The Crash and The Attack
We sat down at our gate, tired already from the hustle that it took getting through security and finding our way to the sleek, blue, uncomfortable rows of chairs. It was 7:23 a.m. and I had just woken up three hours ago, but somehow I already felt like going back to sleep. My mom, ever paranoid, kept me awake “Just in case” the plane got here an hour and a half early and we had to get on the plane in the next five minutes. She was worried the whole time until we were walking down the makeshift tunnel to the plane. The plane itself seemed like a sub-par carbon copy of planes in a movie. A chorus of scuffling feet, people buckling in, and chatter like “Oh I think you are in my seat” “Oh excuse me” and “Is there any more space up there” and we made our way to the back of the plane. We were seated just three rows ahead of the very back with the tiny bathroom and those collapsible carts the crew had for drinks and snacks. Mom and I buckled in and I was getting ready to listen to the songs I had downloaded the night before when my mom suddenly said
“Hey, Andre, just think, in 4 hours we’ll be on vacation for two weeks”
“Yeah, I’m excited to just get some relaxation in,” I responded, and with that, we left the conversation there for when we landed, mom was gonna try and sleep through it, of course during takeoff she gripped my hand for a minute until she was able to just close her eyes and try to fall asleep to the quiet murmurs of the plane. We couldn’t have been in the air for more than an hour, when we felt a sharp jolt hit the plane, shaking us all and waking mom up. The fasten seatbelt light came on and the pilot came on over the intercom saying
“It seems we’ll be having some unexpected turbulence, for now, The FAA says it shouldn’t last long but please stay in your seats for now.”
And so here we sat, mom now vividly awake, a second jolt seemed to strike the plane, making us shake and roll a bit more than the last, and the pilot tried to reassure us that all was well but the crowd of people seemed little calmed by his hollow assurance.
Not more than 2 minutes passed and the third shock of turbulence came, and with this, the lights flickered off and the oxygen masks came down, as people scrambled them off the windows slid open as people went to watch our obvious descent. Which now seemed to be at such a stark decline that we would plummet to the ground in seconds.
Only, that didn’t happen. We did nosedive, but the nose hit the clouds and instead of piercing the clouds and descending further, it crumpled against the cloud-like it had just been jammed into the concrete. The plane landed on the cloud with a thud. An air of confused silence and shock passed over the plane. For a moment all was still and nobody moved immobilized by the completely unreal reality that we were sitting on. Then, screams of confusion struggles to unbuckle their seats, people needed to move, to prove to themselves that this was real. Suddenly though the emergency door and door at the front of the plane slammed open with two resounding thuds. Again a silence fell over everyone except a wailing baby, momentarily neglected over the events that were unfolding. What seemed to be a fog passed into the plane, it materialized into three clouds made humanoid shapes, which were holding what appeared to be speared.
A second passed.
Then, one of them started indiscriminately slaughtering people and so did one other. At first, there were screams and grunts of trying to fight back. They were both in vain. Those who screamed got killed next, those who fought back passed right through them and got killed. There was no pattern, they seemed to just want to kill us, no intent other than to harm and inflict the most pain and death possible. When the screams turned to sobbing, still people died, when the blood coated the carpeted aisles, and only a handful of people were left, still people died. Through it all though, two things were made clear, this was no act of unwarranted aggression, they seemed too angry to be doing this with no reason in their minds. They also seemed to be yelling, almost like a whisper, yet simultaneously loud, it seemed eerie and mournful, but I knew it was mourning the people they had just killed, but like a dogs howl when their owner has died, it was a deep loss, but foreign to any sound I had heard before. Second, the spears had no blood on them though having killed dozens of people in a few minutes. The third just stood there, what I thought to be a smile passed over what you could call its face. They seemed colder than the other two, more ruthless and calculating. The mastermind of the massacre, too good to kill these horrible creatures. They went up and down the aisles, examining all the bodies, not daring to touch them, an extreme disdain in their semi-formed features, still, they looked even more disgusted when they passed one of the survivors, but under that disgust was some look of glee, as if they knew we were going to die, and in an even more horrible way then those around us, that they were the lucky ones. They killed nearly everyone on the plane. My mom and I were passed over, whether of mercy or torturous intent I didn’t know. Us and seven others were left. Left in silence. Well, we were silent, the baby that was wailing earlier was left now too, seemingly motherless and searching for someone to comfort them. All we could do was stand there. The cloud people had left and we didn’t know their intentions but we were too scared to move, let alone think.
I’m not sure how much time passed before our reality set in, dealing with bouts of tears and grief seemed endless. I checked my watch and an hour had passed.
I’m not sure if this was some divine retribution, I’m not even sure who had it worse, us or the people who died quickly. To die quickly is a privilege I believe, the worst form of torture is watching other people die around you and knowing that for some reason, or no reason, you will live on. The worst part is I didn’t know any of their names when they died, they didn’t die around those who loved them or cared for them, they died in a narrow metal tube filled with strangers. There was no ceremony in this death, no goodbyes, no way to dress up the body that made you wonder if death wasn’t so bad. Just mangled corpses, all around us, if I wanted to step five feet in any direction I would have had to step over what used to be a living person.
It made some people -most people- angry, not me, it made me wonder why, why would these creatures do this? This such a thought out way to get revenge that in the end is small. If they wanted to stop planes from flying why not find a broader way to fight back or tell people not to fly. It made me curious. So, with little to do and a plane full of bodies I no longer wanted to be around, I left the plane through the hole that was ripped in, what used to be the emergency exit door. Finding myself in an obviously clear sky the sun was particularly warm but the air itself was not warm. I still wonder how the air up here is dense enough with oxygen for us to not suffocate, but at that moment I was not thinking of the air, I was getting my bearings. It seemed we were on rolling hills of clouds, I imagine these were cumulus that was a few days away from raining onto the ground down below. Oh, how weird it feels to walk on a cloud. Constantly like you should be sinking but never actually sinking, the appearance of softness but really feeling like compact dirt. As I looked around at the exit of the plane I saw that some of the area nearby was stained with blood, quickly I left. I didn’t need anything to help me from getting lost, the plane was by far the largest thing in the area. I wandered, not to see unique things but out of awe, it felt like a continuous dream, something that never changed but never felt real.
What was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen was when I reached the edge of the clouds, I think I had walked for several hours already and the sun was behind me, just along the clouds making the whole surface glow gold and pink. I could look down and see beneath me wide swaths of green, I think we were over somewhere with lots of farms as there were not really any big cities or houses, I could only tell because houses and roads had this gray look from this high up and it was mostly green with speckles of gray and brown. The whole world seemed to be painting, I felt like I was plucked from a painting, these beautiful swatches of color just barely bleeding together, separate from each other only by the clouds.
I walked back to the plane as the sun had ducked beneath the clouds and left us in darkness quickly, though some light seemed to glow up through the bottom of our clouds, making them seem like night lights illuminating the world in soft yellow. I found the plane, and my mom outside waiting for me. A tight hug as the hours had passed and emotions had intensified, she sobbed something into my shoulder about how horrible this is, how she is just glad we both survived, and finally that she was scared. We held each other tightly, this took me out of the trance I was in, threw me back into the rough reality of finding some way to live in a plane and even worse so, on the clouds.
