-Impact

Chris’ eyes shot toward mom’s seat as she screamed, and he locked his arms instinctively around his sister sitting in his lap. Within the same moment, the world exploded as the airplane smashed into the wall of trees at 168 miles per hour.

His whole body and the world around him surrealistically lurched as it was rocked by a tremendous wallop, like it had been placed in the path of an approaching freight train.  His senses were assaulted by a simultaneous and insanely loud chorus of shrieking, ripping, and snapping.

The plane jarringly dipped hard to the right flinging him around in his seat.  The panel lights all went out plunging him into total darkness.  In the same instant a blasting crescendo of noise accompanied by a violence he had no way of comprehending ripped through the plane.  The fuselage next to mom explosively disintegrated in a hail of metal, wood, and leaves, disappearing into the darkness.

He was instantly assailed by a massive blast of cold air smashing into him as the airplane was violently jerked sideways to the left.  His stomach floated into his throat as it dropped, crashing from the sky.  With an enormous smashing thud, the plane impacted into the earth. 

He was flung forward hard into Kim, and they both pummeled into the oxygen tank strapped to the back of dad’s seat.  He could feel her little body go limp like a rag doll, but gripped her as tight as he could.  The plane spun to the left, the force of which flung him and Kim in the opposite direction, toward the gaping hole in the fuselage, straining the belt that held them to the seat and inside the plane.  Clumps of debris hurled around the cabin showering over him as the plane slid across the ground with a sickening, screeching groan. 

Chris never screamed.  He was never afraid.  He didn’t have time to be scared.  The whole thing lasted 2 seconds. 

With a sudden and rocking jolt, the plane stopped and was still.  Chris’ heart pounded like a drum in his head and his body resonated like a freshly struck tuning fork. Erie and total silence settled slowly over him like a wet, cold blanket. 

He trembled as he tightly closed his eyes and squeezed the limp body of his little sister to his chest.  He bit on his lower lip and waited.  He thought Kim must be dead and he would be soon too.  Death wasn’t so bad, he figured, now that it was so close, but he never thought it would be like this.  He was probably dead already and just didn’t know it.  From behind the blackness of his eyelids he listened to the sound of the breeze and waited calmly for death’s dark embrace.

From the depths of the still and twisted fuselage of our destroyed little airplane, wrapped in darkness and wisps fog, not a sound or motion came.