Crash Landing (introduction)

I. Jonah

It was the fire that Jonah remembered with most detail. The intensity of the flames, the extreme heat that consumed everything with a passion and behaved like a plague, jumping from console to console and filling the entire metal ship with a thick, black smoke. It was a passion that Jonah had never experienced before in his life. Or so he thought‒ for that same fire that he remembered with such detail also in its own ironic way stole from him his entire identity.

The fire was all he had left, along with a few distant memories of an attempt to escape something inescapable. And as Jonah lie in the wreckage of a ship that he now had no memory of; a dark, blackened hull that he now related all too well with, he tried to make sense of anything that he could.

Above him, through a light haze of the remaining smoke around him, was the remains of the roof to the cabin that he had been in as the ship came flaming and tumbling through the atmosphere. From what he could guess, he had been towards the center of the ship because there had been enough oxygen around him to fuel the fire that burned the ship from the inside out.

The smoke had cleared out of the room he was in mostly, which made him wonder how long he had blacked out before he had awoken to the burnt crisp he was lying in now. The air smelled a mix of sour and smoky, the mixture of the burnt up rocket fuel along with whatever else the flames consumed on their conquest through the ship.

Jonah's senses started coming back to him, and his haze that he had been in started to part. He knew from the throbbing pain that now started to bite at him from almost all of his body that the flames had gotten to him too, the worst of it he could feel all down his left arm and side, likely second and third degree burns. He could feel the agonizing blisters along his forearm, and winced in pain. His right arm was relatively untouched, then he realized that his legs and right arm were pinned under something with massive weight‒ probably contributing to why the fire had not reached him as bad or why he wasn't thrown and killed upon impact of the ship hitting, well, he didn't know yet. A small line of sunlight broke through the smoke and was glowing against his trapped appendages. He assumed that he had been fortunate to land on a planet, but had no idea where. If only he could recall...

He lifted his head to look down at the weight that was on him, but instead felt a searing pain in the back of his skull down his back. His vision became spotty, and he knew that he was not moving from the spot he was in. He now realized that he had suffered major head trauma, likely during the crash his head was banged violently against the metal floor causing a severe concussion, the amnesia he was experiencing, as well as(how he knew this he wasn't certain), the feeling that the trauma had traveled down to his spine, causing the discs to move out of place. A word came to mind: Spondylolisthesis. How did he know that? He wasn't so sure, something in his past that he had now forgotten. It didn't matter.

How he would blow away this amnesia he was not certain of, but he knew that he had to do something or surely he would die in this spot, and remembering anything would be pointless. Summoning what willpower he could to lift his head ever so slightly, he peered to see what he was pinned under. The sight that he saw was not pleasant.

One of the massive consoles that had been thrown about the room he was in had trapped him in the spot he was in. Luckily he still had feeling in his legs and arm, so he knew they had not been crushed. By some fortune, part of the console had been a metal rod lying horizontally, and that rod sat perfectly above his knee caps, effectively trapping them. Past the rod was open space so his lower legs had nothing on them at all. The rod had successfully trapped his lower legs behind it in the small space but had it been a little lower on them it would have shattered his knees and had a different part of the console landed on him his legs would have been crushed altogether.

His arm was trapped underneath not the console but a massive chair. It was not as heavy as the console so it did not crush him but it had cracked the majority of the bones.

Well isn't this just bloody lovely? He thought to himself. There was no way that he was getting out of this situation unless a miracle presented itself. And he had no idea where he was or even if the ship had alerted anyone to its location before it crashed. Miracles weren't really looking like they'd be on Jonah's side.

The universe is a cruel place. It takes and takes and can make you think you have a chance just to leave you in even more pain and die a slower death and more painfully. Why couldn't the flames have just taken me too?

The ship vibrated and the sound of metal scraping against metal filled the air. It calmed with a low groaning, like the groan of a giant whose weight was too much for him to handle. The shaking brought back the pain that rippled through Jonah's body. Maybe if I'm lucky this graveyard will finally give up trying to hold itself together and become my tomb. The pain was beginning to become too much. The haze that he had experienced as he had regained consciousness began to come back.

The last thing that Jonah heard was the sound of what he half thought could've been footsteps in the distance.

Tap
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But no, Jonah could not be so fortunate for that. No one could've survived the flying Hell that he had...

Hey guys thanks for reading! Some friends showed me this app and this is the start of a story that I'd like to write in my free time. If you enjoyed it leave a comment and I love any feedback that I get! Until next time

-Mark