Rain of people

 

I hear the cough first, then see the man.

I can’t get the image of the falling Twin Towers out of my head.

I even knew some of the people I saw jumping from out of the windows.

You don’t work in a place like that for so long and not get choked up – even if all you do is clean floors. You know the faces of those who come and go each day.

I miss that life more than anything.

I always saw myself as someone important because I got to clean places movers and shakers walked.

I saw myself as part of the world economy, one of those people in the pyramid that hold up the planet’s wealth – even though I still had to go home to the same dingy apartment and the same crying kids.

I felt the first plane hit, then saw the fireball from the second.

Then I saw the sky raining people and heard their bones breaking when they struck the ground, each rain drop full of blood and puss.

I felt scared – and then angry.

How could anybody want to do anything like this to us?

When the towers finally fell, I felt relieved, as if that cloud of dust and debris as the final curtain on a horror I could no longer stand to watch.

No more rain of bodies, I thought.

Now, I work cleaning warehouses in Jersey and it’s not the same.

All import and export stuff for companies owned by foreigners anyone of who might be a terrorist for all I know.

I’m always expected the terrorists to come back, sneaking under my nose with their dirty bomb, turning us all into glow worms instead of people.

That’s why I’m carrying a gun.

I want to be ready the next time.

That’s why I know the guy I kill – whoever it is – has to die.

I don’t want to see another rain of people.