1989 -- “Mom!” shouts Austin, “Mom, where are you!?”  Austin slowly walks down the creaky steps one at a time, creak, crock, creak, crock.  After a screechy scream, Austin breaks into a sprint.  That was the second one he heard, the first one was what woke him up. Once Austin is at the bottom of the stairs he runs to the kitchen where he sees her, he sees his mom with 2 holes near her chest, “No!! Mom, please, please get up.  Dad get down here, Dad!” Shouts Austin.  A small tear starts at the corner of his eye, which turns into a steady stream, and by the time his dad is finally downstairs, Austin is laying on his mom crying his eyes dry.  “Austin backup! Austin, Austin!”

 

****

 

“Austin, Austin!”, Mary, Austin’s boss, says in her old cracky voice, “Austin, anyone in there?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah, sorry what day is it” Shakily says Austin

“Monday, why?” Mary questions

Under his breath Austin says, “Oh right it’s been 12 years since my mom’s death.

“What was that?” Mary asks in a quiet voice

“Nothing, just what did you want” Austin says, at a normal volume.

Mary responds louder saying, “Just checking in since you are new here, so you just need to deliver all of the mail in your mail cart, then you need to…”

“Yeah, yeah, I need to make more coffee and sweep the mail room, it has been the same thing everyday for the past month.”

“That means you also know since it is Tuesday I am going home at 8 [a.m.] to be with my kids.”

“Yep, I know, but aren’t you a little old to have kids?”

Austin just walks away from his boss without saying another word, which luckily she didn’t hear him.  Austin squeezes through each hallway of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, he says hello politely to everyone he sees, yet everyone responds just with a slight grunt, Austin goes from office to office delivering mail to everyone, every office looked alike, most of them had windows, all of them had the same boring carpet with absolutely no pattern just all black, and almost every time that Austin left a room he would be pushed, like he was invisible, or like he was just some ball and all of the other people were dogs just pushing and toying with the him.

It was about 8:44 when Austin had run into his boss again, just about an hour and a half since he had last seen he, but he knew something was wrong, because she was supposed to be gone by now, even though he shouldn’t have cared since none of the other people in the office would of cared if it were him, in his bosses situation, but he asked anyway, because he hoped that if he continued being nice he will be rewarded in someway.

“What’s the problem, you should be gone by now?” asks Austin Curiously

“None of your business” Mary responses angrily.

“Hey, come on I just want to know”

“Why should I tell you all you do is just push your way into people’s lives and nobody wants you to, why can’t you just be like everyone else in the building and just keep to yourself!”

“ Is that really how everyone thinks of me” Austin says so innocently

“Yes! How can you not see that!” Mary shouts at him

All of a sudden without another word the entire building shook after something filled the air, nobody knew what happened until the build started to fall.

“Help I can’t see anything, I’m going to fall!”  Mary shouted as a falling box, which knocks her over, hits her and she starts to tumble as the building starts to tilt. As Mary falls Austin loses his balance and sent tumbling down right behind her, finally Austin is stopped a support beam and gets a look at what is happening.  Austin can hear people screaming and tumbling to the edge of the building, he sees fires starting in places and hears sirens in the background on the ground.  Austin also sees wires hanging loose, and falling everywhere, but what hurts him most is that he sees people falling through windows, and down to their death.

Austin’s first response to all of this chaos is to run for the stairs and hope he can outrun the falling building, but then he sees his mom again and remembers what it is like to lose your mom, and he knows that Mary has three kids that are around 10 and he knows he needs to find her even though she isn’t nice, and doesn’t like him, he needs to save her for her kids.  Austin gets up, knowing he is doing the right thing he struggles to regain his balance and he stands up.  He then proceeds to cautiously walk down to the edge of the building, one step at a time, just like how he walked on the night of his mother’s murder.   Mary slowly comes into sight through the thick dust. A beam between two broken windows is supporting her. She is half conscious and has a deep cut on her forehead from the broken glass.

All of a sudden another big *Bang* fills the air with noise once again.  Now Austin is scared out of his mind and is about to run for sure, but then he is back in his house he sees his mom shes smiling, no laughing she is happy, his family is whole once again.  Austin thinks, no knows that he can be happy but the thing he realizes is that his mom slowly starts to fade from the image until she looks like a ghost, and then she vanishes into thin air, Austin then hears voices and banging on doors, “Is there anyone there?”

“Yeah” Austin shouts at the top of his lungs, “There are two of us, I’m okay, but my Boss, my boss Mary, she is injured big time and she needs a doctor.”

Austin doesn’t hear a response so he knows something has gone wrong, not thinking Austin slides down the tilted floor to Mary, not caring that his hands feel like they are on fire from the carpet he picks up Mary, and while he struggles to catch his balance a swollen door that looked like it was holding it’s breath, finally took a breath and 5 firefighters came running in.  

“Hey!” Austin Shouted using what little energy he had left “Hey! I’m over here, Help!”

The firefighters finally noticed and came running down to help Austin carry Mary up to the door that they came in from.

“Okay Son come with us, these towers aren’t going to be standing for much longer!” Shouted the Chief Firefighter.

Austin stopped and thought what about all of the other people in here they all have families too, are they just going to be left to die, they are not as lucky as him and Mary, right then Austin knew even though he was shunned upon at his job, these people didn’t deserve to die, maybe be punished, but not killed, “I’m not leaving!” Shouted Austin “I might be weak but this people in here need to be saved!”

“We all know that but there just isn’t enough time to save everyone, right now our only mission is to save people that we can quickly get to, not everyone in the building kid just come on we need to get out.” Shouted the Chief growing more and more angry as time past.

“Look, I am not leaving until at least everyone on this floor is out of the building.”

“Hey Frank grab the kid, I’m done playing games, let's go men!” Shouted the Chief to another firefighter now far past angry

All of a sudden a firefighter picks Austin and starts running to the door now behind all of the other firefighters.  Austin tries to wiggle out of the firefighter’s arms but he is just too strong.  “Let me me go you big jerk” Austin Shouts while still trying to wiggle loose

“Stop moving twerp” Shouted the firefighter while he ran as fast as he could.

When the firefighter was talking to Austin he didn’t notice fallen printer and when he looked forward once again he tripped over the printer, fell and let go of Austin by accident, right away Austin knew it was his time to save the other people, and got up and ran the other way, by the time the firefighter got up Austin was already gone, and he knew that he was not going to be able to get him so he ran to catch up with the rest of the firefighters

“Where is the boy?” Asked the chief anxious to get out of the falling building.  

“He ran off, he was dead weight any way he didn’t want to leave.”

“Why didn’t you get him!”

“He was already gone by the time I got up, let’s just go we aren’t going to make it if we go look for him you know that and I know that!”

“Wait is that him?” Asked another firefighter listening to the conversation

“I don’t know I can’t tell, it’s too dark” Answered the chief

Austin had someone in his hands, the only other survivor on the floor, he ran as fast as he could, ignoring the pain of running and the burns on his hands, all he cared about was getting everyone out before the building came down,  

“Come on kid bring her home” shouted the chief now knowing that it was Austin, then all of the firefighters joined him and started cheering him on.

“Frank go get him since this is your fault” Shouted the chief

“Fine” Frank said under his breath

Frank started to run to get Austin but then all of a sudden the floor above them collapsed and crushed Austin and the last survivor.  

“NO!!” shouted Frank as he could only grab the other survivor.  

Frank knew this was all his fault he should’ve went back to get him

\”Frank get back here now it’s time to go, there is nothing you can do about it he’s gone.”

Frank ran back to meet up with everyone and they all ran down the stairs, to them it was like all hell had just broken loose, it was dark, the building was collapsing around them and every second they knew they could die.  They all got to the 5th story when the stopped and so had the collapsing of the building.  What used to be one of the lowest stories in the building was now loose.  All of the firefighters were happy, they had survived and they could now see the light, but then they realized the only reason they had two survivors is because Austin had given his life so that they could get his coworkers out alive.