Flashback Circa 1980
Flashback
He locked the doors and bolted the windows.
He cut the phone line and turned on the stove.
He threw the match onto the shirt drenched in rubbing alcohol, watching for barely a second before shutting the bathroom door.
In the dead of night, he didn’t linger. He knew how quickly homes burned down, and he knew how quickly fire ate at the oxygen of dry wooden walls.
He slipped out of the basement window with struggle, the tight space too small for anyone larger than himself to fit through.
And then, as calmly as when he’d started, he sat heedfully.
While everybody else had been swept away to whatever dreams or nightmares awaited them, Alexei Andreeva watched from across the street as a flicker of orange flashed in one of the front windows.
It grew, slipping over to the second window and then reaching the second floor.
It wasn’t long before a window popped, a woman screamed, and the fire smothered. Through it all, Alexei watched.
It was therapeutic, he found. Watching everyone who hurt him, everyone who allowed it, everyone who averted their eyes when he limped into the kitchen for breakfast or walked in the other direction when he hunched over himself and sobbed out in the far corner of the yard.
The screams crying for help calmed him. With each one, another ghostly shackle broke, and with each breath, he felt lighter.
He was a coward, afraid to fight back.
But no more.
It didn’t take long for the firefighters and police officers to arrive. As Alexei had predicted, his social worker still hadn’t made it to the scene, still blissfully asleep, he assumed.
When the small child offered up his innocent excuse of being locked out for returning after the streetlights came on, no one seemed to bat an eye.
“This was a boys home.”
“Ah.” The officer nodded in understanding, at least trying to look remorseful.
As if it were normal. Typical. Believable. Not any loss to the human race.
Where was he? Oh right.
Alexei Andreeva was a coward. And Alexei Andreeva was now dead.
“And what did you say your name was, son?”
“My name is Alexandr Miroslav, sir.”