October Echoes

Sammy opened her eyes to rain-slick brick and the sour smell of alley garbage. For a heartbeat, she wasn’t in her bed-she was crouched in a narrow passage off Cherry Street, Macon, Georgia, heart pounding like a trapped bird. The she was back, gasping, soaked in cold sweat, her small, tight curls damp against her forehead.

Sammy was Black, in her early twenties, with warm brown skin, sharp eyes that held both curiosity and quiet grief, and a close-cropped afro.

The first time it happened, she was thirteen. One moment she was in the math class, pencil tapping against her notebook: the next, she was Sam-eighteen, white, lean and freckled, with wheat-blond hair that curled slightly at the nape of his neck and anxious blue eyes. He was stacking books at the The Bass Community Center in 1987 Macon, sweat beading on his pale forehead, humming “Dream On.”

Since then, the flashed came daily: his sunburnt shoulders after mowing lawns, her fingers tripping over piano keys in a Sough Side recital, his nervous first kiss behind the Piggly Wiggly, her own trembling hand holding John’s beneath a movie theater seat.

They’d never met, never spoken-but their lives ran parallel, stitched together by deja vu so vivid it bordered on possession.

Sam felt it too. In 1977, while walking home past rusted rail yards, he’d suddenly see a flash of steel-and-glass skyline, hear the distant wail of a Chicago L train, feel the soft brush of Sammy’s tight curls against his neck. At first, he thought he was losing his mind. Then he began to welcome her. He’d look up at the Georgia pines and whisper, “You seeing this too, Sammy?”

He didn’t know her name-but somehow, he knew it was Sammy.

Their timelines synced with eerie precision. When Sammy failed her driver’s test in 2019-her hands shaking on the wheel, her afro tucked under a borrowed baseball cap-Sam dropped a tray of library books the same second in’79, his knuckles white with sudden, inexplicable dread.

When Sam stood at his mother’s funeral in ‘78, head bowed under a gray sky, Sammy-then fifteen, sitting in the fluorescent glare of her school cafeteria-burst into tears for no reason anyone could explain, her small afro trembling as she pressed her alms to her eyes.

They learned to read each other’s silences, to sense shifts in mood across decades. Sam began writing things down-not just for himself, but for her. “If you’re seeing this, “he scrawled once in the margin of a community center flyer, tell John yes. He’s worth it.”

Years later, Sammy found those words while researching Macon history online, her fingers hovering over the archive scan, her afro haloed by the glow of her laptop screen. She cried for an hour.

As more years passed in both timelines, the visions grew stronger, more sustained. Sammy would blink and find herself in Sam’s skin-feeling the rough weave of this work plaid cotton work shirt, tasting Macon tap water, hearing the low murmur of this thoughts: Wish I could see the ocean. Wish I had the courage to say it out loud.

Sam, in turn, would wake in the night seeing Chicago through Sammy’s eyes-skyscrapers glittering like frozen lightning, the warmth of John’s hand in hers, the pride in her professor’s voice then she defended her these on Black southern migration.

You’re living it for both of us.

But always, the shadow loomed: October 3, 1981.

Sam knew it was coming. The visions had shown him fragments-a dark alley, rain, approaching footsteps, headlights slicing through fog. He tried to avoid it, taking different routes home, staying late at the center. But time, it seemed, was stubborn.

Sammy say it too. For weeks before October 3, 2025, her flashes were consumed by dread. She saw Sam’s fear, but also his resignation.

On the morning of the third, she sat on her couch, trembling unable to move. She knew what day it was in his timeline. She closed her eyes and let the connection pull her under.

She was him.

Rain stung his freckled face. His shift had run late. He took the Cherry Street shortcut-just this once. Behind him, heavy footsteps. He turned. Two figures. Words exchanged-sharp, ugly. A shove. Then pain-explosive, blinding.

He fell against wet brick. Rain filled his mouth. He thought of the ocean he’d never seen. He thought of her: Sammy,

Live, her sent into the void. Live for me...live for us.

And then nothing.

In Chicago, October 3, 2025, Sammy screamed. She collapsed onto her living room floor, unconscious before her head hit the carpet. She woke hours later, soaked I tears, her body aching as if she’d been struck. But clarity flooded her, bright and undeniable. She wasn’t just connected to Sam-she was Sam. His soul, reborn into a Black woman’s body, with a future that was not his.

Every vision, every echo, every shared heartbeat had been her past self reaching across time, not to warn her, but to prepare her: to show her that love, courage, and longing transcend skin, gender, and even death.

She rose on unsteady legs and walked to the window. The Chicago skyline glittered, resilient and alive. She picked up her phone.

“John?” Her voice was steady now. “I had the strangest dream. About a boy names Sam...white, freckled, scared but kind...in Macon in 1977,” She paused, smiling through tears, her fingers absently touching her curls. “He wanted me to tell you yes. A thousand time, yes”

She booked her ticket to Savannah that night.

Two weeks later, Sammy stood barefoot on Tybee Island, salt wind whipping her small afro into a joyful chaos, the Atlantic stretching endless before her. She closed her eyes and felt Sam’s awe merge with her own. He hadn’t see the ocean-but she was seeing it for him.

And in that moment, past and present folded together like a letter finally delivered.

She whispered into the wind, “We made it, Sam.”

And somewhere, in the quiet between heartbeats, she felt him smile.