Wings of Fate: The Lost Ones

She told him they weren’t dead but Raven wasn’t sure. The idea of getting up and opening the door scared the hell out of her. She didn’t want to see the bodies. She didn’t want the kid to see it either.

“Raven -- it’s dark in here and I -- I don’t like the...” his voice trailed off, ashamed perhaps or, afraid to voice his fear aloud. But she didn’t like the dark either. The bathroom was too small and way too dark. Widening her eyes as much as possible, she tried to catch a glimpse of light. In every bit of darkness she had ever been in there had been some small sliver of light -- some bit of shading giving way to shadow. She could see nothing now.

“You know what Austin? I was thinking the same thing. Before we open the door, though, you realize -- you understand we may be the only -- you know the only...” she stopped and took a breath, trying to find an explanation that wouldn’t require saying those words.

“I don’t care, I want out of this room.” He sounded panicked and, she knew, before long he would clamor over her in his attempt to escape. Austin grabbed at her hand, tugging her arm in emphasis of his readiness.

“Let’s try this together then.” she said, leaning against the sink for a moment before groping along the surface of the door for its handle. Raven pulled on the metal latch when her fingers touched it, but the weight of the door was impossible at this angle. “Austin, I’m going to need my hand until we get out, probably until we get off the plane, are you okay to stay beside me?”

When he responded it seemed the promise of getting out of the bathroom calmed him but he still whispered. She knew why he whispered, it was the tomb of silence surrounding them -- so at contrast with the shrieking and screaming they last heard. Surely, they were not the only survivors, Raven thought, easing the door open so she could wedge her body between it and the doorframe. When she arranged herself so Austin could get through she called him forward and he squeezed by her.

It was just as pitch black in the body of the airplane as it was in the bathroom. Maybe comparing it to a tomb was more accurate than I meant it to be.

“You don’t think…” his voice caught, the panic renewed. “Water -- you don’t think we’re under water, do you? I know with the windows, they won’t break right? Right? It’s dark, we’re going to die down here!” Austin’s fears clutched her heart as she searched for some indication they were not under water. But there was nothing but darkness.

“Austin, calm down. Why don’t you stay here for a moment and let me --”

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me...” he whispered.

“Okay, never mind, you come with me.” She said, sighing. Kids.

“We’ll move slowly down the aisle okay? We are going to have to hold on to the seats as we move down. There might be luggage or -- well, we are going to have to move slowly but I’ll stay with you, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

The bathroom door snapped shut behind them as they began a slow descent through the plane. It was dark, pitch black even, at the bottom of the ocean and it was possible the plane crashed into one. Very possible. How long could they survive at the bottom of the ocean? Raven struggled to dredge up any long buried knowledge of ocean life and came up empty. As they inched down the aisle they managed to not trip over any luggage or bodies, but the luggage should have been strapped in the overhead compartments and the people should have been strapped in their seats.

She dug her fingers into the chairs in an effort to keep from plunging headlong down the aisle. And to hold on to some sense of reality. In the darkness her mind tried to trick her into believing she was trapped in a dream. Austin was silent behind her -- leaving only the whispered hush of her breathing.

A dream was easy to believe.

The next time she reached for a seat, her palms encountered the solid edge of walls on either side of the aisle. The galley, she thought vaguely, mentally placing herself at the front of the airplane where passengers entered. She shuffled forward until her hands touched the smooth surface of a door.

“Hold up Austin, we’re at the cockpit.”

“Are we going in there?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’m going to look inside first.” Sliding the heavy door to the side, she tried to look around inside but was unable to see a thing. It was darker than night everywhere, she grumbled to herself. Raven wasn’t sure what she was looking for in the room, anyway; it seemed like the right thing to do. What was she doing? She asked herself -- knowing there wasn’t a good answer. Raven leaned against the closed door.

“Raven?”

“Yeah, hold on, I’m thinking.” She didn’t know what to tell him. Before, when they were in the bathroom, claustrophobia demanded she get out of the plane entirely; make their way to the cockpit where they could open the door or use one of the escape exits. But then Austin asked about being under water.

At the bottom of the ocean, even.

It could be night time and that could be why it was dark everywhere. They could have landed on an island where there weren’t any streetlights or ambulances, and that could explain the darkness. But, what if the kid was right? If they were at the bottom of the ocean and she opened the emergency exit, they were both dead. Then again, if she didn’t open the door they would both be dead -- not a whole lot of options when you’re at the bottom of the ocean, she thought sardonically. Raven wished, for a moment, her watch lit up so she could check the time. Not knowing where the crew kept matches or lighters, left her with the option of digging through someone’s pockets.

Her mind shied away from that idea.

“If I had some idea of the time, I would have a better plan Austin. Right now, my plan is to find us a comfortable place to sit and then wait for a while, I guess, maybe even sleep.”

“What about your laptop?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t those things have clocks?” she studied the spot where the boy’s voice seemed to come from and decided she was a complete idiot. Of course she could use her laptop! She had email on there as well, they could even email 9-1-1. She bit her bottom lip. Well, maybe I can email 9-1-1. Or call! Geez, Raven, she thought, find your phone!

“That’s brilliant Austin! Okay, let’s find a place to sit, and then I’m going to go get my things.”

“I don’t want to be alone…” he whispered.

“Austin look, I understand man. It’s dark and scary, but I’m not going far. Right? There’s nowhere to go. I’ll talk to you the whole way up and down, okay? It’ll be faster if I go alone, though, so let’s pick a place where you can hang out until I make it back.”

“Yeah,” he answered, “there’s a seat right here, I think it’s the back of the first row, we can sit here I guess.”

“It’s better than nothing right?” Austin was quiet and she glanced back up the aisle, from where they came -- unable to see a damn thing. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to find our row and my laptop, what if the stupid thing went flying off?”

“We were row 7, count the rows.” He said.

Raven gripped the tightly woven cloth covering the seats and headed into the unknown. She found it remarkably difficult to convince her mind there was a floor in front of her -- and her feet would land on something solid. She couldn’t get her mind to comply by pretending to envision the plane all lit up. It was impossible to see anything but what was before her. A great big, black nothing.

“What are you doing?” she asked Austin, pulling her weight up to what she figured was row 3, then reaching forward again.

“There should be blankets and pillows here somewhere, the stewardess pointed them out at the beginning of the flight.”

“Be careful opening cabinets, okay, because of luggage.” She pulled up to the next row.

“There’s no luggage in this one, no blankets either but I found a pillow. I’m going across the aisle to look there.”

She nodded in the dark, listening to the shuffling sounds of his feet and the slight click of the cabinet door unlocking under his fingers as she pulled herself up to row 6. “I didn’t know this plane had pillows for the passengers, I thought those were just for first class.” She called back to him as she pulled herself up to row 7.

“That’s because you weren’t paying attention during the instructions,” he pointed out.

She smiled to herself, remembering having been suspicious others might notice she wasn’t paying attention. Apparently so, she thought. At row 7 Raven stopped and leaned against the seats to rest. “I didn’t realize anyone noticed that.”

“I notice lots of things. Found another pillow and a couple of blankets -- still, no luggage. Wasn’t the plane full? Didn’t they say they were over-full?” he asked.

She thought back to the boarding of the plane -- it was crowded, which was why her bag had been under her legs. “Yes, actually, it was and so were the luggage compartments. That’s odd.” She reached down to the floor, waving her hand back and forth in blind search of her leather bag. A full minute passed before she realized their window passenger neighbor wasn’t in the row. Raven wondered if she miscounted the rows and would have to start over, but then she recalled there were passengers on every row. Chills crept up her spine and she called out to Austin.

When he answered, she said, “Just checking to make sure you’re okay. I’m still looking for my -- here it is! I found it, oh thank you, thank you, thank you.” Raven raised her voice in excitement and the loud sound ricocheted off the walls in the tomblike plane. Pausing for a moment, she waited for the sound to disappear and made a mental note to not raise her voice.

Raven pulled her bag to her chest, clutching it under one arm. Originally, she thought just to grab her laptop but decided instead to bring the whole bag. Other items were in there too, like her wallet, a mirror, phone, a book of matches, and gum. Maybe even something more edible. Besides, if they ever made it off the cursed plane, she wanted her belongings with her. As she started back down the aisle she peered into the darkness and thought for a moment how desperately tired of being in the dark she was. “Hey Austin, you ever heard of Marco Polo?”

After another journey to the front of the plane, Raven was chewing a piece of peppermint gum, sitting next to Austin with a pillow behind her back, a fleece blanket thrown over her legs and the laptop on her lap. She dimly recalled the bottom of the ocean was supposed to be freezing and thought they should be cold, or colder than they were, if they were indeed at the bottom of the ocean. She opened the laptop with a mental shrug and powered up. It sprang to life and she typed in her login and password. “Welcome Raven.” Her computer said.

“Welcome Lilly.” She responded with a smile, and tried again to get a signal on her phone.

“You have blood on your face.” Austin pointed out when the white light filled their space. She watched as his eyes traveled over her hair, which was undoubtedly a mess. “And bruises, I think.” He added quietly. The laptop’s light shone against his face and she was sure it was just as bright on her own.

His eyes were dark, staring back at her in some ghastly contrast of life and death. It looked like fear in his eyes and Raven considered the possibility she appeared the same to him -- like a specter of death. Twin dark hallows shaded his cheeks like the black smears coating his eyelids. The starkness of glowing light encircled the two of them, reflecting off his white t-shirt -- sending his face further into shadow. He was silent as he stared at her with those dark orbs where his eyes should be. She looked away.

“I’m fine Austin, we both have bumps and bruises but we’re fine now, right?” Raven smiled and he stretched his lips in a small smile. She glanced at the computer screen. “9:45 p.m. it says, so it could be dark outside because it’s night time -- I was thinking we could have landed on a remote island or something,” she murmured, staring vacantly to the left, toward what she imagined was the pitch black nothingness outside.

“That would be okay, right?” he asked.

“It’s better than being at the bottom of the ocean.” He stiffened beside her and she was instantly sorry she worded it that way. “If it makes you feel any better, I really don’t think we’re at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because it’s not that cold in here and the bottom of the ocean is icy cold.”

“Oh.”

She opened her Internet browser and got a “page could not be found” message. She closed the screen and tried again, but with the same results. “Well, if we are on some remote island, then we probably wouldn’t get Internet, so that makes sense, too. I guess there’s nothing left to do but get some sleep.” She logged off the computer and closed it, leaving the two of them in silence.

Austin dropped off to sleep quickly, his breath evening out before even thirty minutes passed. But it was a long time before she herself drifted off. Raven’s mind scrambled in a hundred directions trying to get a grip on what happened. Had they really just survived a plane crash? It didn’t appear anyone else survived. Did they only survive because they were in the bathroom? And why couldn’t she remember the crash? They should’ve exploded, shouldn’t they have?

She should be in Puerto Rico right now, checked into her hotel room, standing in the bathroom beneath the comforting glow of basketball sized 120-watt light bulbs, ignoring the dark circles beneath eyes that lately seemed to look lost. She should be getting ready to jump into a steaming shower before crawling into an over-sized pillow-top bed with pillows and blankets she always half-seriously considered stealing.

Instead, she was on a wrecked airplane in the middle of who-knew-where. She didn’t think they were far enough away from the east coast of the U.S. to have landed on an island because the islands were further south. It was possible, though, she guessed, glancing unseeingly where the dark-headed boy curled up beside her. How was she supposed to handle a kid?

She didn’t want to be responsible for one, especially this one -- he had been through so much lately. Austin needed someone kid-friendly; someone who would know how to handle this situation; someone who wasn’t just as lost as he was.

Raven glanced up and stared where she assumed a window would be, and convinced herself she was gazing out at the inky blackness of night.

She hoped help came soon.