The Girl in the Window

The day of the great earthquake of 1906. Not too scary.

The girl was woken up early in the morning by the earthquake. She felt like something was shaking her bed, but the earth itself was shaking the entire room, the entire house.  She stayed in her bed with her mother as the earth continued to shake. She tried to remember what she should do. By the time she got out of bed, the shaking had stopped. Her mother went to check on her aunt the the other side of town, after it was clear that their house was stable enough. The girl was told to stay in the room until her mother came back. 

The room was small. It was on the second floor of a hastily built wooden building, surrounded by many other hastily built wooden buildings. There was a bed that she shared with her mother, a desk where her mother wrote letters to her absent father, and a few toys scattered on the floor. There was a single window overlooking the dirt street. The only earthquake damage to their house, as far as she could see, was a single crack running down the glass. 

The earthquake had roused her neighbors, but this early there was no light and everything was quiet.  She obediently stayed in the room all day. She watched, looking outside the window. After the sun rose, she saw the first of the fire engines rolling past her street. For the rest of the day, the engines drove back and forth. As the day dragged on, she saw more fire  engines  driving on the road. The later it was, the closer they seemed to be to her house. She could see fire in the distance, but as darkness fell the fire moved closer and closer. People rushed out into the streets. She thought about whether she should go out into the street too, but she knew her mother would come back and she would expect to find her in the room. 

Besides, it was safe in the room. The streets were hectic and loud and dirty and hot. She would get lost or trampled or stolen. The fire would not reach her house. It couldn’t. 

But the fire could not be stopped. It kept pressing forward, block after block of homes lit against the dark sky. 

By the time she thought the danger was real, it was too late. The fire reached the house next to hers. It had not reached the room yet, but she could feel the heat. She opened up the door leading to the doorway and the room was filled with smoke. She ran back into the room, coughing, barely able to breathe. She opened the window, hoping to let the smoke out. She planned to yell and hope that someone would hear her or see her.  But she couldn’t make any sound. She felt the heat with every cell of her body.  She could hear every scream and collapse around her. Time seemed to stop. 

She frantically looked around for an escape, but there was none. Slowly, the adrenaline began to fade from her veins. Mentally, she knew that she was in mortal danger, but her body began to become limp and movement became difficult. She stopped trying to block out the smoke and took long slow breaths. She struggled to move towards safety, but her body was too weak.  That was okay though, because she no longer felt any panic, she no longer knew where she was or how she got there. Around her the fire thundered and sirens blazed, but in her mind, everything was quiet. She no longer could fight; instead, she peacefully drifted off to sleep. 

But then one day she woke up. She remembered the earthquake and the fire. She remembered the panic and the smoke. Yet, she was still at peace. She did not remember her death, but she accepted it. She looked down at her hands and dress and feet and saw only smoke She moved hesitantly towards the window, wondering if her mother would be there. The houses on the other side of the street were in charred ruins. She recognized one of her neighbors walking outside but she did not see her mother. She turned around and looked at the room. The fire did not reach the room, but everything smelled of smoke. The bed and the desk were gone. There was no sign that she had lived and died here. She touched the door leading down the stairs, but soon drifted away again. 

This was the first of many cycles of peacefully drifting away and then finding herself in her room once more. She knew the world only by what was outside her window. First was the charred debris of the fire, then construction, and then grand Victorian homes lining the street. Soon the horses disappeared from the street and electric lights appeared. 

Sometimes there were people inside the room. First was a girl who lived there, who grew into a woman. For a time the room was storage. Then there was an old man who was not there for very long. 

She did not know how she came to wake up or why, but she felt no need to question it. She in and out of existence, slowly, aimlessly, drifting into an unknown future. Each time she fell asleep she did not know if she would wake up again, but a part of her was surprised when she returned. She felt pulled back by some force to this place, but there was nowhere she was being pulled from. 

There was one thing she was curious about. She knew that she could see the rest of the world, but could anyone see her? Every now and then, a head would turn her direction, or someone would stop, but they would always look away and then keep going. She had hoped that someday she would be able to speak to someone to learn where her mother had gone and what had happened to her family. She tried to talk to some of the passersby, but every time she opened her mouth, she could not speak, she could only taste smoke in her mouth.