Journalism Assignment:
The Day I Fell
By Lauren Sargent
I never should have taken the train. I know that now. It was dangerous, stupid, and reckless. The day I fell was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Its pointless to keep talking about all of this in the present tense, when anyone who is reading my experience would have no idea what the heck I’m talking about. So lets go back in time. WAY back in time, to last week. It was a stormy morning, and my commute was slow, as usual. Now that I go back on it, getting up at 5:00 a.m. and traveling for two hours for a job at the supermarket was a highly unintelligent decision. Needless to say, I was a struggling artist, and I had no other income as of that point in time.
I just keep driving. Stopping. Driving. Stopping. Driving. I did this for a good hour and a half through my morning. I was slightly relieved when I realized I only had another half hour at the minimum. To my surprise I had a fairly open street to drive down.
I shouldn’t have been going that fast. Another stupid decision of the many of my life. I never saw the girl walk out in front of me. I know what you probably think I hit the girl. No, I swerved and ran smack into the Bank. Not the best place to smash into.
Surprisingly from the state of my car, I was fine, not a scratch on me. I stumbled out of the wreckage. I could already hear the police sirens. Now that I think about it, that was extremely fast. They probably just sit around and wait for this kind of thing to happen. I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t get in trouble, again. You guessed it, I’ve been in jail before.
Anyway, I just started running. The local train station was just around the corner. I sprinted in the door and bought the first ticket I could get my hands on, which was the next train to leave in two minutes.
Two minutes later I was on the train. I finally took time to see where I was going and realized it was to Kansas. Why the heck would I want to go to Kansas? Hays Kansas, never heard of it. I moved to the back of the car I was in and fell asleep thinking about the situation I had just gotten myself into. Unfortunately, I had no idea how bad it was going to get in just a few short hours.
What the?...I thought to myself as my eyes sprung open to the sounds of screaming. My whole body seemed to lift without gravity. I grabbed my seat, held on tight, and stuck my head out the open window beside me. Why are we beside the tracks? Suddenly, I felt more force and my entire body was jerked back inside. I slammed to the ceiling. From the view I had, I could tell we seemed to be falling, but where?
Oh god. I finally realized we were falling down the side of a mountain. A MOUNTAIN! Who cares how, I knew we were going to die. For the first time in my life, I prayed to god. With all my heart, I prayed.
So here I am, a ghost roaming the wreckage of the old train cars in the bottom of the canyon where I perished. I shoulda’ just gone to jail.
The End.
