The Lost One

Chapter 3

Nova was suddenly jolted awake by the sound of an explosion and the feeling of the plane going out of control. The passengers screamed and cried in their shock and fear. The plane was getting ripped apart in its descent and some of the passengers (including the flight attendants) and luggage were being tossed around the cabin. The woman who sat in the window seat next to her, whom she hadn't paid much attention to, was sucked out of the plane. Her screams were cut off by the howls of the wind and the screams of other passengers. Nova gripped her hand rests tightly. So tightly that her knuckles were white with no blood. So tightly that she felt her hands could've crushed the handrests.

Then the very seat she sat in started giving way. She felt it loosen until she was out in cold, frigid air, falling thousands of meters to the ground. She screamed and cried, and every thought in her mind was racing at incomprehensible speeds. Her heartbeats were fast and intense. Her lungs were straining inside her and her breaths were shallow and rapid.

She whispered her prayers and closed her eyes, accepting death.

***

She slowly opened her eyes and found her lying in the snow in the middle of the Gelus Forest. Her seat was demolished. It was a miracle she was even alive. She groaned in pain as she got up. Her head hurt. She found blood near the top left of her forehead and a cut across her right shoulder. Her vision was wobbly and she struggled to balance herself for a moment. But she was able to balance herself and she looked around the surroundings she found herself in. The towering white trees and unusual plant life were strange, otherworldly. It was freezing and she was unfortunate to have been wearing a jacket.

She made her way to the wreckage of the plane and surrounding trees. Many pieces of the plane were scattered all over the place. There were other bodies on the ground surrounding the plane, she found. She went to investigate. She turned over the first body she found and the expression on its face horrified her. The body was of a man, whose eyes were wide open and face was covered in blood. His bones were bent and broken in unnatural positions. Nova stumbled back. She felt as if she wanted to vomit. She didn't, however, and continued looking for other survivors in the wreckage.

The inside of the cabin was demolished in the crash so there wasn't much to find except for fallen luggage and more dead bodies. She had searched the cabin in almost its entirety when she heard something near the back. She rushed over and found a woman, bleeding out from a wound in her gut. She had blood over her mouth and she had grabbed onto Nova's wrist and pulled her in closer.

"W-what has happened?" she asked.

"The plane has crashed," Nova replied.

The woman looked down to see the wound and started to panic. Her intestines were hanging out of the wound and blood oozed from it.

"O-oh, my god!" she said. She coughed and shivered. "H-help me..."

Nova placed her hands over the wound and attempted to put pressure on it. The woman groaned and seethed in pain. Nova thought she was going to be sick. She gulped down the lump in her throat and managed out some words.

"Listen, listen," she said to the woman.

"Everything's going to be alright. Let me find some bandages."

"No!" the woman griped harder on Nova's wrist. "Don't leave here!"

Nova tried but was unable to resist. She knelt beside the woman, the life in her eyes slowly being sucked away.

"It's okay, it's okay," Nova said, attempting to comfort the dying woman who coughed and groaned in pain. "Just look at me, look at me."

"I c-can't die alone..." the woman said, shivering. "I can't die a-alone."

"Hey, hey, it's going to be okay. It'll slide over you. Just allow it to slide over you. It will feel warm, you'll no longer be in pain. You'll be in a better place."

The woman shivered and cried a single tear before dying. Her grip on Nova's wrist dropped and her eyes fell lifeless. Nova's breathing was shallow and her mouth was agape. She tried to close the woman's eyes but they simply reopened themselves. She tried again, gently and slowly, several more times before she managed to do it. Her hands were shaking. She stepped back, in shock. She, once again felt herself vomit, and this time needed to vomit. She rushed to the side and vomited the contents of her stomach out onto the cabin's floor. Bits of food in green liquid spilled out aggressively. She gripped the chairs as she slowly stood up.

"Ughhh, fuck!" she slammed one of her hands onto one of the chairs. "Fuck!"

She slowly made her way to the plane's exit and sat outside to recompose herself. She hadn't seen someone die before, especially not in a manner such as that. She stared at the horizon with tears in her eyes. She wondered why she was crying for someone she didn't know. It was a bizarre thing, a peculiar thing, indeed.