Rest

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On September 11, 2001, members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, crashed airplanes into the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, the third one heroically diverted by passengers. Twenty-two years later, I think of the families who were affected by this tragedy and know they still grieve. In no way do I mean to infer they should be over their grief, but I do wish for them rest.

This short fiction was written in response to a prompt inviting me to use "As soon as Harriet entered the building, she headed to the seventh floor" as the opening sentence.

 

                                                                                Rest

As soon as Harriet entered the building, she headed to the seventh floor; the number seven corresponding to the seven bells and seven birds and seven brass horns that had summoned her to come. Harriet, or Hare, or Hettie as Mama Pat called her, was sure the summons to appear was the beginning of a new chapter in her otherwise uneventful existence, unless maybe you count her death an event.

As far as she was concerned, it was only a blip, a mild disruption in an otherwise hum-drum day, as she felt the chill flash of light pass through her when American Flight 11 hit her tall north tower. The dust was thick, but she felt no ill effect, only a small aggravation with the way her legs kept floating up and her skirt opened like rose petals showing everyone her hoo-ha, which was a new sensation.

That’s what she remembered as she walked into the tall building and called the elevator to ascend to the seventh floor she could have reached by levitating, but she much preferred the button’s solid feel. The doors opened into one room much larger than it looked from outside, and over 1600 fellow souls of the north tower gathered there in quiet conversation, not to mention the five Arab men who knelt in prayer facing East.

They were all there together, and no one was worried, and no one was jealous, and no one was upset even to find there on the same floor those who in the former life had been the attackers and the others the attacked. It felt to Harriet like she had found on that seventh floor a higher plane, pun not intended, where the 1600 souls and even the five Arab men soon swirled together and faded, but she didn’t feel alone at all, only full.

In her fullness, she found she was rocking, gently rocking, in a soft, familiar lap, as Mama Pat enfolded her in arms so strong and tender and kissed her hair and softly sang, “My Hettie, oh, my Hettie, take your rest.”

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