What’s the worst that can happen?

It’s not the “worst,” it’s the where and when. Example:

The Big One hits, while you’re under the bay on the BART.

Cracks form on the tunnel walls, the first of millions of gallons

trickle. Creep. Run. Rush and rise. The train stalls. Then

darkness. Wailing: young girls’ surprise. A policeman falls

to roar and rage at the floor. Ice cold. You shiver, gag: fishrot

sewer smell of baybottom silt and scum reaches past your lips,

to your lungs. You are one damned among many damned, all

mindless with fear, scratching and pushing and pushed, helpless

as fleas tossed in a toilet and flushed, punished as a civus romanus

convicted of parricide, sent to the bottom of the Tiber in a sack

with a live dog, snake, rooster, and monkey to drown together…

No. Correct this metaphor: yes, you are punished, but 

not like the parricide. You are the monkey: thrust in a bloody

sack with animals and this wretched man who failed you, crying:

I, ape, have committed no crime, why must I suffer?  Die?

1. BART

2. civus romanus

3. monkey