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Black smoke pours from the plane. Orange and yellow flames find their way inside the cabin, licking their way to the ceiling.
“Leo! You aren’t coming up on my screen anymore. Send me your location, please.”
My tongue is thick and dry, sticking to the roof of my mouth know I need to say the words my sister was afraid of.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! I’m going to land the best I can, but all there is ahead of me is forest.”
“Leo—”
“—Brian. Tell my sister I love her, okay? Just in case.”
“No way, Leo. You’ll be here—”
“Mayday, Brian. We know what that means. Promise me.”
A second of silence from him feels like an eternity as I lose altitude. This is not how I expected my first day on the job to go. Sure, I always thought I’d probably die in an airplane, but not so soon, not when my life is only just beginning.
“I promise,” he croaks. “I can get your sister on—”
“No! No, I don’t want her to hear me going down. I’m cutting off all communications.”
“No, Leo. No.” I can imagine Brian shaking his head, gripping his own headset with all of his might. “I need to be able to find you. Your GPS is no longer working. I can’t tell where you are in the sky. I should be able to trace your communication, and then we will come rescue you.”
Oh, there’s no rescuing me from this.
It will be a recovery.
“Just don’t let my sister see me if it’s really bad, okay?”
He coughs and sniffles. “Okay, Leo.”
“Thanks, Brian. For everything.” I cut off all communications, yanking my headset off, so I can think without having a voice in my ear.
I wipe the sweat off my forehead with my arm, staring out of the windshield at the trees getting closer and closer.
The entire plane shakes. The noise is unbearable. The heat from the fire breathes onto my neck.
Dark yellows and reds paint the sky in the late afternoon. The rays pierce through the windshield, making me wonder if I’m flying directly into heaven or hell.
The lower I become, the more it looks like the trees are spreading their branches to welcome me. They won’t be able to break my fall, and even if they do, they will be one of the reasons I die.
Momentum is a bitch when the only thing that can slow it down is some type of force.
My arms shake as I try to keep the plane level. Sweat stings my eyes. I grit my teeth together, and the plane clips the top of one tree, jerking the plane to the right.
“Come on. Come on,” I grunt, pulling on the yoke the best I can to stay parallel to the ground.
The right wing gets ripped from the body as another tree makes me its victim.
Then the left.
Metal crunches and creaks. Sparks fly. A demonic growl cuts through what’s left of the cabin as pieces of the plane are ripped away.
The tail snaps off next, taking the fire and supplies with it as it falls to the ground. Gales of wind roar as I continue on my path of destruction. A long branch spears the windshield, shattering the thick acrylic.
Shards of glass stick into my skin along my arms, neck, and face. Warm blood trickles down my cheek along with the tears that pool in my eyes. I won’t lie and say I’m not terrified.
“I don’t want to die,” I whisper, fighting to keep half of this plane from taking too much of a nosedive.
