The Night Chicago Burned
Summary: Gary discovers that the invisible thread of time connects the past to the present. This very short story was inspired by "Hot Time in the Old Town."
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whomever created them. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made. Some of the dialogue that appears in this story is not my own, but belongs to the writer of the Early Edition episode "Hot Time in the Old Town."
Author: Tracy Diane Miller E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com
The Night Chicago Burned
Chicago, 1871
As flames painted the ebony sky, the scene was reminiscent of another pivotal moment in time where a different city had also burned and a proud legacy of gentility had been swept away with the howling winds. On that night, Atlanta had crumbled to its knees, humiliated and whipped into submission by Sherman's forces. Those conquerors had ravaged homes as the spoils of war. It was a night that had witnessed the mass exodus of Southerners as a powerful conflagration swallowed the city. And it was a night for which those who had survived would never forget; a memory indelibly imprinted on the brain and passed on throughout generations as a tale of lost glory and innocence.
But tonight, the fire that licked Chicago buildings and homes would not be remembered as a byproduct of war. Instead, history would blame this destruction on Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
Gary stopped the stranger driving a horse-drawn wagon. A moment later, the man agreed to the hero's request to take Jesse and Eleanor away from the burning city.
"We can find you if we get in trouble again?" Jesse asked Gary.
"Jesse, I'm just passing through. I..."
"Sure." Was the young boy's response, disappointment evident in his tone.
"Listen, I wish I could make everything right, but I can't do that."
A brief silence.
"Listen, here. Jesse, look you take this. Go ahead. I want you to have that." Gary said as he handed Jesse his pocket watch.
Jesse took the watch. He rubbed his finger over the timepiece in an almost reverent gesture. "You sure, mister?"
"Yeah, I'm sure." Gary said. "And don't give up. Do you understand what I'm saying? 'Cause if you do, I'm going to know. Don't give up."
Gary watched as the wagon carrying Jesse and Eleanor towards their destinies disappeared into the night.
******
Chicago, 1998
Last night, while he slept, they wouldn't leave him alone. As the moon quietly observed, they had emerged to torment him. They had prowled around his brain and had invaded his subconscious without remorse. And like the vengeful scavengers that they were, they had fed upon his sanity and had left confusion in their wake.
Nightmares.
They were hungry, aggressive, and merciless pursuers. Soon, the voices had visited him. The sounds were faint, yet he could still hear them very clearly. These voices had whispered from the darkness before the faces had appeared to him like restless ghosts craving recognition. Morris. Sullivan. Eleanor. Jesse. They were the names and faces that belonged to another time and place.
But the sensations were the worst. Fire. An angry explosion of colors followed by a cloth of smoke blanketing a vulnerable sky. His heart pounding as he desperately began beating the stubborn flames in a vain attempt to subdue them. Smoke filling his lungs and suffocating him. And finally, the impatient fire waiting no more as the flames tasted his flesh. Then...
"Good morning, Chicago. It's 6:30 and..."
"Meow." Thump.
He woke up.
In a trance-like fashion, his hand slapped the radio turning off the offending device. Ignoring Cat's plea, Gary lay in bed for a moment. A thick layer of perspiration coated his sweatshirt before making an uncharted journey down his chest. His heart continued pounding forcefully seemingly unable to process that the nightmare had ended. And his head was equally unresponsive; the hero's heart had communicated his fears and now his head was throbbing. His entire body appeared rebellious to his desire for calm. Gary couldn't remember when a dream had affected him so deeply.
He tried reassuring himself by silently repeating that what he had just experienced was only a nightmare, a figment of his imagination that couldn't hurt him. None of what he had seen or felt in that dream was real. He had never visited Chicago during the time of the Great Fire. Time travel was just...it was just some perverse H.G. Wells' science fiction fantasy. There was no invisible portal, no time and space ripple linking the past to the present.
And he wasn't a kid anymore. He didn't need to be afraid of shadows on the wall that he thought were clever monsters poised to strike.
There was no such thing as time travel. Right?
Still, yesterday he had tried explaining to Chuck and Marissa what he believed had happened to him. He told his friends about Morris and Eleanor, how these denizens of the nineteenth century bore an uncanny resemblance to them and about Sullivan who was a dead ringer for Trotter. He told them about Jesse, about the talented and resourceful young boy trying to find his way in a cold and heartless society. And he told them about how he had tried stopping Chicago from burning that fateful night over one hundred years ago.
Gary felt frustrated when Chuck not only looked at him disbelievingly but had also acted as if he were a child weaving a tall tale as a bid for attention. And Marissa...well, even she hadn't believed him and she had always been much more willing to accept the unexplainable on faith alone. Both of them had insisted that when he hit his head on the ground at that construction site that he must have dreamed the whole thing during the time that he was rendered unconscious.
Perhaps, he too would have been content to dismiss all of this as some injury-induced delusion and bury it deep within the recesses of his brain, but there were still some unanswered questions. Gary knew that neither Jesse Mayfield IV nor that familiar pocket watch that the young man sported and had proudly revealed as an heirloom from his great-grandfather was a dream.
"Meow!" Cat's cry was insistent now. Fortunately, Gary's agitated body had finally settled. A moment later, he arose from the bed and proceeded to the door. He knew that he had a responsibility for preventing the future disasters that awaited him. The Great Fire, a unique moment in Chicago's history, had already happened. He didn't have the time for obsessing whether or not he had been a part of it. The past had already taken care of itself. He needed to take care of the future even if it did come to him a day early.
Gary opened the door. Cat seemed to stare at him intently for a moment then let out one last and arguably annoyed "meow" for being kept waiting. The feline strutted into the room like some self-absorbed diva commanding the stage on opening night. Gary reached down, picked up the Paper, and closed the door.
The front page was blissfully silent; only mundane headlines greeted him. Cautiously, he began flipping through the pages. If the early edition were a person, one might have suspected that today The Paper too was exhausted from always shouldering such a heavy burden and wanted to relax. It looked as if it was going to be a "quiet" day with a half-dozen slip and falls scattered at different times throughout the city. Sure, he was going to be busy, but none of the saves was life-threatening. His first save, at 8:00 a.m., would involve preventing a woman from slipping on some spilled orange juice in the lobby nearby the directory by the elevators of an office building on Wacker.
He took a quick shower. After selecting a pair of jeans and a white turtleneck sweater, Gary grabbed his leather jacket and left the loft. Breakfast this morning would consist of only a cup of strong, black coffee. Maybe this was unfair subsistence for a body that had endured what he had yesterday, but the thought of food at this moment lacked appeal for him.
Time proceeded at a frenzied pace and before Gary knew it, he was on his way to his first save. Traffic was congested this morning as Gary sat in the cab so it took him nearly a half-hour to reach Wacker. The air already reeked with an odor of impatience and rudeness as a number of people pushed and shoved their way through crowded pavements to reach their destinations. The rat race never seemed to stop its dizzying run along the never-ending corporate wheel. To stop, to even slow down, meant that a younger, hungrier person was always willing and ready to take your place on the wheel. There was a reason why cash was cold and hard. It was because the desire to achieve it at any cost often meant sacrificing the warmth of human kindness.
Gary never understood that. His "American Dream" was never about material rewards nor social accolades. The "American Dream" he desired was the stuff of fairy tales; he craved a loving wife and healthy and happy children. Making money was only about providing a comfortable home for his family not accumulating things that he didn't need.
Entering the lobby of the office building, he was immediately filled with disgust as the memories flooded back to him. This building was like so many others in Chicago, in big cities all across the country. It reminded him of his days working at Strauss and Associates. A cold, gray, sterile prison where human emotion was left at the front door like wiping one's feet on a welcoming mat. Except there was no welcoming mat in the corporate jungle. Perfectly manicured, double-breasted suits (some designer name), expensive leather shoes and briefcases confirmed the illusion of success. But were these people happy? Gary wondered. They didn't look happy.
Gary was shook from his musings by the appearance of a young woman just entering the building through the revolving doors. She proceeded towards the elevators. The woman seemed oblivious to the impending danger.
Gary spied the spilled orange juice. With the agility of a panther, the hero sprung into action and caught the woman just as her pumps made contact with the substance and she started to fall. She was dazed but unhurt. She thanked him and impulsively rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek. A few moments later, the elevator had arrived. The young woman stepped in and disappeared to her destination.
Gary removed The Paper from the back pocket of his jeans. As expected, a story about an upcoming school board meeting replaced this particular slip and fall. He put The Paper back into his pocket and walked towards the revolving doors ready to leave the building. He stopped when he spotted the young man who had just entered the building. The well-dressed African- American wore an Armani suit with a comfortable familiarity; yet pretension didn't seem to be a part of his attire.
Gary realized that the man was Jesse Mayfield IV. Maybe there was a reason that The Paper had sent him here to this office building. Maybe it had to do with more than preventing a woman from slipping on some orange juice. Yesterday, was a mystery to him. Last night, he wrestled with nightmares. Perhaps today he would have some answers.
"Excuse me? Mr. Mayfield?" Gary called out to the man.
Jesse turned around to face the caller. Gary approached him. "Gary Hobson. We met yesterday."
"Of course, Mr. Hobson. Nice to see you." Jesse extended his hand. Gary accepted the handshake. "And I want to thank you again for your help yesterday."
"It was nothing. I...ah...I..just...you're welcome." Gary stammered.
A brief silence.
"Mr. Mayfield, I was wondering...do you have a few minutes? I want to talk to you about something."
"Sure. What do you want to talk about?" Jesse asked puzzled.
Gary hesitated briefly before responding. "Your great-grandfather." Gary said cryptically.
The End.
Summary: Gary discovers that the invisible thread of time connects the past to the present. This very short story was inspired by "Hot Time in the Old Town."
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whomever created them. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made. Some of the dialogue that appears in this story is not my own, but belongs to the writer of the Early Edition episode "Hot Time in the Old Town."
Author: Tracy Diane Miller E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com
The Night Chicago Burned
Chicago, 1871
As flames painted the ebony sky, the scene was reminiscent of another pivotal moment in time where a different city had also burned and a proud legacy of gentility had been swept away with the howling winds. On that night, Atlanta had crumbled to its knees, humiliated and whipped into submission by Sherman's forces. Those conquerors had ravaged homes as the spoils of war. It was a night that had witnessed the mass exodus of Southerners as a powerful conflagration swallowed the city. And it was a night for which those who had survived would never forget; a memory indelibly imprinted on the brain and passed on throughout generations as a tale of lost glory and innocence.
But tonight, the fire that licked Chicago buildings and homes would not be remembered as a byproduct of war. Instead, history would blame this destruction on Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
Gary stopped the stranger driving a horse-drawn wagon. A moment later, the man agreed to the hero's request to take Jesse and Eleanor away from the burning city.
"We can find you if we get in trouble again?" Jesse asked Gary.
"Jesse, I'm just passing through. I..."
"Sure." Was the young boy's response, disappointment evident in his tone.
"Listen, I wish I could make everything right, but I can't do that."
A brief silence.
"Listen, here. Jesse, look you take this. Go ahead. I want you to have that." Gary said as he handed Jesse his pocket watch.
Jesse took the watch. He rubbed his finger over the timepiece in an almost reverent gesture. "You sure, mister?"
"Yeah, I'm sure." Gary said. "And don't give up. Do you understand what I'm saying? 'Cause if you do, I'm going to know. Don't give up."
Gary watched as the wagon carrying Jesse and Eleanor towards their destinies disappeared into the night.
******
Chicago, 1998
Last night, while he slept, they wouldn't leave him alone. As the moon quietly observed, they had emerged to torment him. They had prowled around his brain and had invaded his subconscious without remorse. And like the vengeful scavengers that they were, they had fed upon his sanity and had left confusion in their wake.
Nightmares.
They were hungry, aggressive, and merciless pursuers. Soon, the voices had visited him. The sounds were faint, yet he could still hear them very clearly. These voices had whispered from the darkness before the faces had appeared to him like restless ghosts craving recognition. Morris. Sullivan. Eleanor. Jesse. They were the names and faces that belonged to another time and place.
But the sensations were the worst. Fire. An angry explosion of colors followed by a cloth of smoke blanketing a vulnerable sky. His heart pounding as he desperately began beating the stubborn flames in a vain attempt to subdue them. Smoke filling his lungs and suffocating him. And finally, the impatient fire waiting no more as the flames tasted his flesh. Then...
"Good morning, Chicago. It's 6:30 and..."
"Meow." Thump.
He woke up.
In a trance-like fashion, his hand slapped the radio turning off the offending device. Ignoring Cat's plea, Gary lay in bed for a moment. A thick layer of perspiration coated his sweatshirt before making an uncharted journey down his chest. His heart continued pounding forcefully seemingly unable to process that the nightmare had ended. And his head was equally unresponsive; the hero's heart had communicated his fears and now his head was throbbing. His entire body appeared rebellious to his desire for calm. Gary couldn't remember when a dream had affected him so deeply.
He tried reassuring himself by silently repeating that what he had just experienced was only a nightmare, a figment of his imagination that couldn't hurt him. None of what he had seen or felt in that dream was real. He had never visited Chicago during the time of the Great Fire. Time travel was just...it was just some perverse H.G. Wells' science fiction fantasy. There was no invisible portal, no time and space ripple linking the past to the present.
And he wasn't a kid anymore. He didn't need to be afraid of shadows on the wall that he thought were clever monsters poised to strike.
There was no such thing as time travel. Right?
Still, yesterday he had tried explaining to Chuck and Marissa what he believed had happened to him. He told his friends about Morris and Eleanor, how these denizens of the nineteenth century bore an uncanny resemblance to them and about Sullivan who was a dead ringer for Trotter. He told them about Jesse, about the talented and resourceful young boy trying to find his way in a cold and heartless society. And he told them about how he had tried stopping Chicago from burning that fateful night over one hundred years ago.
Gary felt frustrated when Chuck not only looked at him disbelievingly but had also acted as if he were a child weaving a tall tale as a bid for attention. And Marissa...well, even she hadn't believed him and she had always been much more willing to accept the unexplainable on faith alone. Both of them had insisted that when he hit his head on the ground at that construction site that he must have dreamed the whole thing during the time that he was rendered unconscious.
Perhaps, he too would have been content to dismiss all of this as some injury-induced delusion and bury it deep within the recesses of his brain, but there were still some unanswered questions. Gary knew that neither Jesse Mayfield IV nor that familiar pocket watch that the young man sported and had proudly revealed as an heirloom from his great-grandfather was a dream.
"Meow!" Cat's cry was insistent now. Fortunately, Gary's agitated body had finally settled. A moment later, he arose from the bed and proceeded to the door. He knew that he had a responsibility for preventing the future disasters that awaited him. The Great Fire, a unique moment in Chicago's history, had already happened. He didn't have the time for obsessing whether or not he had been a part of it. The past had already taken care of itself. He needed to take care of the future even if it did come to him a day early.
Gary opened the door. Cat seemed to stare at him intently for a moment then let out one last and arguably annoyed "meow" for being kept waiting. The feline strutted into the room like some self-absorbed diva commanding the stage on opening night. Gary reached down, picked up the Paper, and closed the door.
The front page was blissfully silent; only mundane headlines greeted him. Cautiously, he began flipping through the pages. If the early edition were a person, one might have suspected that today The Paper too was exhausted from always shouldering such a heavy burden and wanted to relax. It looked as if it was going to be a "quiet" day with a half-dozen slip and falls scattered at different times throughout the city. Sure, he was going to be busy, but none of the saves was life-threatening. His first save, at 8:00 a.m., would involve preventing a woman from slipping on some spilled orange juice in the lobby nearby the directory by the elevators of an office building on Wacker.
He took a quick shower. After selecting a pair of jeans and a white turtleneck sweater, Gary grabbed his leather jacket and left the loft. Breakfast this morning would consist of only a cup of strong, black coffee. Maybe this was unfair subsistence for a body that had endured what he had yesterday, but the thought of food at this moment lacked appeal for him.
Time proceeded at a frenzied pace and before Gary knew it, he was on his way to his first save. Traffic was congested this morning as Gary sat in the cab so it took him nearly a half-hour to reach Wacker. The air already reeked with an odor of impatience and rudeness as a number of people pushed and shoved their way through crowded pavements to reach their destinations. The rat race never seemed to stop its dizzying run along the never-ending corporate wheel. To stop, to even slow down, meant that a younger, hungrier person was always willing and ready to take your place on the wheel. There was a reason why cash was cold and hard. It was because the desire to achieve it at any cost often meant sacrificing the warmth of human kindness.
Gary never understood that. His "American Dream" was never about material rewards nor social accolades. The "American Dream" he desired was the stuff of fairy tales; he craved a loving wife and healthy and happy children. Making money was only about providing a comfortable home for his family not accumulating things that he didn't need.
Entering the lobby of the office building, he was immediately filled with disgust as the memories flooded back to him. This building was like so many others in Chicago, in big cities all across the country. It reminded him of his days working at Strauss and Associates. A cold, gray, sterile prison where human emotion was left at the front door like wiping one's feet on a welcoming mat. Except there was no welcoming mat in the corporate jungle. Perfectly manicured, double-breasted suits (some designer name), expensive leather shoes and briefcases confirmed the illusion of success. But were these people happy? Gary wondered. They didn't look happy.
Gary was shook from his musings by the appearance of a young woman just entering the building through the revolving doors. She proceeded towards the elevators. The woman seemed oblivious to the impending danger.
Gary spied the spilled orange juice. With the agility of a panther, the hero sprung into action and caught the woman just as her pumps made contact with the substance and she started to fall. She was dazed but unhurt. She thanked him and impulsively rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek. A few moments later, the elevator had arrived. The young woman stepped in and disappeared to her destination.
Gary removed The Paper from the back pocket of his jeans. As expected, a story about an upcoming school board meeting replaced this particular slip and fall. He put The Paper back into his pocket and walked towards the revolving doors ready to leave the building. He stopped when he spotted the young man who had just entered the building. The well-dressed African- American wore an Armani suit with a comfortable familiarity; yet pretension didn't seem to be a part of his attire.
Gary realized that the man was Jesse Mayfield IV. Maybe there was a reason that The Paper had sent him here to this office building. Maybe it had to do with more than preventing a woman from slipping on some orange juice. Yesterday, was a mystery to him. Last night, he wrestled with nightmares. Perhaps today he would have some answers.
"Excuse me? Mr. Mayfield?" Gary called out to the man.
Jesse turned around to face the caller. Gary approached him. "Gary Hobson. We met yesterday."
"Of course, Mr. Hobson. Nice to see you." Jesse extended his hand. Gary accepted the handshake. "And I want to thank you again for your help yesterday."
"It was nothing. I...ah...I..just...you're welcome." Gary stammered.
A brief silence.
"Mr. Mayfield, I was wondering...do you have a few minutes? I want to talk to you about something."
"Sure. What do you want to talk about?" Jesse asked puzzled.
Gary hesitated briefly before responding. "Your great-grandfather." Gary said cryptically.
The End.