10:28:31 (first draft)

It happened just after 8:45.

            I know because Trudy had a bobble head clock of Derek Jeter. It was an awful thing that would yell out a phrase at every 15 minutes, and then chime out the stadium’s theme at every hour. Not a minute after “Homerun!”, it felt as if Atlas shook and sent the world askew.  

            Most of us ended up on the floor or beneath our desks even though the pulsing impact wasn’t of body-throwing magnitude. A woman screamed tardily, but then it fell quiet. Our throbbing hearts called out to one another in silence. No one in the entire floor made a sound, yet there was a noise in the background, clearly audible though far off at the same time. It wasn’t quite droning… It almost mimicked the pitter-pattering of rain on gabardine but most definitely thicker with a harsher accent to it.

            Our collective self immediately thought we had just experienced an earthquake. We wished it had been an earthquake. But in New York? But we’re on the 108^th floor… someone said without being prompted. Someone else shouted belatedly that it was a bomb – a terrorist bomb! Almost immediately, people took these words and regurgitated them back into whispers, and then talk, then shouts, then screams.

            People surged for the doors, the force of animal fear pressing against our bodies like the invisible hand of God. But the first wave immediately recoiled as they flushed the doorway. People began to shout and scramble – those in the front vying for the back and those in back blind to the black shade of smoke. It smelt like burning sulfur, malodorous, the kind of smell that clings to your nostrils like ticks to a vein. It smelt like burning flesh, heavy and unforgettable, so thick that it almost had a taste. By the time someone braved the blackness it was too late: a haze had already begun to settle in the entire room. 

            Women were keening. People slouched in the crevices of the room, crouched head against knees in the embrace of the walls as if the building could protect them in its inevitable collapse. There were several people begging others for their cell phones, some more aggressively than others. I felt a hand grip my arm and turned to face an older man. He had obviously been crying, the red webs of sadness stemming across the whites of his eyes, but his face was set in cemented resolve. He was gesturing a cell phone in my direction – his, I assumed – saying it was my turn.

            My turn?

            I refused. I took his hand in mine and curled his fingers back over the face of the device. He stared at me with a deep wretchedness. I know – the world had gone to shit and I didn’t have anyone to call. Young enough to have a girlfriend, old enough to possibly have kids, and yet I had neither.  It wouldn’t have even been worth calling my parents. And friends – it would make for an awkward goodbye. But the man’s eyes were almost accusatory. I would’ve explained, maybe offered a little premise, but something blot out the sun. It sounded as if the sky had cleaved in two.

            People began breaking the windows. They were all looking down, many turning away to beat their fists against the floor and cry in the severest of pains. I made my way to a slim opening and glanced down as well. My insides melted. About 10 stories down gaped a tremendous hole. Smoke, viscous and Baltic black, poured out as if from a dragon’s maw. You could make out just one thing -- a single tooth in the dragon’s mouth. It was angular and was tilted so it caught the sunlight. At a glance you would think it was just a sheet of broken metal or molten glass, but if you stared hard enough at it, you’d realize that it was far from just ordinary metal or glass. No, you’d realize you were staring down the tail end of a plane.

            A plane had knifed through the Northern tower. We were stuck. Everybody realized this. The knowledge hung on our every breath; it hung in the air like a morphic resonance. It was clear that nobody above the crash was getting out… at least not by the stairs.

            A dissonance of screams sounded as the first person jumped. Several others followed suit and a new chorus began to echo, but the screams soon became ghosts until they stopped all together and people began to line up by the windows. I hadn’t realized it, but smoke was beginning to bleed heavily from the doors and walls and even the floors. My nose had become numb to the smell of burning keratin and flesh and clothing. It seemed people preferred throwing themselves to the wind than dying pyre or by the noose of smoke.

            I couldn’t help but glance down at my arms. They were wrapped tightly around the window’s iron frame and my veins were slightly raised and pulsing violently. They skin was stippled ebony save for two pale scars, straight and true as a saber’s edge.  They were on both arms, stitched across the skin from the wrists to the curve of my elbows.

            With all of the weeping and the shrieking I couldn’t think straight. All it would’ve taken was a little pressure and a piece of glass. It was all right there, in front of me. I had the precision; I had the experience. 

            But I couldn’t do it.

            I began to wheeze over my tears. It was becoming harder to breath and harder to see as the smoke began to tendril its way out of the windows. I tried retreating back into the building, but people began to bum rush for air. They clawed atop one another -- on top of me – trying to escape the thickening void. The plaintive, disembodied cries of those too weak to fight for a place by the windows kept me from twisting back around. Somebody’s watch-wearing wrist hung about my head and the time was there, baring me in the face. I blinked heavily to get the soot out of my eyes.

            It was 10:28 when the world began to shudder.