Lines in Brown

This day in 1919 marks the Great Boston Molasses Flood, when a molasses storage tank burst in Boston’s East End and consumed 21 lives.

21 lives lost, and undocumented.

While history records the events, it doesn’t record the names.

Some histories cannot be left on paper — they wait to be remembered.

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Criminalist Eleanor’s job was her haven – she adored the precision and the intimate attention to detail it needed. Years in the Commercial Affairs department of the police force had ingrained foolproof method and reliability – traits that made her renowned.

January 15 took her to an abandoned industrial site – one where tension and chaos were still very much married. Molasses had erupted in waves of brown  from industrial containers, drowning 21 workers in viscous sea of dessert thick enough to build another Berlin wall . The atmosphere overwhelmed in a sickening instant.

Molasses lines still trailed along the sides of tanks, creeping from something – unseen. Brown and sticky. Gripping. Unyielding. 

Accusing.

But Eleanor was but a monitor of records, not memory. She was tasked with verifying the truth – not on reflection of responsibility.

The sickly-sweet dessert was a trained assassin assailing Eleanor’s nose – the cloying scent wrapped her nostrils with a vengeance. The air bore sweetness where none should be. Time had softened, but not erased it – it didn’t move. But remained almost deathly unsettled. 

She had recorded the event before, without missing a beat. 

Safely. Accurately. 

But the events and dates did not sync. The numbers bore no weight – meaningless. The dates had no breath. 

Accuracy had trumped reverence. 

The names of the 21 lost souls, dissolved with the viscosity that had enfolded them. 

Then, the viscous remains reshaped. 

Hardened. 

Becoming a tangled mass of brown limbs, melded together in linked chains that could not be broken. 

Then they rose, in a circle, surrounding Eleanor. 

Approaching her, but not reanching. 

21 links, glistening with dessert gleam. 

Reminding. 

Eleanor stared at the forms, too dumbstruck for words. Mesmerised – but aware enough to find them odd.

None of them spilt forward. None screamed.

She remembered the file that she had put on the table beside her, open to a blank page.

The figures stared, nodding.

And she understood. 

The record she had to complete. That she would complete. 

And the day she would finally mark with remembrance. 

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Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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