Ghosts of New York
By Jennifer Pelland, first published in Dark Faith
Forced to relive her plunge from the North Tower again and again in the afterlife, a victim of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City looks for a way to end her horrific cycle of death.
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On September 11th, 2001, a young woman jumps off the North Tower to escape the encroaching fire threatening her existence. She dies, but in the afterlife, she is forced to relive that moment as she chose to jump and then fell to her death, again and again, alongside the ghosts of the other jumpers. She no longer remembers who she is. She watches as the city planners erect a building in the place of the old World Trade Center complex, unable to interact with the living. But one day, she realizes that she can journey past the vicinity of the ruined Twin Towers after her fall. Although she's eventually always pulled back to the North Tower, in the few moments she has, she ventures out into the surrounding neighborhoods. She meets other ghosts that suffered from different tragedies who reveal to her that she will be condemned to fall until the September 11 tragedy is forgotten. She learns that there's nothing she can do to escape her repeated deaths in the afterlife, given the collective memory of the tragedy, but she adopts the name of another survivor and begins to interact, in the slightest of ways, with the living. Ultimately, she accepts that she won't find any resolution in death but comes to think as an honor for the woman she once was because she'll never be forgotten.
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