Free Golden Colorado by Katie Wyatt

Scene 1
    The heat was unbearable. She coughed. Smoke choked her lungs. The crackling and roar of the flames jarred her out of slumber. She laid on her back in the bed for several seconds, confused, staring at the undulating shapes of reddish orange patterns that lingered across her ceiling and the walls. What was it? What was happening? Her heart pounded so hard she could feel the throbbing pulse in her neck. Her instinct kicked in.
    She bolted from the bed, her heavy nightgown a hindrance as she padded across the wood floor toward the bedroom door. The floor was warm beneath her feet, and when she touched the metal doorknob she jerked her hand back with a hiss.
    Fire! She coughed, cried out, but heard nothing from the other side. Her parents! Her younger brother and sisters! She tried to scream, but instead she choked, doubled over in a fit of coughing. She had to get out, but the only way out was her bedroom window on the second floor of their modest home on the outskirts of Boston. In the distance she heard the cries of neighbors, men’s voices shouting for water buckets. A crashing sound from below sounded like a beam falling from the roof into the sitting room beneath her parents’ bedroom.
    Tears from the acrid smoke filled her eyes. Choking back a sob and tamping down her rising panic, she could only hope and pray that they were already out of the house. She scrambled and reached for her sitting stool, heaving it with all her strength out her bedroom window. Glass shattered, and in the next instant, Minnie stood at the window frame, gazing down in wide-eyed horror into her front yard.
    “Jump, Minnie, jump!”
    The urging of several people within the crowd jolted her out of her moment of indecision. She heard another crashing sound behind her, followed by another burst of heat as her bedroom door blew open. Casting a terrified glance over her shoulder, she saw the flames licking at the door frame, seeking fresh fuel, making their way up the walls and curling and roiling along the ceiling.
    She quickly snatched her night robe from the base of the bed, an arm’s length away, and bundled it over the bottom of the window frame so that she wouldn’t cut herself climbing through. She didn’t have any time to waste. The short overhang of the porch directly below her window provided questionable footing, but she climbed through anyway, tentatively placing one of bare foot, then the other, on the porch roof. She sat down, quickly scooching herself toward the edge.
    Several men stood below, arms upraised.
    “Jump, Minnie! We’ll catch you!” a middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache urged. He wore obviously quickly donned overalls over white long johns, gesturing for her to jump. Only one strap was fastened.
    Where was her family? What had happened? How did the fire start? All these questions and a hundred more raced through her mind as she balanced on the edge of the porch roof. Dangling her legs over the side and hovering as close to the edge as she could, she pushed herself off, placing her trust not only in the men below, but in God to save her.
    “My family! My family—”
    *
    Minnie jolted awake from the nightmare, one that had replayed in her mind every night since that horrible tragedy had taken her parents and her siblings. Her family was gone, the family home burned down with them. While she tried to recover, deal with their grief, the bank had coldly informed her that the land would need to be sold to pay off her family’s debts. In the end she was left penniless.
    It appeared that all her dreams for her future had shattered that night. As an educated eighteen-year-old, her only desire had been to meet a wonderful man, get married, have no less than three boys, and live happily ever after. Those dreams had disappeared in the billowing smoke and ashes of what was left of her life though.
    In the two weeks since the fire, she had relied on the kindness of friends to provide her with daily sustenance and a