Hero

No one wanted to be at the Citadel that dark Thursday but there was no choice in the matter. It could have been a good morning but the wind was a little too brisk and the ice a touch too slick. Luckily, it did not take too long to seat everyone and soon the class was quietly anticipating the start of the play. Most of the children snuggled deep down in their jackets, breathing on their hands to get some feeling back in them.
Miss Callighan furrowed her brows glancing down the row at her class. She shivered and pulled her jacket tighter around her body. She quietly wondered to herself as to why it was so cold in the theatre. Just as the thought crossed her mind she felt a wave of heat flood the room. They had finally turned the furnace on.
In a few short moments the play began. It was good but it was not the best rendition of Romeo and Juliet she had ever seen. Again Miss Callighan glanced down the row. Some of the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves, while a couple, she noticed, had fallen asleep. Maybe she should not have taken the entire English class on the field trip. She shook her head and went back to watching the play.
It was the marriage scene when everything went wrong. Maybe it was due to the cold or just a design flaw but the building started to collapse in on itself.
All the children began screaming and everyone started rushing to the exits. Miss Callighan ushered her class towards the doors and told them to stay calm, even though she herself was panicking. Just before making it out of the building, Miss Callighan took one last look inside and saw on a small child crying on the floor. The kid could not have been more than two. She raced back in, grabbed the child and wrapped herself around him protectively as the building came down on the two of them.
Later, when the rescue workers cleared the rubble away they found a young school teacher holding  crying toddler in her frozen arms.

A/N: This is another Cafe Chi piece. The prompt was to write a tragedy about somebody at our meeting. For privacy reasons I changed the name. 

Deja Vu

I have this constant feeling that nothing is real. You know that feeling where you wonder if you are actually dreaming and if your life is actually something completely different than what you thought it was. I guess that is not exactly the way I am feeling. One moment ago I was just celebrating my high school graduation, now I am sitting in the library of a college I do not even remember applying to. Mom says that forgetting things comes with age but I am pretty sure that people do not just forget five years of their life just like that.
The biggest problems arise when I forget my own husband's name. I do not even remember him, let alone getting married. And I do not remember carrying a human baby inside me for nine months. I remember the night of my high school grad so vividly and then nothing. A complete blank. I think my husband's name is Kevin, yes, that has to be it. It is hard to see him look so disheartened every time I make it obvious that I do not remember some important piece of our relationship. It was just yesterday that he came home and told me that he had made it into medical school, I congratulated as though he was an acquaintance.
Then, there is my son, Logan. I do not even recognize his cry. I will often think to myself, "can't that mother quiet her child," before realizing that I am the mother and he is my child. I feel being a mother right now is more responsibility than I can handle. Its true, I forget to bring essentials with me, like diapers or bottles. Then there was that time I actually left him at the park, it was only five minutes before I realized I was missing the stroller, but still I forgot him. When that happened I became convinced that I switched places with somebody else because there was no way that this could be my life right now. I mentioned my theory to Kevin and he insisted that I was the same person. I have spent a lot time staring at my reflection, and I see me, only older. It always surprises me because I still expect to see my seventeen year old self. There is one key thing missing from my memory from that night, my grad night, I can feel it. Oh wait-

Maribeth stirred in her sleep. A concerned mother sat up and a family rushed to gather around a hospital bed. Chocolate brown eyes fluttered open and a muffled question escaped a seventeen year old girl's lips.
"Hey honey," Marybeth's mother squeezed her hand, "don't try to talk, just rest."

Maribeth looked around the campus of her new school. She was finally a college freshman. She stared at the map in her hand with a puzzled expression.
"Need help?" She looked up and saw a young man looking over her shoulder.
She smiled and nodded, "that would be awesome. I'm Maribeth, by the way."
"Nice to meet you, Maribeth," he took the girl's hand, "I'm Kevin."
"Nice to meet you too."

A/N: This was a piece from Cafe Chi that did over a month but I was having lots of problems with my computer (still am) and so did not post it at the time. Not my best piece of writing but I feel like this little passage has some potential should I ever choose to do something more with it.