9-11, five years later


I know that a lot of people are doing artwork and writing journals in remembrance to what happened on September the Eleventh, two thousand and one, and I may not have been anywhere near any of the Attack sites or lost anyone I knew personally in the Terrorist attacks. In fact, only one person I knew at the time lost their brother in the attack – he was walking on the street when the first plane hit and was killed by debree.

However, my experience of the day is seen as “Creepy” by many who hear the story, and many people in my High School can vouch for some of the weird events that happened there around me as the Towers Burned.

It all started the night before. I went to bed early because I started feeling ill… Not sick, but I had a heavy feeling on my heart and felt emotionally drained. It was my “Bad Vibe” feeling, a feeling I get before something bad happens, usually to someone I know. The feeling is that of heartache. Sometimes, it's just because something bad might happen to me and warns me not to go on a ride that’s about to break down. Other times, it's because someone I love is going to die. I was worried, but knew there was nothing I could do, and so I slept.


During the night I had horrible Nightmares… Visions of you want to call them that, Flashes of images, feelings, and sensations.

Flash: I’m in a clean room filled with desks and little free standing walls to turn them into semi cubical offices,  facing windows that showed a tall white building and a clear blue sky as a dark shape loomed closer, closer, closer, until I could make out it was a plane. Determined faces stared at me before a roar of noise and a flash of burning light.  Flash: Running down stairs through smoke. Endless stairs, going downwards into dark black smoke and heat. Flash: My skin, burning… Burning….

Flash: Body’s raining from the sky as papers flutter around like leaves. Flash: I’m in a Plane, and people are screaming and yelling. Flash: Running up the same stairs. Flash: People screaming. Flash: A news reporter talking soundlessly as a human body lands behind them in a bloody mess

Flash: Three times I was behind two men in a cockpit, and as they dived or turned into buildings, saw them almost vaporize in a giant fireball. Flash: Spiraling down, a green field fills my vision, people fighting and screaming in front of me, fighting for the controls.  

Flash. Flash. Flash. It kept coming, and I couldn’t free myself from it.

Flash: War cries screamed in a language I didn’t understand, “Jihad bil yad!”.  Flash: People running from an avalanche in a middle of a city. Flash: A war zone in shades of grey, men in muted black and gold crawling over the  rubble. Flash: People wandering the streets like grey zombies, dark, wet blood the only color other then the swatches under their eyes, the path of tears.

Flash... Flash… Flash… Through the entire night. Flash. Feeling as if it would never end. Flash. Darkness… A hollow Darkness.

From the depths of that darkness welled up a deep sorrow filled my body and I woke up sobbing hysterically, my body feeling as if it was on fire, and not truly understanding what my nightmares had shown me. I knew something horrible was going to happen, but had no idea when, where, or by who. I was helpless. My mom came in to wake me up for school, and I told her about the nightmares, begging her not to make me go and not to leave me alone. She convinced me to go to school so I wouldn’t be alone, since she had to go to work. So I went to school, a pit of sickness in my stomach and a grip of dread squeezing my heart.

The grip on my heart tightened as the day wore on, no matter how I tried to forget the nightmares and push them aside. First period passed by without me noticing a thing that happened. Everyone was so happy and I couldn’t help but look at all of them and think “You poor bastards don’t know what’s coming…”

Second period, English, started with the quick write as always. The question: “Where were you during the Challenger explosion?” Since my mom was pregnant with me, all I could write was “In the Womb.” No one was alive to see it, to remember it. And My Teacher, a Mr. John Davis, whom I love and admire, said “Well, I guess I need to think of something else that was big that happened to ask people now..”

With haunted eyes I responded, “Please… Please Mr Davis… Don’t say that…”

I guess he could tell something was bothering me, so he quickly got some work set up for the rest of the class and came over to talk to me… As the Grip on my heart Spasmed. I wrote the time down on my paper: 8:46 AM.

Once again I repeated my nightmare to a trusted adult, spilled out how the last time I felt this feeling, Three of my friends ended up dieing in a Car Crash. He told me it was just a nightmare, and that the feeling was because of my worry of it being more.

Waiting for Class to end, I felt my heart spasm again, a boom faintly echoing through my head. I wrote the time down again… 9:03 AM. Around 9:30 class ended, and I walked through the halls, and many people were calm, acting normally.. But I noticed Haunted faces, people talking paniced to their friends, people running to classes. I knew that something had happened, something big… Something bad. I slipped into my Web Design class and Sat down.

A minute later, one of my class mates ran in, screaming about our needing to turn on the news, “TURN ON THE GOD DAMNED NEWS!”

They rambled about planes and towers, New York and smoke as the TV was set up to work, and another spasm hit my heart. I looked at the time,  9:37 Am. The TV was on a minute later, and the Pentagon was in flames.

A student next to me whispered, “What happened?”

And I looked at them, knowing more was to come, “We’re at war..”

After that the day passed slowly. Next class, Child Care, we watched reporters try to figure out who did it. A name and face hit me “Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda”. The camera returns to the towers, a Reporter on the ground… A reporter from my Vision. I panic “TURN THE CAMERA AWAY! TURN THE FUCKING CAMERA AWAY THEY’RE JUMPING!”


Half the class turns towards me, and try to calm me down, tell me that no one is jumping, asking me who is jumping, confused. I sob and close my eyes, covering them, and the those still watching the TV Scream in horror at the sight I saw in my mind even then, and people on the TV Finally turn the camera away as they run from the deadly fall of still living bodies from the sky.

After that, most of my returned visions seemed tame. I felt Flight 93 go down, the pain in my heart during it hurt horribly,  but I felt numb. Through the day I saw faces of strangers that I had met only once before, in that damn vision. Over and over things that made me cry in my sleep came to be, and I just hung my head and cried again. I might as well had been in the streets of New York, in the Towers, in the Pentagon, in the damn planes. I was there, I was one of them, even though I was hundreds of miles away. I was there.

Years past, and when I tell family and friends of that day, I get mixed reactions. Some call me a liar, some comfort me, and some poor misguided people actually wish for the ability to know when something bad is going to happen, something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.


You’d think that I’d want to forget what happened, that I’d try to avoid anything involving it. But with each story I hear, each picture I see, every documentary and heart felt cry I go through, I want to remember. I want others to remember. Most people I’ve met now go “It's in the past, it's over now.” And pretend that by saying that they are moving on. But instead they are moving back, putting themselves back to where they were before it happened, returning themselves to the uncaring, unthinking ways they were before we were reminded we were not untouchable, that we were not immortal.

That we are still only human…