9/11 Short Stories

My mom drove me to school, filling the car with an awkward and unbearable silence. The only noise was her thumb tapping the steering wheel and the annoying clicking of the signals. Since I am on punishment, I'm not allowed to have the luxury of Megan driving me. To make this car ride a little bit less awkward, I turned on the radio and blasted up the volume to the highest notch.

It wasn’t his choice to live here. He couldn’t remember ever having a choice. He looked down at the street below and marveled at the buildings. The buildings were the one thing he could enjoy here. He could appreciate architecture.

“You live there?” I said pointing to El Building. It was looked hideous and was covered in dirt and rust. It looked like a prison.

“Forgive me for not noticing you Isaac.” She said while chewing. “I’m still not fully awake yet, how did you sleep?”

The tour also went into detail regarding the impact of historical events on the house and its occupants. The Davenports were owners of black slaves who worked by “tasks” or “shifts” before being given leeway/free time; some of which had other jobs. The family was heavily impacted by the Civil War. I found it particularly interesting that two sons out of the surviving seven fought on opposing sides of the war. There were a total of ten children. In that same time period, there was the epidemic of yellow-fever. We toured the master bedroom where Isaiah is believed to have died of the illness in the 1820s. The business quickly subsided thereafter and the house eventually served as a boarding house, closed and reopened in the sixties as a museum. I was especially appreciative of this element of the tour because it put topics already established in class such as the Civil War, slavery, the Industrial Revolution, IDS and yellow fever into perspective. The tour came across as highly informative and

As the family is driving along, the grandmother awakens from a nap and recalls “an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady” (189). This recollection happens while the family is driving through the town of Toomsboro, GA. The grandmother is extremely manipulative and selfish and coaxes the family into visiting the old plantation by lying to them with the possibility of finding hidden treasure. The name of the town is only a slight indication of the terrible tragedy that is yet to come. It is no

The tour involved showing mostly the “Residence,” as what Nathaniel Chearis called it. Along with the great house, the tour guide talked about what Nathaniel and his family lived in before the house. They lived in an apartment that was built right above the kitchen along with a smoke house close to their living quarters.

Back in the car taking a deep sleep for about a couple of hours she realizes the plantation she once remembered was very close by.

It was an infamous plantation buried in Louisiana converted into a home for correcting convicted criminals. Only, once inside the doors, the rumors end and the truth begins. The weeks, months, and years the criminals spend are beyond their wildest nightmares. Follow Nala Osei as she unravels the criminals and makes them reveal who they truly are and what they've truly done.

I open my eyes and the first thing I notice besides the fact that I’m not in my room was the giant pile of shattered glass. I look away from the pile of glass and see a large group of tents and at least ten campfires. Instinctively I get up and start walking towards the tents. All of a sudden a strangely dressed man appears in front of me in a puff of smoke. I fall on my butt out of sheer shock.

figures dart between the devastating ruins of the condemned buildings; they weave in and out crossing the darkened rain-watered streets avoiding the searching spotlight. Hiding in collapsing doorways and the war-torn wreckage abandoned by the many that perished trying to defend them. Working hard to blend with the deteriorating walls and the half-standing shells of the concrete rubble, They use the many trash-filled alleys as their temporary cover. Mindful that the German snipers scan the area for any would-be terrorists, they keep a watchful eye on the rooftops. Michelle decides, in this case, there is not strength in numbers. “We must separate,” she mentions,

When they arrived at the plantation after their long ocean voyage and carriage ride from the city, they discovered her grandfather had died suddenly of yellow fever before they even arrived and the plantation was in chaos. She and her husband, with the help of Johannes, went straight to work and ordered the Overseer to report on the status of the crops and to give an accounting of all of the assets of the plantation including the number of slaves. Her father had given her an estimate of what he knew of the wealth of the plantation before he died but he had encouraged her to check these records with those of the Overseer when she arrived.

landowner of the plantation L’Abri in the ante-bellum south of Louisiana, is confronted by a family secret that has been hidden from him, even into adulthood.

“It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of

His jaw dropped. There were old houses, ones that looked almost exactly like the ones he had seen in his social studies textbook. The intricately designed, curved black roofs, the cubical design- it was like it was the 1930’s.