Excerpt:
There were shouts within and then banging, followed by the distinctive sound of splintering wood. I watched a man rush into the room and douse the flames with a handheld fire extinguisher. I got to walking before the smoke settled. I had a pretty good idea of what I’d see and my day was already shit enough.
I hurried around the corner and almost whooped out a hallelujah when I saw the gate to Singa’s was up.
My enthusiasm was tempered when I looked through the window. The place had been ransacked.
Singa, at least that’s what I assumed his name was since he was always there, sat behind the counter reading an old newspaper.
“What happened in here?” I said.
The shelves had all been knocked down, glass to the cold cases reduced to pebbles, boxes, bottles and cans strewn about as if the entire store had been invaded by a mosh pit.
Singa, who had been old to begin with, looked like he’d aged twenty years. The bags under his eyes were dark and had an almost crispy texture. Those umber eyes held back tears that threatened to fall any second. He looked around the remains of his store in a daze.
“Humanity happened,” he said, his voice, like his gaze, far, far away.
I put a fifty-dollar bill on the counter. “You mind if I see if there’s anything worth saving?
“Keep your money.” He either avoided my gaze or thought he was talking to a ghost. “Money burns. We all burn.”
I snatched a reusable bag from the floor and got on my hands and knees, looking for anything that had been left whole. I came up with a box of elbow macaroni, a can each of beets, sliced potatoes and artichoke hearts, three bottles of off-brand water, and a box of stuffing mix. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
I slung the bag over my shoulder. “Is…is there anything I can do for you?”
His eyes slowly found mine. “Yes.” He opened his palm. In the center, I saw a tiny pile of black specks. “Run.”
Singa dipped his head and inhaled the powder like a cokehead fresh from rehab.
The sneeze came instantly.
The flames seemed to burst from every pore of his body.
I jumped back and slipped on a pile of debris, sure that the heat had singed my eyebrows.
Poor Singa slumped into his chair and burned without a sound.
It took a few attempts to get to my feet and run out of the store. In my mad dash back home, my heavy breathing popped the tampons loose. I didn’t stop to look for them.
I noticed fires in other windows.
The one that had been put out earlier was back, blazing again. SHC was like that sometimes. Someone on the radio had called it ‘almost sentient.’ It didn’t like it when people put it out. So, it came back with a vengeance. This time, no one tried to extinguish it.
In fact, there were tendrils of smoke everywhere as far as I could see. And nowhere could you hear the sound of a single fire engine. What was the point?
Oddly, what disturbed me most was when one of the feral cats hiding under a car gave a loud sneeze. It burst into flame immediately. The fleeing blur of burning hair and flesh went headfirst into a wall, made a sharp turn and disappeared down an alley, leaving grayish smoke in its wake.
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