The child, the Wild and the Morbidly awkward Introvert

EUREKA!

CORA

I was rushed into the control room; a room that was the expansive child of two large wardrobes. It was full of various beeping machines, interactive maps and collections of pens, pencils and books. The people inside the room were mainly very grim-looking men with pock-marked faces and creased brows; hair that looked like frosted grey grass. Everything about the room screamed frustration and frenzy; two things that were starting to make my heart pound and my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth.

I looked up, relaxing slightly only when I noticed that Andrew and Misty were both watching me anxiously as though waiting for me to explode or have a meltdown. I forced myself to smile and focused on one of the haggard faces before me that were frowning at me with their faces frozen in grim frowns.

"Sparrow is....bringing the plane back." Andrew offered.

I felt like he had slammed a bag of frozen peas into my face.

"Something happened and there is a crazy man running around with a knife. Sparrow-"

Something beeped. The room was full of static that sounded like a raspy cough. It echoed through the room, bounced off the walls and threatened to deafen me completely.

"Come in." One of the haggard men barked.

"Yes." Sparrow sounded strangely calm; robotic, almost. "We are presently headed back to Heathrow and will be arriving at an approximate time of one and a half hours..."

"What is the news?"

"News?"

"Your current situation."

Thump.

I felt my eyes widen as the static got louder until I was sure it would drive me mad. Through the static we could make out bangs and shouts; the heart breaking sounds of a frantic struggle and a chorus of thumps and mechanic clangs.

"Come in, please?" One of the grey-haired men murmured worriedly.

I frowned; not daring to move in case I missed something.

There were a few more loud shouts and screams. No sounds from Sparrow before a loud ripping sound and then an almighty thump that I felt in my bones.

Silence.

"Hello?" Sparrow sounded breathless. "Hi...erm. Yes we are moving faster than I believed. Erm....if you could perhaps just-" a loud, mechanic combination of whines and sputters made us look up as one.

A huge, mechanical, ghost-like body had swooped low in the dark sky. The rounded belly covered the moon and the windows hid what was inside.

"If someone could PLEASE tell me how on EARTH to pull the wheels up it would really help!" Sparrow was panicking now. "Oh God.....look....the lever broke-"

"Why don't you-"

Boom........boOM BOOM.

Deathly silence froze us where we stood. The plane had hit cars that had gone up in golden flames. Flames that were now devouring anything in sight. The plane had kept moving. It had slammed into the ground and come to a dead stop; too far away for us to see inside it but the plane looked like a battered, dead carcass of a huge bird that had fallen out of the sky.

My heart siezed up. I was trembling helplessly; frozen eyes wide holes of terror as I stared blankly at the wall of fire and the dead body of the plane that paramedics, the police and ambulances were flying towards.

                  ☆♤♧♢♡

I was running. My numb body cut through the frozen wind. I knew nothing but the plane. Paramedics had now crowded around it and were rushing away with bloody stretchers trailing blood in their wake. It made me sick that cameramen and the parapazzi had already arrived and were hovering to one side like hawks waiting hungrily for Sparrow so that they could fall upon him and devour him. Their cameras zoned in on me, taking in my tiny, manically moving, stick-figure-like form bulleting to the plane with no idea what was happening around me.