I worked in the World Trade Center, somewhere in low 100's, and I hated my life.
I don't remember all the details, but everything sucked. I hated my family and my job. I was in debt. There were implications of mob-related violence hanging over my head. I was being investigated for something. Everything was a mess, and I was hoping and praying for some way out of the whole thing-- if only I could get out from under the snowballing mess of my life, I could start over fresh and not make all the same mistakes.
I left the office and went down onto the street to make a phone call. I don't know who I was going to call, but it was somehow related to the trouble I was trying to avoid-- the mob stuff or whatever. I couldn't use my cell or the office phone, so I was going to use a payphone on the street. I left the WTC and walked a few blocks away and just as I picked up the phone and started to dial, the planes hit.
The two impacts, and the building collapses, all happened pretty much at once-- the first explosion happened, and I looked up to see the second one. I could see the fire of the first one burning right where my office had been, and then both buildings came down and disappeared in the rising cloud of their own disintegration. The shockwave hit me and I dropped the phone and just stood there, awestruck, open-mouthed.
And then, as the sirens started, I realized that nobody who knew I'd left the building was alive anymore, and they would never find any of the dead intact enough to really be sure who was who. Nobody, literally nobody on the planet, would expect me to still be alive now.
So, while everyone around me screamed and shrieked and wept in horror and dismay, I headed down into the subway and caught a train out of the city while they were still running-- and my entire old life disappeared into the gray ash behind me.