excerpt NaNoWriMo 2016

…how to adequately describe the fifteen minutes in which one hundred forty six souls perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, March, 1911…

Hundreds of horrified neighbors and fellow workers stood across and down the street from the smoking Ashe Building,  hypnotized, stunned, necks craning backward,  hands held over  gasping mouths as one, two, three,  more, and more long haired, terrified, frantic young women threw themselves  from the windows of the eighth floor, skirts and shirts and stockings flaring.  Young men silhouetted against the roaring flames held  the girls’ and women’s and the few boys’ hands as they frantically climbed onto smouldering window frames, then stepped out,  falling,  flashing, slashing,  smashing to the sidewalks below, never seeing, never hearing, never screaming, never moving again.  And people stood there, staring, not believing, destroyed.