A Collection of Short/Long Stories I've Written;

Becoming Ronnie: 31.

I waved to Derik as he drove off, silently thanking him.

His words were a wakeup call.

Life has a beautiful way of waking people up on such a beautiful day.

The sun was shining, I was about to go and see my dad and I would make up with my mother – and forgive her for her mistakes – when I got home.

For once, nothing bad mattered.

I was happy.

I looked up, shading myself from the sun, with a grin plastered across my face.

People in business suits were walking past everywhere. Many of them going into the building my dad worked at.

I frowned, seeing a plane rather close, when it shouldn’t be. I knew that the pilot was probably fiddling with a button or something and would move its course a few inches in a second.

I couldn’t get the warm feeling and the grin off my face.

I moved my foot to enter the building when a piercing noise filled my ears. I quickly whipped my head, cricking my neck. I shielded myself from the light of the sun again and felt my chest constrict, my breath caught, and panic run through me.

And then nothing.

I dropped my bag as I saw how close the plane was, until I screamed; the second the plane disappear, not behind the tower, but into it.

It burst into flames and shook the ground, blowing up right into the floor of the world trade centre that my dad worked on.

People began rushing past, not into the building, but out. Thousands screaming for their lives. Adrenaline pumped through me and I couldn’t move. I placed my hands over my ears and screamed; constantly, watching, waiting, for my dad to come out. I knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t. It was too late. My dad was gone.

I just couldn’t find it in me to move and my arms fell, limp, by my side.

“We need to get in there!” Someone screamed, they ran in-front of me and someone else crashed into them.

“No!” the person who ran into him said. “You have to leave!”

It was something you only saw in the movies, in films, in editing rooms. It wasn’t normal.

I felt my world crash down then, and cried out.

People pushed past me as they ran past, trying to save themselves and a few around them.

“Oh my god!”

“William!”

“Naseem!”

“John!”

“Help me!”

People were screaming, everywhere, and I couldn’t do anything but try and breathe.

“No!” I cried, watching a man with a bleeding head walk out. A woman shortly followed and my heart beat increased. I knew her.

“Lynda?” I whispered. “Lynda!”

“Get out the way!” Someone shouted.

I screamed as an explosion met my ears, and someone jumped from the tower. They fell to the floor, not even twitching.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, staring, horrifyingly at the dead body in-front of me.  

I looked back up to the Lynda staring down at the man, too, although it wasn’t Lynda. It was just someone who looked like her, with soot and dust covering her from head to toe.

A piece of scrap metal fell, and was about to drop on me, when someone pushed me out of the way.

We crashed to the floor, scraping my leg on the pavement, but that didn’t hurt. I didn’t matter at that moment. The world that was being destroyed around me was what mattered. And I knew it had been destroyed, because my dad hadn’t made it.

“Get down!” he shouted. “Stay down!”

He had a phone in his hand and was shouting into it in a military like manor. I pulled myself up after he pushed himself off me and heard him shouting into his phone. He was telling someone to get everyone down with hoses and I realised he was a fire officer.

“Help me!” I shouted. “My dad is in there!”

“Move out the way. Miss.”

Another explosion rocketed, and made the ground vibrate and I clutched the air in-front of me, cowering away from the noise and the disaster around me.

I screamed for what seemed like forever, before I was shoved to the ground by a screaming woman trying to get away from what was going on.

Something warm trickled down the side of my head but I didn’t want to know if it was blood.

My eyes closed in on the world around.

***

*Paramedic Leo’s POV*

“Get everyone out of there!” I shouted, watching as ambulanced pulled up.

“He’s gone into cardiac arrest!” my colleague shouted, pushing a trolley with an injured worker on.

“Shit!” I muttered.

I scanned the floor between the smoke, and the people, looking to see if anyone was struggling to move, or were fallen.

My eyes landed on a girl with blonde hair, blood surrounding her. Pieces of rubble was scattered her.

“Oh my god!”

“Look out!” Dave shouted.

I turned away from looking at the girl to look up at the North tower. The South tower had collapsed, I had seen it with my own eyes, not even half an hour ago.

“Holy fuck!”

“It’s going!”

I felt adrenaline pump through me, as not even five-hundred yards away from the North tower, the girl laid, passed out as the tower began to fall.

“Everyone stay stationed!” an officer shouted. “It’s going to collapse.”

I looked at him, the girl, and then the building. She was quite far away from me and I would only have a few seconds to get to her.

I put my right foot forward and began, amongst the smoke, people, and rumble, ran towards her.

“Leo!” Dave shouted.

“Get back here!”

“What are you doing?”

I ignored them all, rushing over to her, trying to ignore my heart beating against my rib cage, the screams and the sound of the building as it was falling before reaching where her body lay.

I could see she was breathing and scooped her up in my arms.

“It’s alright.” I whispered. “I’ve got you.”

“Leo!” Francis shouted from by where they were all told to stay.

Dodging people I kept the girl tightly in my arms as I tried my hardest to get back to where my ambulance was, all the while praying to God to help me through.

And then it fell.

The North tower.

In front of everyone who stopped in their tracks to share the same heart-breaking feeling and the same sickness in our stomachs as part of history is destroyed, and part of our lives forever gone.

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I know I didn't write this very well, but I could imagine filming this shot (I do Film studies in college for motion media) and I thought about all the people who actually experienced it in real life and who survived or died, I am sorry about that day.