Fire Escape

Mrs. Shapiro looked like a scribble in a gaping inferno, leaning out of the window of a thirteen-story building at approximately 8:05 p.m. She was a shrewd slip of a woman gobbling up sumptuous bits of the sights below. The city flowered up at night in tell-tale colors of neon green and fiery orange and white. Laughter and car-horns filled the streets along Alaskan Way, but it was all white noise to her. The sounds of this city on a Saturday evening in the month of June only served to cement her status in the world, and she resented this feeling of singularity. She had a sister in Spokane whom she hadn't spoken to in years. Esther. Just another solitary leaf on the family tree in her book. The closest memory that she had of her was fifteen years ago, when Esther left a message on her answering machine telling her that her and her husband would be visiting Seattle on their honeymoon and would she like to meet up with them? She had awkwardly returned her sister's call and offered to pick them up from the SEA-TAC airport when they arrived. A week later, she pulled up in front of the arrival terminal, where a pretentious looking couple sporting sleek weather-appropriate attire were hugging and kissing, oblivious to everything else around them. She helped Esther and her husband load their hounds tooth luggage into the back of her beat up Volkswagen, and watched her new brother-in-law inconspicuously through the rear-view mirror. He introduced himself as A. J. Dirk Shapiro, but she could call him Dirk. None of them said much on the car ride to dinner, and when they finally sat down to eat, Dirk looked over at her quizzically, and with a mouth full of chewed up chicken Marsala said, "So your sister tells me you've never been married...never had a boyfriend even?". Initially Helena had taken it as an insult. 2 days later, Dirk showed up at her house bawling his eyes out because apparently Esther had just up and left, and he didn't know where she was. I mean they were on their honeymoon for godsakes! Helena listened with motherly devotion to Dirk's woes, as she sat up straight on her tweed couch with her slender hands in her lap. After what had seemed like hours, the heartbroken man in front of her had looked up and beheld a pair of steady, sagacious eyes gazing back at him. Dirk had leaned in and kissed her, and Helena didn't stop him. The rest was history. The marriage had been annulled. Helena showed up a month later out of nowhere, claiming she had been abducted by two young hoodlums on a late night trip to the Walgreens in Ballard. This later proved to be an unfounded claim entirely. Apparently, Esther was just having second thoughts about her new husband, but she swore up and down she would never speak to her sister or Dirk the Jerk again. And so it was, that Helena and Dirk, resigned to Esther's wishes, and having grown closer by the day, decided to elope. Helena performed her domestic duties as his spouse with a wifely zeal, and Dirk secured a position with maintenance at The University of Washington.

Dirk the Jerk died one year later in a boating accident on Lake Washington; that was how Helena had found out he was having an affair with a student at the University. She didn't mourn him in the conventional way that most widows would have, but was rather inclined to shut herself in for days and to stare at the walls of her apartment. A couple in the apartment next door to her, knocked on her door one day to bring her a home-cooked meal of eggplant parmesan, and to express their condolences. Helena had laughed at them, and her mad laughter had echoed through the apartment stairwell causing the couple to exchange looks of confusion with one another and to scamper back to their apartment. No stone was left unturned there. How strange this city, she had thought, so full of beginnings, and so full of endings. A siren in the distance seemed to echo this sentiment.

Our dear Mrs. Shapiro, lost in her thoughts, didn't notice the words of the news anchor behind her drifting on the breeze flowing in from the window. The President has announced this afternoon that NASA has warned of a giant meteor headed straight for earth. An official at the Glenn Research Center is quoted as saying that the meteor will hit our planet in seven days time. Government officials are working around the clock to execute an emergency plan in light of this recent announcement.

In the streets below, people navigated the sidewalks of the city talking excitedly with their friends, cars moved along slowly in the evening traffic with various tunes escaping from their cracked windows, and a straggly stray cat with amber-colored eyes attempted to clime the fire escape of a thirteen-story building.

Mrs. Shapiro shut her window half-way, turned off her television, and walked solemnly into the kitchen. The light bulb over her kitchen sink flickered twice, and the sound of a leaky faucet assaulted her thoughts. From the apartment under her, she could her the sultry sounds of some Billie Holiday song floating up through the floor. Some romantic tune that was supposed to inspire, but instead left her feeling anxious and destitute. Her stomach growled, but she didn't have the energy to put the components together for a meal, and so she rummaged through her cabinets and settled for a pack of raisins and some peanuts. GORP, her and her sister used to call it when they were little. Good Ole' Raisins n' Peanuts. They would go camping at Riverside State Park and stay up late telling ghost stories and playing MASH. One day we're both going to get married, and have big families, and live right next-door to each-other.

How gray her world was these days, so quiet. Here she was in a city packed with people, and she resented every single one of them. She had often considered getting a cat or dog to keep her company, but deep down she didn't feel like she deserved such unconditional love. But what she didn't realize is that unconditional love is never deserved, and what she also didn't realize, was that a straggly creature with whiskers and slanted eyes of amber was creeping into her window at that very moment. It wasn't for unconditional love that this creature slipped into her living room, but to escape that buzzing he heard all around him these days. In the alleys, under the cars, in the beds of trucks, there was no escaping that horrible itching vibration that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

"Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong," said Mrs. Shapiro, as she tossed an empty pack of raisins into her trash can.

A feline shadow formed on the wall in the hallway.