l a p s e

the wreck

We looked through the wreckage. We couldn't really find much, though – everything had either been flung away or burnt to a crisp. What we did find, though – or who – was you, sitting under one of the wings.

I only looked at the wing first. It had been crumpled like a tin can and the aluminum was torn around the center. Mud caked the edges, obscured the lines painted across it. The light on the end was missing.

You were still wearing the gray shirt, but now it was covered in dirt and pine needles, smelling like forest. The botanist asked you the same questions he'd asked me: who are you, do you know where you are, have you found anyone else? You nodded to the second and then shook your head at the third. You hadn't answered the first question. We assumed you were in shock.

Finally, I spoke. "We should look for our things."

The three of them looked at me strangely after I'd spoken, as if surprised that I had a voice. I suppose they were relieved that I wasn't a ghost, some figment of their imaginations.

The lawyer nodded at me after a long pause. She walked past and began rummaging in the debris under the fuselage of the plane. The botanist followed suit. I waited for you to get up before following them, and together the four of us looked for anything we could use.

It seemed like an eternity before we found something. It was a blue rolling suitcase, like the red one I'd found in my clearing, and it didn't belong to any of us. We still unpacked it, because we could.

It was definitely a woman's. There was, inside, a set of plush shawls, packets of incense, and several other rolls of fabric that we could not identify. There was a dress, frilly and cotton-blue, but it was too large for both me and the lawyer, even if we were both to wear it at the same time.

Finally in the bottom we found a small cage, upon which there was a small engraved plaque christening its inhabitant as Statue. I pulled it out and inside sat a small white rat with a large black heart-shaped patch on its head staring at me pleasantly. I wondered why the woman had put it inside her suitcase, buried under the shawls. The rat seemed to be okay, however, and when I undid the clasp on the cage she tittered and scampered around, then when I made a comforting chirp she ran out onto my arm, her little feet causing little pats along my skin. I shivered, but it was a pleasant one. The rat tucked herself into my muddy jeans, and that's where she stayed.

We looked around some more. The only thing we found was a handbag, and at first it was so covered in mud that I didn't recognize it. Then, once the mud flaked off I realized it was mine, and I lunged forward to take it from the lawyer, who was holding it gingerly.

"That's mine," I hissed, and grabbed it, as if she were a threat. I fossicked around inside it, looking for my hunk of a flip phone, but it was gone. The only things inside were my journal, my house keys, some safety pins and a package of tissues. In a pocket there was about $180 worth of cash in twenty dollar bills. Everything else had either fallen out or had never existed in the first place.

I shoved the tissues into my pocket and tucked the journal into the front zip of the blue suitcase. The safety pins I hung on my necklace – a thin silver chain with a small, ruby pendant, a gift for my nineteenth birthday – and the cash went into my bra. The house keys and handbag I left in the turbine of the plane, like a sort of offering.

We didn't find anything else. We searched and searched but nothing revealed itself; nothing rose out of the mud like magic.

"I want to go inside," I said to the botanist.

He shook his head vigorously. "It's not safe."

"There might be something inside. Please. We have to try. People could be alive, inside, and trapped."

"But they could also be dead. Leave it alone. It's not worth the risk." He left me to search under the tail again.

I still feel like there was something inside that plane. Something completely and irrevocably alive. Something that could have been saved, had I been fool enough to venture within.