She was in shock, I knew. In her mind, she was already dead. She was already walking in the twilight.
I smiled at her.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” I said.
Trembling, shivering, she looked down at the rosary beads clutched tightly in her hands, spilling out of her palms like blood. The smoke was getting thicker. I wouldn't be able to stay much longer. I had to hurry. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed gently, lifting her to her feet. Her stockings were torn and one shoe had disappeared, smoldering somewhere in the gutted industrial château. She felt like broken glass in my hands.
I led her into the hallway and back into the other room.
She hissed, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
The valley of the shadow of death.
Evil.
When I looked at them, the shadows continued to dance, laughing and pointing derisively. Spattered like liquid across the walls and beating fiery, musical notes out of the floor and into the air.
Notes that sang like a chorus of angels, despite the situation.
I will fear no evil.
Whispering encouragement and comfort, I brought her to the window where voices and screams drifted through as the smoke drifted out, maintaining an equilibrium. I motioned for her to get on top of the windowsill, but she resisted. Suicide, her eyes said. I cannot commit suicide.
“One last look at the sky, darling. One last breath of air and the feeling of the wind on your skin.”
She stared through the open window and out at the skyline, smiling at her like broken teeth. She was afraid. Everything about her bled fear and hopelessness and regret. Fear of the next life. I wanted to tell her that fear was not necessary. I wanted to tell her that fire cleansed. That boiling purified.
She looked back at me.
And at that moment, I loved her for her fear.
I stepped onto the ledge, still holding her hand – her sweating hand – that seemed to collapse under my grasp like molding clay. The wind ran fingers through my hair and tore at my pant leggings like so many groping hands.
I smiled.
She smiled.
The world was on fire and I was romancing a sweatshop girl. I pulled her up beside me and slipped my arms around her; around her waist and her head, pushing my fingers through the knots in her hair. I felt ash in between the strands like grains of sand.
“You first, darling,” I said and kissed her.
I kissed her like the parched mouths of flames kissed human flesh.
And then I pushed her from the windowsill.
She didn't even scream as she fell. She was the picture of grace and elegance and she looked like some kind of crumpled blossom from the boughs of a cherry tree as she pirouetted to the asphalt below. The people below surged to accept her, their hands fluttering above their heads. Like dying sparrows.
Lifeless purity from out of the valley of the shadow of death.
I still felt her kiss on my lips – a piece of the fire behind me – as I closed my eyes, lifted my face to the wind and then followed her down.
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