What Even.
You're midway into your flight when you, feeling bored, decided to surf the Internet. You read breaking news about another plane disappearance. You're on that flight.
I checked the map on the large TV screen, six more hours until we land. Ugh. “Travelling alone sure is boring!” I thought. This was the first time I was travelling alone, some people may be scared but I wasn’t scared at all. Since my parents both work as airline crew I had already been on hundreds of flights before, the experience was nothing new. Not having anyone to talk to and having already watched all the inflight ‘feature films’, I decided to use the charged internet for a while. It wasn’t that expensive, 1 dollar for every hindered mega-bytes was fine by me.
Unlike most people, instead of going on Facebook or Twitter, the first thing I did is go on Reddit. The front page, as usual had posts about cute cat pictures, some guy who broke his ceiling trying to make a pizza for the first time, another post about the world’s fattest kangaroo. Haha. Pretty typical stuff, I switched to the ‘Hot’ tab to have a look at some of the trending news. One of the threads caught my eye. ‘Flight PK 789 has gone missing’ “Another missing plane, how does this keep happening?” I thought. I clicked to view the details and it opened into the /r/worldnews subreddit. Then it occurred to me that PK is the code for Pakistan! “Wait what… a Pakistani flight?” It said,’PIA’s flight PK 789 en route from Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, to Pearson International Airport, Toronto, went missing just as it left the European coast into the Atlantic…’
Now it hit me. “THIS IS MY FLIGHT!! What? It must be a mistake!” I quickly bent down and opened my hand carry’s outer pocket to check my flight number. People gave me strange looks due to my sudden behaviour but it didn’t matter, was it April 1st or something?? Sure enough my boarding pass said the same. PK 789 KHI to YYZ.
Now I was extremely confused. I pressed the help button and a young flight attendant was by my side in a minute. I told her to tell me that I’m crazy and showed her my iPad. She gave it back to me and without saying a word went back to the galley she came from. I could see from her face that she didn’t quite know what was going on either. After a minute she came back with another attendant, a rather bulky lady who assured me that it was a mistake and everything would be fine. Well, that didn’t help. It wasn’t just reddit. I went on BBC and CNN just to double check. When I opened Geo.tv just to check for the final time the internet stopped working, and so did the large television. Most of the passengers were asleep but a few others began to notice the peculiar antics just as I did.
I had no idea what to do. Was this even real? Was I going mad?? While I was thinking the airplane took a sudden nosedive. YEAH, THIS IS DEFINITELY REAL. I buckled my seatbelt
and bent forward with my hands over my head just as the safety manual said so. The oxygen masks dropped and people started frantically putting them on. I saw the young flight attendant who came to me get catapulted to the back of the plane. Poor woman probably had a family. I didn’t have time to think about her, I had to put on the Oxygen mask or I would suffocate! It was barely out of reach, things were flying around, and a baby’s bottle full of milk hit my head. OWWWWW! I screamed, still unable to reach the oxygen mask. Then after the longest minute of my life the airplane straightened again. “THE PILOTS HAVE SURELY GONE MAD” I thought. I finally got hold of my oxygen mask. Only then did I realize the severity of the situation. Two thirds of the passengers were unconscious, some probably even dead. The others were distraught and damaged like me. The baby bottle left a bigger mark than I thought when I realized the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. My teeth had cut into my cheek.
I barely had time to get a feel for the situation when I heard noises again. “MOVE MOVE MOVE” … “SECTOR CLEAR SIR”. I heard footsteps and voices of people who sounded like they were wearing gas masks. They were getting closer and closer. “WE’VE GOT A LIVE ONE” bang “Did they just shoot a passenger?? Oh my god. I have to do something. I can’t die like this”. Not having been able to come up with an insanely good idea I decided my best option was to play dead or be dead. I lied on the ground like the rest of the passengers and closed my eyes. The footsteps were all around me now. They were in my cabin. I heard them looking through the already opened head racks. They were looking for something. One of the footsteps grew closer and closer toward me and then the noise stopped. I heard him pick up my iPad.
“WHAT HAPPENED PRIVATE? WHY DID YOU STOP? DID YOU FIND IT?” “NO SIR! BUT THIS KID ALREADY KNEW OF THE HIJACKING. WE NEED HIM ALIVE AND WE NEED TO FIND OUT IF HE KNOWS ANYMORE” “TAKE HIM OUTSIDE!” Outside? We’re in the air for God’s sake! What outside? “SIR YES SIR!” They would obviously torture me for information if I showed them I was awake. I kept playing dead.
The man who appeared to be ex-army picked me up with and carried me to the door. I could still hear the airplane engines, we definitely didn’t land! What on earth was going on? Do I dare open my eyes?
With me still in his hands, the man opened the door and jumped outside. I couldn’t take it anymore. WHAT WAS GOING ON? I opened my eyes to see a large man. His body was tall and slender, fully black. He had long arms and legs and thin fingers which looked like claws. I couldn’t discern any clothes, the black looked like his skin. He definitely wasn’t human, I tried to make out his face…but I couldn’t make out any facial features - all I could see was the blackness in his eyes.
Then I looked down, we weren’t falling, the airplane had long sped past us but we were still there, hovering, in the air. Another aircraft suddenly visualized in front of me, right out of thin air. A door opened and the man carried me in like I was his pet or something. Another large man greeted me, “Hello human… Sweet dreams”. He then pierced a small needle into the center of my forehead, and then, everything went dark.
Written By: Faryab Haye.