Train Wreck

 I studied the best I could at train engineering school. Nobody told me how to drive a train; they just wished me luck and told me to pray and drive the train every day.

 Without a set of rules, I felt ill-equipped. I watched other engineers who'd been driving longer, but none seemed to know how to transfer their skills to me. Observation wasn't enough. I needed hands on training.
 And yet, I found myself roaring down the track, unable to stop the train as it picked up speed. The experience was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Trees flew by, buildings, birds, telephone poles, cats, dogs, people, cars... I was passing all of them. I hit the brakes and squeaked across a narrow bridge, pulse racing. Was this a dream? You know, one of those hang-on-for-your-life rides that ends in a sweaty bedsheet when you finally awake?

 I've been told you could die of a heart attack if you actually dream of falling and hit bottom. That's why most people dream of falling but awaken before they hit bottom. Not me. As a kid, I had a recurring dream of falling off our stairway in our large, two story double house in Indiana. I would invariably hit the bottom of the stairway, pain emitting throughout my entire being.
 It got worse.
 I dreamed of falling from a high rise skyscraper, screaming as the air was sucked right out of me. All I could do was spiral downward, dry eyed and dry tongued, rocketing faster and faster toward earth.
 BAM! I struck with a force of a bullet, body numb with excruciating pain.
 Maybe I was meant for this type of subliminal superhuman sacrificial suffering.
 At any rate, here I am, at the wheel of the locomotive, roaring down the track and the brakes are hot. The damn track is sloping downward, pert near like a roller coaster more than a railroad track.

 I'm spiraling out of control. I feel the wheels leaving the track. I want to pee my pants. Terror smacks me in the face with every blast of wind seeping in the open window.

 I can't stop. I'm going to wreck. I am watching my life derail in front of me.

My blood chills. I close my eyes. I'm praying my fool head off, and I want to wake, but I fear I am not asleep.