Untitled Short Story

“Where is Riley?” “Where is Riley?,” she kept mumbling to herself creating a low baseline against the symphony of sirens. The question asked through squinted eyes to no one in particular, although there were plenty of people to ask questions too as amber and tangerine painted the walls of 312 Carnegie soot gray.

This was an ordinary fire, well, as ordinary as fires could be. It posed no challenge for the men who rushed in and out of blazes for a living. It was not on a busy street, so it did not stop traffic, and the twenty year old building was relatively unremarkable so the historic society would take no notice. Many fires had raged before, larger and grander than this, but as water baptized the brick and mortar of the basic two-flat building, she had never seen anything more superior. And as she sat on a gurney, interrogating herself, she tried to remember the last sounds she heard before everything turned to dust around her.

It was a normal day, after arguing with her alarm clock for the third time, she finally conceded defeat as she laid in the glow of early winter morning. Feeling the warm body beside her she smiled briefly, before reaching down with her toes to slide on her house shoes. A grumble of frustration sliped from her lips as she thought, “what’s worse than an alarm at 6:15am? A cold greeting to the morning.” Cringing from the thoughts of her bare feet on hard wood flooring, she tip-toed into the bathroom to reluctantly start her day.