This week, for the #FictionMonday prompt, ‘crash’, I thought of creating a scenario that never fails to terrify me, every time I board a flight. I always watch the aircraft from the waiting lounge area and silently say my prayers… for every life that will be accompanying us on the journey to fly and kand safely…and when we land, I always thank the pilots for we literally owe them everything to keep us safe VCror the venture duration of the flight.
Anyway, so here’s what the word ‘crash’ brought to my mind today, as I started to write based on the prompt.
The Descent
The plane started shaking and panic took hold.
A massive jolt sent the passengers flying out of their seats.
Handbags, glasses, phones and toys flew everywhere, while screams resounded through the air.
The ground rushed up to meet them.
In those fleeting moments of descent, a torrent of memories came hurtling down, along with hopes, laughter, love, and dreams—all left unfinished.
A giant fireball splashed into the ocean.
Their worlds drowned in the swirling depths of the sea.
Silence engulfed them.
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Joining Vinitha with a short piece of fiction for #FictionMonday. This week’s prompt is ‘Crash’.
We visited D.C. a few days after the recent crash of Blackhawk and commercial jet. Flew into the same airport. It was sobering, flying over and driving along the Potomac. Sobering, too, the way life goes on – traffic doesn’t take a pause, flight schedules continue without significant interruption. As they must. As we all must. But it always feels, to me, like we should slow down – think, process, be sad, feel something. Yet here we were, flying right over the wreckage. Driving by it. Flying over it again. Only the slightest sigh of relief to reach home, at last. Knowing that the odds of being in a car crash on the drive home from the airport were worse than those of being killed in an airplane.
I’d really like to die painlessly, in my sleep, in my late 90s. Maybe 100. Meanwhile, my brain cells form a phalanx around terror, only letting the tiniest, most persistent soldiers of the anxiety army through. That’s how we live.
This felt so real, Esha. I am scared of take offs and landings, but something I can’t avoid. All good thoughts during the flight to keep those nerves at bay.
I have travelled by plane just once and it was not very frightening back then. But now, the scenario you created above is the first thought that will cross my mind, were I to sit on a plane. 🙂
I have always been scared of train journeys. Somehow plane seems safer. I have a friend who has a phobia of landing and takeoffs. He is over 50 years old and flies for his work almost every week, and even then every time the plane takes off he clenches the seat, closes his eyes, and keeps chanting the Hanuman Chalisa.
That’s a frightening scenario. I consciously block all such thoughts when I board a plane.
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