Only Human

When all you can hear is the dust settling and someone’s erratic heartbeat pounding in your ears like a barbaric war cry of drums that you realise is actually your own - that’s the moment you expect the worst.1

No screams.2

No cries for help or the distant sound of feet hitting the concrete at a run. 3

Just this surreal lack of noise. Like you’re trapped in an airtight box that’s just imploded on itself leaving you completely disoriented and without the reassuring ringing filling your ears. All you have in that moment of silence is that irregular, terrified thump-da-thump of muscle no bigger than your fist, telling you that you’re still alive. Telling you that you’re still here. 4

Then your brain catches up with the rest of you that’s been running on autopilot and it reminds you of your purpose. Why you’re trapped in this hell-on-mute. Why you’re fighting to breathe through the ashes and cremated debris of what’s left of this disaster. 5

The weight of the young office-worker slows your movements as you stumble further down the stairs to escape the dark hopelessness that is reality. The solid-proof fact that you’re more likely to die of exhaustion after half-carrying, half-dragging a fellow employee down those damned stairs makes you hesitate for an awful moment. Just fleetingly, it crosses your mind. As your suit feels tighter than before – more restricting, you know there is a real chance - an almost certainty – that you might not get through this. 6

The heat insufferable and relentless, you can still smell the burning rubber from the soles of your shoes that are still suffering under the inhumane conditions that you just left moments ago before the darkness encompassed everything, clouding your judgement pressing in on you from all sides – unbearably smothering you into that tiny space of 20 square ft of nothingness. 7

You don’t know what’s more dauntingly horrifying to witness; the gradual obscurity as only a handful of office workers follow you deeper and deeper into the buildings’ very bowels as you try to find a secure route to reality, or the utter chaos that you left behind.8

The rooms that were buzzing with busy employees, typing frantically at their computers, answering phones and generally having an average day at the office were currently filled with terror-stricken, everyday innocent people. People with families and homes. You can see a woman’s tear-stained face in your mind as you try to block out what you saw.9

She couldn’t have been any older than about thirty and, by the way she was dressed in her conservative charcoal grey suit and skirt, she would’ve blended in easily with the rest of them and yet - you notice her as you pass the smaller offices where fire-fighters are stationed. The room is dark with the power out on this floor, shadows flickering as minor fires dart across the carpet and leap out of the path of the danger of being extinguished. Long, columnar lights are hanging from the ceiling by mere wires, haphazardly swinging to and fro like eager guillotines, itching to do some damage. The air is heavy with smoke and shimmers with the heat so badly your eyes sting from where you stand. Nobody else seems to have seen her cowering behind a desk in the corner of the room, shaking like a brittle autumn leaf in a rough wind. 10

You know you should just keep on moving yet you stand, transfixed, as she clamps her hands over her ears, eyes screwed shut as if in agony. A dark, thin trail of blood trickles from her forehead and casually travels down into her eyes. She opens them and you can see from the doorway that they’re wild with panic, confusion. She seems utterly frozen in fear, as she stays crouched and unmoving under the desk. 11

Recognition jolts you into action as you see those eyes that you know are a deep, grey-green even though it’s too dark to make out their colour. You know those crying eyes - you know that face.12

You try to walk towards her but the building rumbles and growls as something explodes on a lower level and the remaining glass in the windows trembles and shakes loose from the frames. The woman stares out to the billowing tendrils of smoke outside, as they grow thicker and darker with each passing second. You watch as she crawls away from under the desk, praying she’ll have the sense to ignore the flames and smoke that appear to be closing in on her and catch your eye. You step forward but before you can call her back, she runs full pelt towards the window, through a gap between the blazes. One minute she’s running, crying out – you blink – and she’s gone. 13

It’s all over in a matter of moments. Bodies push past you in the corridor but the shock has taken a steely grip on your nerves. Something inside you is twisting, hurting until it breaks. Your chest aches as if a garrotte has it in its tautening hold. Cutting so tight into your dwindling thoughts like a cleaver, slicing through your purpose, severing the very core of what makes you the man you are today as you struggle with the idea of not having her there in front of you. You think, it’s not . . . it can’t be happening. This doesn’t happen to people like you. Nothing like this ever happens to you. And yet just like you, others will feel the same rendering of their souls as people they love are killed. Only thing is, they don’t know for certain yet. 14

They have no idea, watching paper and debris falling like ashes from the once-beating heart of downtown New York, of the sheer chaos that has bled out from the wounded building. 15

Thinking is out of the question as you continually stare at the empty space by the window. That unfamiliar hot prickling behind your eyes distracts you as your throat constricts and dries up like sandpaper. This numbing sensation of hopelessness has you drowning in doubt. Struggling to regain control over yourself, you command yourself to forget that single tragedy for the sake of preventing more just like that and you find that it’s disturbingly easy to push it to the back of your mind.16

So you soldier on and make it down a few floors all the while trying to ignore the vicious, bitter taste of bile creeping up your throat and the slow parade of images of the woman’s face, each more heart-wrenching than the last. Until you get downstairs to a seemingly safe office and find nobody else there. 17

Now you’re panicking - just a little - but it’s all it takes for the others to catch on to your uncertainty, to pause and consider their own frail mortality. 18

Thinking of the people you’re trying to help gives you a renewed motive to get the fuck out of there. To escape and survive. To get all of them out safely. 19

The old man next to you asks you a question. The look in his eyes, full of broken shards of hope – as easy to hold onto as a handful of shattered glass – contradicts the level voice filled with the harsh desperation of dangerous situations. But his experience and brute force is not of much use here. Technically he’s your superior but it’s been two years since the guys down at accounts threw him a retirement party. He shouldn’t be here. He could’ve chosen to stay at home with his family, spent the rest of the day teaching his grandkids to play gin, helping his wife out in the kitchen. 20

You only half hate him for this but even then you know it’s a selfish thing to think at a time like this. But you can’t help yourself wondering why someone won’t rescue you from this nightmarish disaster. If there is a God, then what possible divine right does He have to do this? What did we do? Why? Why?21

The man’s still waiting for a reply. You’re praying that he can’t see the real answer in your own eyes as you lie to him, saying that they’ll all be fine.22

But you can’t hold back the dark, foreboding feeling of impending tragedy. Images of smoke and glass fragments are forced in front of your eyes. 23

You hear the rumbling groan of the building in its protest against the strain of this catastrophe. Your back is to the window overseeing the other tower but something in your gut screams for you not to turn round. It whispers shakily - 24

Don’t look. 25

But of course we all turn around, we all look down, we all want to know what could be so terrible that we shouldn’t lay eyes upon it.26

You turn to see everyone else staring out the window, which is surprisingly still intact. Your gaze focuses on the empty space beyond. 27

The tower is gone. 28

In its place is a column shaped mass of dust.29

The lingering taste of acidic bitterness on your tongue seems to have increased in its foulness and suddenly you’re finding it difficult to breathe in the air mixed with the plaster dust. You gasp. You try to swallow the oxygen that surrounds you unseen. 30

The old man nods shakily and turns to the others, seeming to simply accept that this was meant to happen. As if he knew it would come to this, even if he couldn’t have any idea of what it meant. You take a deep breath, finally feeling it fill you and freeing you of the dust. 31

You blink – it’s still gone.32

And you realise that sometimes things are lost and can never return. That they can never come back.33

She’s not coming back 34