http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20... The operator came over the speaker system and said something about a delay, but his iPod muffled her announcement. The train slowed and accelerated, stopped and started, and all the while he kept reading.
But then, panicked shouts came from the front of the car.
"Oh no. Watch out!" one passenger shouted.
"Oh my God!" screamed another.
Bottoms instinctively grabbed the handrail of the seat in front of him, heard a shrieking crunch of metal, was thrown forward in his seat and saw something coming toward him that at first didn't make any sense. It was a jumble of dust, shoes, glass, seats, carpeting, Metro maps, metal poles and people. It was the front half of Car 1079. But in the first instant, it appeared as a rolling, roaring wave that was coming closer and closer. Carpeting near Bottoms's feet began to rise up and crumple like tissue paper. The wave swept within 15 feet in front of Bottoms . . . 10 feet . . . 7. A studied theologian and an experienced chaplain, he recited a simple prayer.
"God, make it stop."
"God, make it stop."
The wave crested against the seat directly in front of Bottoms, and a cloud of dust enveloped him as the train rocked to a halt. Bottoms stood up, scanned the car and tried to understand what had just happened. Had the train derailed? Had it fallen off a bridge? Had it hit something? He looked in front of him. Where was the floor? He looked up. Where was the roof? Why, as the cloud of dust settled, was he sitting at an incline, staring at a cloudless blue sky, and at another train stretching down the tracks, and at a man on the roof of that train covered in soot and dangling his legs over the side of the car as if perched on the edge of a swimming pool?Cross-posted - Editorials and Articles
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x459614(And as I wrote in that forum, I didn't post this particular excerpt as an endorsement of god. I posted it because it is a compelling description of hell happening before a man's eyes.)
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