Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

83

Eviction

It all started with a little old woman who refused to leave her apartment. The city had condemned the apartments and the tenants had been forced to relocate.

I work for a demolition company as a project manager, and we'd been contracted to take down the South Side complex. It was high-rise, low-income housing that was already falling apart 20 years ago. But now real estate was booming, and there was real interest in the property. A development company bought the land to build an upscale condo village with 5,500 units. It was a critical piece in the city's multi-billion dollar urban renewal program.

Everybody was supposed to be out, but one my guys came running up yelling that there was a crazy old woman in 229 South.

"Me, Marty and Joey was makin the rounds one last time — like you said — when we come on a strong smell, like somethin burnin.

It was on 17, an apartment at the front. I knocked and yelled if anybody was in there. There wasn't no answer so Joey busted down the door. And inside, there's this little old lady wrapped up in a blanket. Puttin strips of newspaper on one of them small charcoal grills. Place was cleared out except for the stacks of papers up against the wall."

"We tried to talk her out but she hissed and spit and clawed like some kinda wild animal. She looked real sick and smelled like she hadna seen running water in weeks. We didn't wanna catch nothin from her. Let the police take care of it, that's what I said. Funny thing about those papers though. They was all the same date —

tomorrow. And on the front page headline it said "Gas Explosion Kills 46."