White Death

We ambled down the railway tracks, waiting for the sound of a train, a rumble beneath our feet; waiting to run. You asked me for a ghost story. I was momentarily at a loss. Neon lights and gory special effects filled the dark spaces, leaving no room for shadows. Then, the play of moonlight on your face and the broken windows of the burnt out factory inspired me to tug at a loose thread of memory. I pointed to the old sugar refinery and, with a voice laden with smoke and warm beer, began my tale.
The building didn’t always look like that. Well that much is obvious even to you I’m sure. Once it was alive. The blood of workers beat in its veins, the thump of machinery was the beat of its heart, the hot air that dried the sugar was its breath and always, always was the air was full of the smell of its sticky sweetness, a sweat that oozed from its floorboards and rafters. Nowadays, white sugar is almost a bad word. People want their raw sugar, their honey their stevia but back then white sugar was gold and the process of spinning and crystallization was damn near alchemy.
I inhaled deeply, wondering if I would catch a hint of white death on the breeze. Maybe it was just my imagination but the damp earth and rusty metal I inhaled did smell almost sweet.
Now, the conditions in the factory weren’t very good, to put it mildly. The machinery was, by all accounts, antiquated; the hours were long, the heat intense and the pay only every slightly above a pittance. But the workers didn’t complain, at least not loudly of publicly. The sugar refinery was one of the few employers in town. Our luxuries have always come at the cost of someone else’s sweat and blood and the workers here were certainly better off than the slaves who worked the sugarcane plantations not so long ago in Brazil.
Even in the dark, I could see you roll your eyes. You wanted a ghost story, not a diatribe about workers’ rights.
The workers inhaled sugar day in and day out. Even after a shower, its scent clung to them like a psychotic mistress. They began to find reasons to turn down their wives peach cobblers and brown bettys. Soon their wives stopped offering. Maybe it was better for all concerned, healthier, but I can’t help thinking that such a strong aversion is unnatural.
Then one day, the whole factory went up in flames. They figure it was just dust, just dust in the overheated machinery, but that was all it took. The building was old and dry. The flames spread almost instantly. All those on the main floor perished. Those on the top floor fared better. Most managed to climb down the rickety fire escapes or jump to their safety before the fire engulfed the whole building.
The city smelled like syrup and burnt flesh for weeks. The owners tried to re-open a new factory just across the bridge but no one would work there. The smell of sugar made them sick. People wouldn’t even buy or eat sugar. Just a whiff of a pie baking in the oven was enough to make a grown man lose his dinner.
Last I heard, they re-opened the factory in some other Podunk town. I hear they’re doing ok, despite this new age of healthy living, but there’s many in this town who still won’t touch sugar.
Good thing it didn’t happen in a brewery, you said and laughed. I laughed too but we both knew there was nothing funny, that we were just hoping the sound would keep the shadows at bay.