A Night That Went Down In History

New Prompt:
Write a poem or story about how you’re going to (or already have -- if you want to write in an imaginative past tense) spend/spent New Year’s Eve. What will you do? Imagine, if you like, something grand, something daring, something completely, utterly, extravagantly or courageously different and write about it.
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“It’s a New Year’s Eve to remember, no matter how hard I try to forget.”

The police officer listened to my whimpered comment with an expression of disinterest on the fat, sweating face. “So? Tell me what happened?”

“No, please,” I tearfully begged, falling to my knees in abject supplication. “You honestly don’t want to know. Take my word for it. Once the words leave my mouth, there’s no taking them back.” I raised my handcuffed wrists toward the decidedly bored officer.

I received no pity, just a sharp jerk back to my feet. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you,” I said, backing slowly away until the wooden bench behind me nudged against the back of my knees. “Tonight started out like any celebration, my friends and I welcoming Baby New Year in with copious amounts of champagne at Kelly’s Bar and Grill.” While saying this, I sat down on the bench and looked up at the heavy-set officer with tears streaming down my face.

“Having to go bad, really bad, just before midnight I made my way through the crowded bar to the restrooms.” A shudder went through me. “Feeling much relieved a few minutes later, I left the room and came out in the middle of an inferno.” Without realizing it and unstopped by the still bored officer, I jumped to my feet. “There was no bar! Don’t you understand, you stupid idiot? There was a sign blazing fallen to the sidewalk with the words “Dupont Plaza Hotel.” Body bags were already being placed in the street, and I heard firemen yelling this was the worst fire to hit San Juan.”

“So what?” said the officer, clearly not believing a word I’d practically shouted. “You drank too much and were hallucinating.”

“You don’t understand,” I stuck my arm out where a piece of skin was red from when an ember had landed on it. “The fire was real, and I ran back into the restroom to keep from getting burned to a crisp. When I slowly opened the door and peeked out, the fire had disappeared, but I was still outside.” The memory of what I’d next seen made me pace back and forth in the police station’s front room. “There was a train on its side in the snow, and I saw a sign on the road near the tracks stating I was in Ogden.”

“Ogden? Where’s that?” A tiny bit of curiosity crept into the officer’s voice when asking this question.

“Ogden, Utah.” By now I was panting as the horror returned of all those dead and mangled bodies in the melting snow. A low moan came out of me before I could continue. “Before I could move or do anything, a thick fog surrounded the train, the bodies, and…” Here I paused to take a deep breath before finishing the sentence, “And me. When the fog dissipated, I was watching a ship sink. From a picture I had once seen in books, I recognized the Union ironclad ship "Monitor.” Staring at the obviously skeptical police officer, I whispered, “That happened at Cape Hatteras during the Civil War, and I was actually there.”

“Yeah, right, and next you were at the North Pole surrounded by elves.” By now, we had attracted a crowd of both officers and their prisoners.

One voice from the back of the room called out, “Shut up, Betts. Let the lady continue. This is getting interesting.”

By now, sweat covered my body, pure nervousness. “Not the North Pole, but Scotland where a nice lady told me her neighbors were celebrating Hogmanay Day, or in this case night.”

“Hog a what day?” The officer I now knew as Betts started laughing and began shoving me through the crowd to the back where the jail cells were located.

“Wait, Betts, this one might not be as crazy as she sounds.” A young officer, fresh out of the academy and filled with gung ho, came running toward us holding some computer printouts. “I’ve been Googling on some of those things your prisoner mentioned.” He practically shoved the papers into Bett’s hands.

“See? The top one is all about the Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan that killed 97 people back on December 31, 1986.” He grabbed back the next page and waved it excitedly. “I also checked, and on December 31, 1862, the "Monitor" did sink off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.”

“I know what you’re going to say next.” Betts gave a sigh, all three of her chins quivering. “Something about Utah?”

“Yes, on December 31, 1944, a train accident in Ogden killed 48 people. Betts, this can’t all be a coincidence.”

I stood there shivering in terror when Betts reached down and removed my handcuffs. “Now do you believe me? I’m not drunk or crazy, I’m not...” That’s all I got out before Betts, the other officers and prisoners, indeed even the police station surrounding all of us snapped out of existence.

I found myself once again outside in the cold air seeing men in kilts, along with women and children, surrounding a roaring bonfire. In the distance, I could hear bells starting to chime the midnight hour, and the people joined hands and started to sing “For Ault Lang Syne.”

As the tenth note of the bells traveled from the town to the bonfire, I watched the fire and people start shimmering. The eleventh note followed, and the shimmering scene began to fade bit by bit. When the last echoing sound reached me, I found myself once again back at Kelly’s Bar and Grill.

On shaking legs, I returned to where my friends greeted me with excited cries. One shoved a fresh drink into my hands. All around me people were calling out “Happy New Year!” It was midnight, and I’d only been gone a few minutes.

“You almost didn’t make it back,” one of my friends yelled above the crowd’s noise.

I thought to myself, You can say that again.

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Microsoft Word count = 998

Winner of "The Writer's Cramp"  12/31/07 daily contest.
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