The Night

As Lulu Lamar re rigged her morning wake-up alarm, she felt the ground shake from Sinclair bounding in to say goodnight and then curl up in his usual corner of the bed. His tongue brushed across her toes, tickling them and she reached down and rubbed his soft ears. Lulu switched on the mattress heater, gently pulled back the old quilt that was once her mother's and climbed into the bed, snuggling up to her best and only friend Sinclair. The window was open letting the cool night air fill the room and she could smell the lingering scent of Chinese from Ming Ming's stream in with the breeze. Lulu slowly drifted off to sleep trying not to think about the many tasks of tomorrow.
Her eyes opened and closed. The air felt thick to her lungs, strangely thick. She opened her eyes and sat up to find flames all around her bed. Washington Heights was ablaze. She could now feel herself shaking from fear and the flames hot breath covering like a velvet curtain. She looked helplessly for Sinclair, but he was no where in sight. She had no one to comfort her and the smoke was making it hard to see; without her sight she would be left with just three senses and that was no good. She would die in these flames alone and without comfort. Looking around helplessly for a way out, she saw a familiar figure climbing through the window. A man she had not seen for many years, her father. He pulled himself through the window frame and came to her bedside, seeming to walk right through the flames. He sat down on the bed and reassured her that everything would be just fine. He kissed her cheek quite sloppily and then started to scratch her back. Lulu suddenly awoke from her dream to the kind presence of Sinclair and a very hot mattress heater. She turned off the heater and glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It read 4:00 am. Way too early for Lulu so she snuggled back down and drifted back to sleep with Sinclair by her side.
The alarm had gone off and she felt the slow dripping of water on her forehead. She no longer had money for a nurse to wake her, so she had resort to other methods. Lulu prepared herself for the day, scooped up her flowers and put them in a basket. They were red carnations today, fake of course because of the weather. She called to Sinclair and walked out the door with him by her side carefully closing the old somewhat broken door and locking it. As she walked down the hall she passed Delilah Plunk. She had a box of cookies and seemed to be counting the rows and then eating the fifth cookie down. How strange. She caught Lulu's glance and gave her a short smile. Lulu weakly smiled back and hurried toward the elevator. The elevator always left Lulu feeling uneasy the way shook going up and down. It felt like a small earthquake. She was always relieved when it hit the right floor. Another cold, long day was about to start, but Lulu was not prepared for this particularly unusual day.