Haunted

Haunted: Chapter Three

I was sitting on the couch, holding an old, battered copy of Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone, worn from being read so many times. The whole table of contents had fallen out, and someone (namely, me) had spilled cranberry juice on page 53. That was when I felt it coming on.

The flashback.

When my vision started to darken, I let the memory of the flashback engulf me. I leaned back our old green couch, my long, silky black hair fanning out around me, and I carefully placed my oval, wire glasses of the side table beside me. Preparing myself, I clutched a tattered yellow pillow to my chest. I took a sharp breath in as my vision clouded over and darkened:

The voice of the pilot filtered through the small plane, crackling. "Ladies and Gentleman. It seems we have a small emergency on our hands; we in fact have a mechanical problem with the engine. Please, do not worry, we should be landing soon, and if I am correct, which I assure you, I usually am correct, the engine should hold up until we land. Thank you." He laughed afterward, reassuring us that everything was fine.

Even though we were told to not worry, we did. All of us on the plane, I think twenty in all, were worried. Mothers hugged their children, while fathers searched through the overhead compartments for some sort of means to save their families; only life vests for the ocean could be found. My own mother grasped each of us in her long, graceful arms: Yuriko, my little sister, was on the left, closest to the aisle, and I was on the right, next to Papa.

Papa turned to the three of us, huddling together. "Girls, it will be fine. We will all be fine. We will stick together. Everything will be OK." Even though his words were directed towards my sister and I, they seemed to be for our mother, too, who looked as worried as Yuriko and me.

A few minutes later, the voice of the pilot crackled back on. Everyone on the plane held their breath, anticipating what he had to say.

"Attention, all passengers of flight number 6410. The mechanical issue that our engine is experiencing is worsening faster than expected. Unfortunately, there is nothing that we can do to stop this. Please stay calm. Thank you."

Those dreaded words. "There is nothing we can do to stop this." Those words would hound me until the day I died, and into the grave.

Mother started sobbing, tears streaming down her face. Papa reached over to her, and whispered in her ear a few sentences. I was close enough to hear every word, and even though I knew that my Papa's words weren't meant for my ears, I strained to hear anyways:

"Ayame, we knew that this wasn't the best flight. We knew that we could be endangering our family. Ayame, we knew from the beginning that we were taking an illegal flight out of the country because we were too poor to get a real flight. Did you expect a luxury plane with state-of-the-art machinery? Did you?"

As the plane tilted downwards, heading for the rocky plains below, the noise level in the small, cramped plane rose to a clamor: No, more than a clamor, a ruckus. Mothers were sobbing furiously, grasping their children. Fathers were shouting, yelling to the pilot to do anything he could to stop the plane, to save them and their families. Children were crying or shouting or tugging on their parents' arms, asking what was going on, and why was everyone yelling.

The details of the memory became more vivid as it reached the climax.

The plane smelled like burnt rubber, a smell that I hated to this very day. I could see the early dawn sky out the window, dark and smudged from fingerprints. There were no clouds, and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. My mother grasped me to her, thinking that it would be our last time together, and I tasted her hot, salty tears, running down her face and onto my head.

The space between the plane and the ground diminished.

I jerked up from the flashback. My eyes flitted around, scanning the surrounding area. After a bit of inspection, I found myself lying on the old beige carpet. It still smelled like old milk, soured by the years we had used it. I pushed myself onto the couch, grabbing my glasses and shoving them onto my face, turning the blurred watercolor world to a one with sharp focus. 

"Nanami! Dinner!" My mother called, ushering me over to our small, rectangular table, decked out with two mismatched chairs. I rubbed my forehead, damp with sweat and throbbing from where I had hurt it when I fell. Mother only glanced over at me, but she could tell that there had been a flashback. And she wished it wasn't that way, I knew.