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Click!  I hear as I look at my hands… securing the brass buckles attached to my dirty pale blue suspenders.

Pluck! I hear as I look at my black metallic lunch box sliding and banging against one of the posts in the train corridor.

I begin to understand who I am and where I’m at.  I’m a worker.  I’m in Brooklyn… on a train.  I’m wearing thick navy blue slacks, pale blue suspenders, a cotton lavender shirt and a brown hat.  I notice my feet… I have brown, old and worn working shoes.  I’ve black wavy hair.  I’m 32 years old circa 1940s.

My dogs are with me, like every other morning.  It’s not dawn yet when I see that my best friend - and co-worker - is sitting next to me.  I can make out his lunch box on his lap, so worn out that you can see the metal through the blue paint… and I notice his expression… filled with panic.

My dogs are crying.  The bitch is a cocker and the male’s name is Mutt, even though I don’t seem to remember him… People crying, praying… that smell… what is that smell?

I feel the fear surrounding me while my dogs beg me to hold them.  I lean over to pick them up when I hear a noise and realize the train is rocking… slowly… dangerously… still not fully understanding what is going on, so quickly, around me… I calm my dogs and sense heat and then realize the train tracks are wrecked… we are on the verge of falling… slowly… steadily…

Screaming.  Crying.  Praying.  I can see the fire beneath us, feel the heat, and listen to the sirens from the firefighter trucks and the ambulances, as well as the police yelling instructions using loud speakers.

I hold my dogs firmly… beside me on the cherry stained wooden seats… knowing we are about to die… fervently wishing to be rescued.  I can feel their fear.  Feel how they shiver.  They can feel and smell mine.

I see the Empire State building on the horizon with a bright yellow sun behind it.  It’s dawn.  The train begins to fall.

And I wake up… and I’m crying… still smelling and feeling what I had experienced just a couple of seconds ago… it’s me again... safe in my bed and wondering if I had made it.  Wondering if my dogs were alright… so real!  I woke my husband up to tell him and then wrote it down…   Crazy, huh?