MindPhuck
Eric Mooney
Im drinking stuff donated to quake.ie
clan : n8z
posts : 1267
site owner
| as some of you may know, nicky "beast" condon was working in new york when the world trade centre was attacked. nicky mailed a couple of friends about his experience and i thought i'd help him share this experience with you. heres a direct copy of his mail -
for the first time since arriving in this country i awoke with finalized
intentions of not getting up and not going to work, i had a pain in my back
that i had picked up the previous evening as karl and i sat eating cookie
and cream ice-cream, a pain caused by whatever unintentional awkward
contortions were made during the gluttony. i was on my way upstairs to spill
my woes into the phone when i heard movements, which could only mean that
karl's dreaded aunt-in-law, siobhan, was awake. believe me, i was in no mood
to gaze upon such a rank apparition or try to try and communicate with such
pedestrian intellect at that early hour (7.30 am). so back i crept and tuned
into howard stern for the half an hour remaining before movement would be
necessary.
with revitalized spirits and a smile on my face i went out the door and
locked it behind me. i got the light rail (above ground) to the new jersey
equivalent of the subway (they named it the path train), and set off for the
two minute journey to the world trade center, listening to music all the
while. got off the train, as usual, went up the first escalator, as usual,
was greeted by a lot of black smoke and barely restrained people, which had
me slightly curious. walked to the second elevator, herded by anxious
police, and went straight to the right hand side, as usual, (if you want to
walk up the elevator you go to the fast moving left, if you want to stand
there and let your path be decided by mechanics, you stay on the right)
because, and some of you may be shocked by this revelation, i am a lazy
bastard. i rationally assumed that the floor i was on, the first floor, was
on fire, although all i could see was smoke, no flames anywhere. so i made
my ponderous way to the exit, the crush of people actually moving me at a
faster pace than is customary for me, which i resented greatly. i step out
onto the street to be welcomed with a burning letter to the head, which i
resented greatly. i look up and see that about a hundred floors above, some
of the building is on fire, and burning strongly. this is the south tower,
unknown to me a plane had crashed into the north tower as i was getting into
the station, and the explosion roared across to this tower and set some of
it on fire. my view of the first tower is blocked, so i mean, it looks bad
and everything, but not that bad, so i just stand there underneath with a
few hundred other people wondering if this is a good enough excuse to be
late for work, when a fucking enormous explosion goes off overhead, that
fucking sends us running i can tell you, i was much too close to the
building to realize that it was a plane, but i was pretty sure it was a
bomb, which means the place is under attack. so we leg it up to where my
building is, which is close, and a lot of people are screaming and crying at
this stage, i got hit by buring bits of building as i ran, but it wasn't too
bad, because the thing is so tall that it takes about a minute for the heavy
debris to bypass gravity and wind resistance, and it fell harmlessly enough
in front of us. at this point, i must admit, i was riveted, my attention was
got, i finally take off my earphones and hear people saying things like
"that was a fucking 747 buddy", "shit man this is like a movie" and lots of
comments that you would expect from a race raised on television. its just
past nine o clock at this stage, i still consider going to work, i would be
dead now i think if i had, but instead i drift back down to where i had been
standing previously to get a look at the destruction close up. then i see
that it is both towers that are fucked, there is a massive hole in the south
tower, and the fires seem to be burning downwards, (dripping fuel i
guessed), and an awful lot of smoke around the place, there are letters,
wallets, pictures, all burning around the place. most people just ran at
this point, which probably saved my life later, but some of us stick around
for the next hour out of a morbid curiosity. the police get it together and
start moving us back to the edge of my building, we retreat grudgingly, and
only after being prompted a few times. if we had not listened to them, we
would now be dead, they stayed where we had been standing, and they are
dead. it's about that time that i see pieces of 'debris' falling a lot
faster than the rest, i soon realize that this is actually people making the
last choices of their lives, burn or die instantly. this one guy fell close
to where i had been standing, he had taken all his clothes off, i assume
they had been burning, he hit and just disintegrated into a red mist. i must
have spent about fifteen minutes just looking at the people and chaos around
me, almost everyone had the same shocked and scared expression, i remember
wondering if i looked the same. we saw a few hundred firemen and policemen
head into the building quite close by, i thought it seemed like a pretty
pointless thing to do, there was no way they could put the fire out, i
suppose they were seeing if anyone was stuck or passed out with the smoke, i
felt most sorry for the people at the very top of the building, and the
people clinging to the windows, they had time to really think about what was
happening, maybe they even had some hope. then came the single loudest sound
i have ever heard, and i look up to see the building falling, i was sure it
was falling right on top of us, we all reacted instantly, just ran up around
my building, i got maybe ten steps when twenty or so people just fell down
in front of me, i was going to join them when the choice was taken from me,
something very heavy landed on my beloved shitty black bag and snapped the
string from my shoulder and ripped me down with the force of it, then the
force of the falling building itself hit me and i was fucked forward and
down, people landed on top of me, if i had not been so close to the front of
the crowd, or if the crowd had been larger, i think i might have been
crushed to death. we were instantly overtaken by the clouds of dust and
debris, i have seen footage on television of people running from the clouds
of stuff, and they have maybe eight or ten seconds or running available to
them, and buildings in the way. we were a lot closer than that, we had maybe
a second or two and we were swamped and in complete darkness, could not see
a single thing. the dust got in my nose, my mouth, my eyes, my ears, went
down my pants, filled my pockets to the top, just got everywhere, i remember
being sure glass or something heavy was gonna take my head off as i
struggled not to vomit. i just tore off my shirt, i had managed to hold onto
the bottle of water i was holding, and i poured this onto the shirt, and
pressed it hard over my face, it stopped more shit entering, but i was at
this point choking to death, and so was everyone around me, horrible noise
actually. i stood up and tried to walk, started to take one step, realized i
was standing on someone, dead or alive i dunno, changed my movements to
shuffling instead, and made my way to the black marble bench where we all
sit at breaks to smoke our cigarettes. i found it, got on it, and followed
it to the end, (it runs the length of my building), still could not see a
thing, perhaps a minute after the collapse i was onto the street and moving
a lot faster, i smacked into a car, which fucking hurt, but i got into the
middle of the road and just went for it. at this stage some light, kind of a
peach colour, from the shops, not the sun, was beginning to shine through. i
followed it into one of the deli's, there were basins of food immersed in
cold water to keep them cool, i fucked the basin out and splashed the water
all over my eyes and into my mouth. i robbed some bottles of water and
started, with the aid of a lot of coughing, to get the stuff out of my mouth
and lungs, went back outside, gave the water to some others, and just kept
walking forward. about five minutes later i was in sunlight, very nice day,
and i started taking more interest in my surroundings. people were still
choking everywhere, the whole place looked like i would imagine a street on
the moon would look like if someone built a street on the moon and just left
it there. people looked like weird snowmen, i looked like a weird snowman.
people were cleaning themselves in the fountains, and there was one guy
standing there looking very concerned shouting "don't drink the water", i
just skipped past it all, spitting all the way. we heard more planes
overhead, that had a lot of people screaming, that was the only point i can
remember getting a fright at, thought we were about to get bombed, it was
just the american fighter pilots prepared to blow the fuck out of any more
planes though, "bit late" i thought. there are fighter planes flying
overhead everywhere now. i followed the general exodus down to the river,
and just started walking, down this far almost everyone was clean. they
reacted to the sight of me, some just started crying and telling me that im
going to be ok, which i found annoying after a while, pretty presumptuous of
them really, others told me to go to hospital "listen, i'm okay", others
telling me i look like a moving statue "oh, do i?", and some just wanting me
to reassure them that they got people out of the building, i really don't
like lying to people, im not too good at it being the main reason, but i
gave a great performance that walk i can tell you. i walked uptown for about
four hours, went to karl's building, i was pretty cheery at that stage.
after telling them a good story, they gave me clothes, and brought me
downstairs to get hosed off with a powerful air-hose, the whole room went
white, "sorry". the city was reacting as if it was at war, so it took me
seven hours to get back to new jersey, standing or walking the whole time.
if there is one thing i hate doing it is standing idly in a queue, i had to
queue for four fucking hours, getting a nice red sunburn all the while, that
was by far the worst bit of the whole experience. after the ferry ride i was
really starting to feel it, i had only a few minor cuts, but was body was in
severe pain, and i was finding it quite hard to breathe, i started stopping
for five minutes every twenty awkward steps or so, made a resolution to go
to hospital the next day, which i never did. tried to sneak quietly into the
house, but they were on full alert, they had probably reacted to the most
minor of sounds a hundred times before my own contributions, so down they
came, concern and all, and i just gritted my teeth and went upstairs with
them, politely told them the story (after ringing my mother), drank a beer,
announced my weariness and the solution, and slept after talking to tim.
hmm, read back over some of that, i don't think i told it properly, but you
get the idea anyway. cant wait to see you all, soon i hope, tim even sooner.
love (?) nicky
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