Local News: Woman Dies In Chimney

By Kristen Tracy

They broke up and she, either fed up or drunk or undone,

ached to get back inside. Officials surmise

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she climbed a ladder to his roof, removed

the chimney cap and entered feet first. Long story short,

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she died there. Stuck. Like a tragic Santa. Struggling

for days, the news explains. It was a smell that led

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to the discovery of her body. One neighbor

speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a person

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could disregard so much: the damper, the flue,

the smoke shelf. He can’t imagine what it was she faced.

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The empty garage. The locked back door. And is that

a light on in the den? They show us the grass

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where they found her purse. And it’s not impossible to picture

her standing on the patio — abandoned — the mind

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turning obscene, all hopes pinned on refastening the snap.

Then spotting the bricks rising above the roof

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and at first believing and then knowing, sun flashing its

god-blinding light behind it, that the chimney was the way