WE ALL FALL DOWN

For as long as he could remember, Sam had been dropped off at school by his father. Those little rides to school every morning weren't a privilege to him, They were just the status quo. That is until they stopped. until Sam's stepmother had casually suggested to his father that they could simply pay for a student bus pass over dinner a few nights ago. The idea upset Sam at first, however, he quickly considered that it might not be so terrible. A few boys he knew took the same bus every morning, Sam reasoned. At least he wouldn't be lonely. He wanted to tell his parents all of this, of course, but his parents usually found a way of shutting him down. No matter what news Sam had to tell them, his parents always responded with some variation of “You think that's bad? Today I had to go all the way to blah blah blah…” So while Sam’s dear old dad and not quite mom were off doing blah blah blah, Sam was making his way up to the bus stop. 

He moved through the snow quickly, out of his small cul-de-sac and past the small busy gas station on the corner of Sam's block. The sound of traffic as he approached 56th Street, had a way of straightening Sam’s posture and hurrying his pace as he went. The early morning air, Sam noted as he moved towards the crosswalk, now held the faintest taste of car exhaust and half-frozen mud. Even so, Sam took long greedy breaths as he waited for the light to change. Why had he been walking so fast in the first place? It's not like he had any risk of being late. 

Lazily, the few cars on the road wooshed past the boy in his bright blue ski jacket. Soon enough, The casual flow of cars slowed and then stopped. The light changed, and Sam stepped out of his neighborhood and onto the street. There was something nice about walking, Sam decided. Even in the snow. Walking to his stop in the morning, Sam quickly learned, it didn't take him long. Less than ten minutes after closing his front door, he could see the nearby bus stop coming into view ahead of him. He slowed his pace as he approached his stop, catching his breath once again. Real speed demon there, Sammy. Just can't help it I guess. It felt good to slow down for a minute, to stop and take in the few sights this bus stop had to offer. In his small chest, Sam felt his labored heart slowly winding down its normal rhythm. 

There was no bench for Sam to sit on. No shelter from the snow or potential rain. Not even a garbage of some sort to contain the scattered litter. All there was to see from Sam's stop was a slender metal sign marked ROUTE 8 in a small circle of muddy brown packed snow. With nothing better to do until his bus came, Sam kicked some snow. He dug through his iPod massive library for the perfect song. He checked the time almost obsessively, convincing himself that the bus had already come and gone. 

He had one thing going for him, however. No one else came to join him. Suddenly, Sam heard the sound of a window breaking nearby. He craned his neck towards the large brick apartments nearby. Was somebody trying to break in? Was that a window-breaking or something else entirely? It almost sounded as if someone had broken a window up on the 3rd or 4th floor. Ridiculous, Sam muttered to himself. but not impossible. Somehow, Sam felt confident that's exactly what had happened. A smell came to him, faint but undeniable at the same time. The smell of burning plastic, the smell of burning everything. Maybe some hobo Just… 

Before he could finish the thought, Sam watched the unmistakable shape of a city bus making its way through the snow towards him. Suddenly nervous to board the crowded bus for the first time, Sam forgot entirely about hearing a window break at all. It would only be later, watching the news, Sam would remember the sound he had heard. Remember that funny metallic smell. And he would feel bad.

2.

This late in the game, this was simply Gordon’s everyday morning routine. Sometimes he even felt good, almost younger than the 62 years he carried in his hips and his back. But most of the time, Gordon felt sore and tired. What do you expect? Gordon’s grandfather had joked countless times. I'm old. I'm not supposed to feel good! The old man chuckled in Gordon's memory. But there was pain in that laugh. Always had been. The same pain he passed on to his grandchildren. Gordon could deal with the pain, the almost total lack of REM sleep, and even that god-awful smell, But what kept Gordon coming back was his hands. nicotine-stained or not, His whole life he'd gotten by on his hands. He could stop drinking whenever he wanted, Gordon told himself just often enough to forget. But his hands would shake, and shake, and shake.  As a kid, Gordon spent far more time at his dad's auto Body Shop than at high school. “Learn a lot more here, than any man school in America”, Gordon's father assured him. Gordon still believed that was true today. By the time he should have graduated, Gordon was working his first full-time job as the janitor at Pine View Estates. 

Back then, it had been the kind of place you were proud to work at, a bustling medium-sized apartment complex filled with charming tenants to greet him after he clocked in. There were the Ackermans up on the 6th floor, little Danny Vogt two doors down from the janitor's closet, and even the new couple on 3rd whose names Gordon could never remember. When they smiled at him, Gordon smiled back with honest good cheer. Back then, Everything just seemed easier and brighter. 

As he reached for the bottle, Gordon wondered how many other people started their day like this, already tired, already sore, already thinking about when things were easier. Janitor work was always a foot in the door for him, and during that first year, Gordon attached himself like a tick to the maintenance man Clarence. It didn't take long for both men to realize that Gord was a better maintenance man at 19 than Clarence ever was at 46. A week before New Year's Gordon found himself the building's new maintenance man. At the beginning of what he would come to think of as his marriage to his job, Gordon had been full of excitement. He loved finding all the little spots to scratch, Which parts of the building's elderly body to massage to help ease some of her pain. what levers to pull, what switches to check, what pipes would freeze, and which pipes needed to be replaced. If the building had been a woman, then Gordon had been good to her over the years. always thinking of her before he thought about himself, always putting her needs before his own. But that was before Leslie died, and whatever was left of Gordon’s old life died with him. Before she had told him in her final letter 

When I look at you, all I see is him. Before he'd had to find a place on his own, before the only bottle in the liquor cabinet was vodka, before Gordon's hands shook in the morning and shook at night. Had he ever really enjoyed the taste of this shit? The phone rang its default chime beside him, And Gordon answered, managing to sound better than he felt. “Hello? Yes, Sir. The keys to reset the alarms Are… Are you sure it's that? Of course, Of course. Give me about half an hour and I'll… OK, OK, 20 minutes. But I still have to…” click. Your compassion is overwhelming, Dr. 

Fucking kids, Always the fucking kids. In his lifetime of service, there'd only been a real fire at Pine View Estates twice. The first was only a small kitchen fire, and the second had been a dramatic affair involving a hot glass pipe and some frayed sheets. Fucking kids. This had to be another false alarm, although Corey did sound pretty worked up about whatever the hell was happening down there. Normally stern and hard to rattle, Gordon felt relentlessly restless and uneasy. Despite his best efforts, Gordon's hands were trembling.

3.

When he first got his degree in Fine Arts, David mistakenly believed he'd be able to easily land a role in one of the countless productions filming all over Canada. According to David, he was better than every other applicant combined in every way possible. Despite this, His first and only role so far could easily be summarized as a dorky but charming best friend to a hot leading man. Despite his god-given beauty, David was already afraid of being typecast. When he started working for the QTMA Channel 7 News, he figured it would be a bit more fun before moving on to something serious. Every actor worth his salt loves to play a little house, and that's exactly what this was to David. He didn't belong here, and he never would, but David was a good enough actor that nobody would ever need to know the difference. A little private joke just for him, the punchline one of the greatest kept secrets of his whole career. Not only did he not give a fuck about anyone at this station, he was better than them. if they liked him, and he very quickly found that they did, He felt like a puppet master.

When he felt himself getting a little too comfortable a few months into working for the station, David took risks. He improvised some on-air catchphrases, He interrupted anchors, and sometimes for fun, he would pronounce someone's name wrong on purpose. the punchline? it had the exact opposite effect he thought it would. Instead of getting fired or even reprimanded, soon enough people started to know his name. Some of his painfully lame catch phrases could be seen on the company's website, And best of all was when the head of the network told him they needed someone like him who wasn't afraid to take risks. Maybe he didn't have to move on after all. Maybe, David could be a kind of king if he smiled hard enough.

 This morning he had taken one of those risks. As much as he enjoyed being David Dunkirk, the Channel Seven eye in the sky, David always preferred having his feet on the ground. scared of flying? No, no, no, not at all. He was just cautious. Cautious enough that he would simply head down to the sound booth, throw some helicopter noises in the background, and read whatever dribble had been oozed onto the copy. All the Rubes watching live could see was a camera dangling from seemingly nowhere, without a single shot inside of the chopper. He did, of course, actually use the chopper when the mood struck him, and this morning the mood had indeed struck. As soon as he opened the door to the roof, David heard Hawk laughing. “Well, well, well. Look who's showing up to work for once, getting tired of staring at power suits, big shot?” Hawk laughed from across the rooftop. “You know it man,” David called back, “I could use some wind in my sails this morning.” 

What the fuck did that mean? Well, whatever it was, it worked, and Hawk clapped him on the back before hopping into the shiny yellow eyesore. What the hell was his real name, anyway? David started calling him Hawk no less than a week before he first met him. It was mostly a tactic he used to avoid learning people's real names. Was it J Something? James? By the time he made his way to the passenger side door, the helicopter's blades had already started to whir, and less than 10 minutes later they were live on the air. He said good morning and what a lovely morning it is, Donna. He said the same basic shit David always said. He said it would be cooler in the morning, warm up towards noon and get cold again later tonight. He said It sure was a cold one, but he was doing his part to keep everyone's spirits warm. In his perfect salesman style, David advised “Make sure you use Burkes Refrigeration for all your cold storage needs. Burke cares, so you don't have to.”

Really breaking new ground here, asshole. That was when the routine ended, However. That was when David saw the chance to take his second risk of the day. The cloud of thick black smoke spiralling away from an ocean of dirty brown snow could only mean one thing. That was when he saw his chance to catapult his career into the realm of Lester Holt. Without even realizing it, David was grinning like a kid on Christmas.

4.

When she had first woken up to the smell of smoke, she wasn't concerned in the slightest. She had the sort of detached curiosity of someone driving past a car wreck, a swirling mixture of wanting to know more and wanting to know less. The last time she'd woken up to the smell of smoke was way back when they had first moved in, and the resulting smoky black mess was the reason she had never had breakfast in bed since. This wasn't the smell of burnt toast or overcooked bacon, however, She knew that without even opening her eyes. On almost all of her countless family camping trips, She'd loved tossing in a packet of fire colors and watching the neon flames lick charred wood. Every time her grandpa saw those colors, he would always say the same thing. 

Must have put a garden hose in there, Smells like a son of a bitch, but lights up really pretty. Smells like a son of a bitch, she echoed. But it lights up real pretty. By this point, most of the living room was already gone. It wouldn't be long before she could hear the heavy popping sound of knotted wood burning, the sound of glass picture frames shattering from heat stress, the smell of countless burning plastics, metals, and fabrics, the smell of her entire life going up in smoke. 

By the time she got to her feet, it was already too late.

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AFTERWORD

Being a cop, Grace figured she had damn near seen it all. Shotgun suicides, Countless brawls and bar fights, Battered women, Neglected children, Addicts after their final high. But most of the time it was a lot less dramatic. No cats stuck in a tree by any means, but nothing that would make a decent episode of COPS. Events like double homicide are few and far between, even in a good-sized city like this one. Remembering it all, Grace spent the drive to the crime scene doing the best she could to brace herself. Anyone who told you that it would get easier was a liar, but it did get a little easier. Arriving on the scene a few minutes later, Grace let out a sigh of relief. The three cruisers surrounding the small trailer, let her know that most of the work had already been done. 

Left behind like a discarded bullet casing, Grace found only a single sobbing woman to comfort inside. At first, She told her woman what She told everyone in that position. She told her that there were resources for people in her position. She told her that this was the hardest part and that things would get easier. She told her that she had lost somebody too. Just as the woman's tears were starting to dry, she looked up and asked her a simple, barefaced question that still broke her heart when she thought of it. Who's going to clean all this up? Choked between tears. Amazingly, Grace had never really thought of it before, and had no idea what to tell her. There was no Department of the Force for Crime scene clean-up, and she quickly learned the field was almost entirely dominated by privately owned companies. Less than a month later, she sent her first email to one of those companies asking to be trained and found herself an official bioremediation specialist. Nobody ever called her that title, However. To most folks, Grace was simply another crime scene cleaner. 

Being a crime scene cleaner was a whole different kind of education. Grace learned that over time, people will pop and melt into the floor. She learned that small pieces of a human skull can cut through multiple layers of gloves and get stuck in your palms.  She learned in the right conditions, Human fat can burn like the wax of a candle. Later, Grace learned to turn off her detective brain, to stop herself from making a subconscious timeline of events. So when she stepped into the blackened skeleton of the apartment for the first time, Grace thought this would be fairly simple. No blood, no shit, no tiny pieces of bone to pick from the ceiling. This would be pretty standard demo work once the body was out of the way unless the bedroom was somehow a mess, but she had no way of knowing yet Just by looking at what was left of the door. Grace made her way over to the knob, attempted to open it, and pulled the whole door right off the wall. As it collapsed to the floor, That timeline of events Grace had worked so hard to ignore became more and more obvious as the corpse inside was revealed. A shiny Fleck of gold glittered, commanding her attention. It was a wedding ring, or at the very least an engagement ring. If Connor had brought that same ring home on some future Valentine's Day, Grace would have scolded him for going so far over budget. But for a wedding ring, it was perfect. It used to be perfect anyway, but with her focus fading off the ring, Grace allowed herself to take in the whole picture all at once. 

a black human-shaped lump of coal, hands still around her knees. She had no time to save herself. She may have panicked at first, but in the end, she had simply sat, resting her back along the edge of the bed, and waited for the smoke to carry her out. Did she feel any pain? Were those marks on the door? Scratch marks? Where exactly did she stop and all of this wreckage start? 

It was impossible to say