On a Cold Winter Night
Rebecca was a mature 12 years old and was accustomed to city life. She had lived in Chicago, Illinois her whole life. Rebecca, her brother David, and her parents lived in a spacious apartment in the center of the city. Every morning, Rebecca boarded the El with her older brother and rode to their stop at 14th and Stenson Boulevard. In the evening they rode the same train back home, where their mother had a hot, comforting meal waiting for them.
One bone chilling February evening, Rebecca’s mom asked if Rebecca could take a thermos of hot shop and a basket of freshly backed blue berry muffins to Beth’s sister stellar, who was in bed with the flu. Beth would have gone herself but she was up to her ears with housework, and Rebecca was at home with nothing to do. But watch the snow turn the dirty city into a winter wonderland. Rebecca was excited to trek through the city on her own. She donned her favorite coat—the puffy red one- and a pair of L.L. Bean snow boots and set off. Rebecca had been instructed to follow the directions her mother wrote out for her and not to dally at any stores she passed along the way.
The wind was fierce, and Rebecca’s pale cheeks turned strawberry red with every step she took. She found the train stop and hurried up the steps. In her haste, Rebecca slipped on a patch of ice and fell flat on her face. The other commuters at the stop hurried to her side to help her up. She tried her best to be brave, and not cry in front of so many strangers, but her brown eyes welled up with tears.
Rebecca sat on a nearby bench with a kind woman who made sure Rebecca wasn’t hurt. After a few minutes, Rebecca’s train, the t-815 came into view. As the train approached, Rebecca could see the lights shining through the windows of the cars. The image of the train in the wintry night reminded her of her favorite book, The Polar Express, the story of another child on an adventure of a lifetime.
The train jerked to a noisy halt and the metal doors sled open. Rebecca felt the car exhale warm, stale air onto her face. She stepped eagerly into the warmth and sat on a hard molded plastic seat. Rebecca noticed the absence of other passengers, which she thought was odd. Turning back toward the door where she entered, she saw a short scruffy man board the train. The doors closed with a resounding click.
The man sat down behind Rebecca. He hummed an eerie tune to himself. The song sounded familiar, but strange, as if in a different key. Rebecca clung tightly to her basket of food and prayed the train would soon come to a stop. They sat like this for a few minutes and suddenly the man fell silent. Rebecca felt him grab her shoulder and she jumped from her seat. The man also stood and asked in a deep, gruff voice, “What’s in the basket, little girl?”
Rebecca gasped and backed away as far as she could from the frightening man and stood pressed to the small door at the back of the car. She spun around and in her fear wrenched open the heavy steel door labeled in large red letters, “EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.” Later that night, Rebecca would remember the smaller words on a plaque below that read “Opening this door will trigger the moving train to stop abruptly.” And abruptly stop it did. As the door swung open, the train screeched to a halt. Rebecca, frozen in fear and cold watched the ground below her come into sharp focus. The rails on which the train wheels grinded on caused angry red sparks to jump in every direction dying quickly in the wet cold night. Rebecca stood in between the cars over he streets of Chicago, her mind racing as the train she rode moments before. The man in the train had followed her to the door.
“Where are you going?” he called out, a sickly yellow smile on his face.
She tried to step away from him across to the connecting car. Her weak legs gave way, though, and she fell through the whirling show the street below.
Luckily for Rebecca, she landed on a mound of freshly shoveled snow. Dazed, but unharmed, she got up—basket still in her cold white hands—and ran toward a nearby group on onlookers standing on the street corner. Looking back, up at the train, she could see the shadowy silhouette of the man, still watching from the train.
***
Rebecca arrived safely at her aunt’s apartment. The soup was now cold and the muffins wet with melted snow, but of course it didn’t matter. She was safe and warm in her aunt’s loving arms.
Aunt Stella was relieved to see her niece and welcomed Rebecca into her cozy yellow kitchen. They shared a pot of hot tea and a bowl of golden popcorn at the kitchen table as Rebecca told her aunt the story of her first journey alone through the city
Falling asleep that night, Rebecca felt very lucky to have survived her trying day. The media tracked her down the next morning and retold her story to the rest of the city. It turns out, that scary man on the El was Harry Wolfe, wanted by the FBI for the murder of several children across the state.
That Sunday, the headline in the Chicago Tribune read, “Little Red Riding Hood Escapes from Wolf.”
The End
No comments:
Post a Comment