So, about a year ago I submitted this story for one of my fiction writing workshops. I gained my inspiration from the idea of TJM and decided to change a few things up and changed some names, places, details, etc. I have edited to include Helga, Arnold and Gerald. BUT there are several differences. Hope you enjoy :)!
Disclaimer: I do NOT own HA!
I couldn't sleep. The sound of snoring filled the plane as turbulence went unnoticed by everyone surrounding me. I got stuck in the middle seat because Gerald had "called shotgun" on the window seat and Helga had to sit near the aisle because she "needed the ability to walk around the plane freely without having to walk over two idiots." Lights began to flicker as my seat rumbled beneath me. At this point it would be purely ironic that after three years of saving and ten years of waiting that I would fall to the same fate that landed me in this exact position. My parents had disappeared ten years ago, cause of death declared as a plane crash, but that would only make sense if they had actually found the plane.
I was only seven when they left to study plants in the amazon. They left me with my Grandparents and told me they would be back in "one month tops" as my mother kissed the top of my head and my dad punched me in the arm. I shrugged them off and ran up to my new, bigger, room. I knew they wouldn't be able to reach me when they were there, but after two weeks had passed something in my stomach told me something was wrong. At the three week mark my Grandparents and I received a knock on the coal black door that caused the entire house to echo. Lucy, a botanist friend of my parents, stood at the door. She was shaking and mumbling as she dug her fingernails into her forearms as she informed us that my parents were gone. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything became a blur of paperwork and press releases after this, 'Science Expedition Gone Awry' and 'Botanist Couples Plane Crash, but No Plane or Bodies to be Found!' Turning my parents disappearance into a soon forgotten and less tragic Amelia Earhart fiasco. I didn't understand. People don't just disappear, but they did.
I was shaken from my thoughts and brought back to the rumbling plane as a voice boomed over the loudspeaker.
"Attention flight and crew, we are going to be experiencing some heavy turbulence as we make our way through this storm."
Everyone stirred around me except for Gerald who could sleep through just about anything. I saw Helga's eyebrows furrow as she glared up at the speaker.
"No shit Sherlock. I mean we're in a plane so there's obviously going to be a bit of fucking turbulence. Might as well wake up the whole flight so that they can enjoy it." She then proceeded to cross her arms and slouch down in her seat as she shot me a murderous glance combined with a "What are you looking at?" She didn't want a response, obviously.
Helga. I honestly didn't know why she was here. She claimed that going on this trip would look great on her college applications and hopefully make up for her lack of participation in...everything. I've known Helga since I was five years old and the moment she laid eyes on me I became the target for every ounce of anger housed in her body and there was a lot anger there. This really used to piss me off and even though my Uncle Silas told me to "kill her with kindness," I actually just wanted to kill her instead.
Unfortunately, because apparently I'm a masochist, I realised I was in love with her when I was fifteen. She might be a less than stellar human being, but I've seen something incredible in her. When no one was watching she would do these amazing things that no one ever noticed. Whenever I would say something to her about them she would bark at me and tell me that I "didn't know what the hell I was talking about." I realized I was staring at her again as she glared at me with her unnaturally green eyes and I was soon met with dirty blonde hair as she whipped her head around to actively look away from me in an attempt to obviously gain some sort of response. I was so entranced in her that I didn't register that the plane was beginning to shake uncontrollably beyond turbulence.
"Bro, what's going on?" Gerald looked confused. The turbulence must have been getting bad if Gerald woke up.
"Just some turbulence dude. No worries." As I felt the plane quake I began to doubt my answer. The lights flickered and everyone became the aircraft's ragdoll.
"I know you're always trying to look on the bright side of things, but Arnold...uh...this isn't normal turbulence." He tried to keep his normally cool composure. The lights cut off and apparently so did gravity as we were all simultaneously lifted from our seats, our seat belts straining against our stomachs. Helga reached over and clutched my hand as frantic voices began coming over the loudspeaker.
.
"Flight we seem to have lost power in the engine. Damn it Jenene stop crying! We will have to make an express...crash landing...please find your…"
The captain made a feeble attempt to stabilize his crew and the flight, but his voice was muffled by the screams of the people around me.
"I told you it wasn't normal turbulence!" Gerald screamed.
"Leave it to good old Arnold to look on the bright side in life or DEATH situation!" I could feel Helga roll her eyes at me even though we were upside down, but she only gripped my hand tighter.
"People survive plane crashes all the time...I didn't wait for ten years for this for nothing…"
Everything around me began to feet like an out of body experience. The plane plummeted, but all my thoughts remained coherent compared to the people around me. Screams and cries came from every angle. Flight attendants who hadn't had time to get strapped into a seat were smashed against the ceiling, blood was beginning to drip down the walls. This situation was serious and full of reasons why looking on the bright side wouldn't exactly work, but I couldn't help it. I need to look on the bright side because if I don't, who would? This was just another road block like when Silas needed money and I gave him half my savings nearly sending me back to square one or when they closed my parents case claiming it to be "freak plane crash". I braced myself for the impact as we all dropped back into our seats, my head colliding with the seat in front of me.
"Arnold...Arnold!" Soft hands shook me.
I smelt smoke and burning rubber. My head hurt. What the hell had happened?
"Arnold...please wake up!"
I slowly opened my eyes to see Helga gazing down at ground felt grainy against my body, little rocks pricked at my legs and I felt like I was sinking. My head throbbed as Helga came into focus. The plane crash. I sat up as everything spun around me, finally remembering how my head had hit the seat in front of me. I glanced around realizing I was on a beach. The plane sitting only five feet from me slowly pouring oil all over the beach, smoked fumed and the chemicals seeped into the sand.
"Arnold, you need to get up and move away from the plane. I was trying to move you, but you're too heavy...the plane...it's going to explode soon." She was sobbing, blood trickling down from a gash on her forehead and onto my shirt. She gripped me tight and kept her gaze on me.
"Helga...where's Gerald?" I shot up, my head causing me to stumble. I surveyed the area around me. Bodies were strewn across the sand like sea shells. The plane lay cracked in half and crumpled up like someone had just put it in their hand and squeezed a little. I began running to each body hoping it was Gerald's.
"Gerald! Gerald!" I screamed. Tears began to fall down my face before I could stop them. Each body appearing more mangled than the last, an arm, a leg, a head here and a foot and a hand over there. I couldn't find him. I wanted to go in the plane, maybe he was in the plane. The flames were beginning to spread toward the chemicals which means the plane would be up in smoke. I needed to save him I needed to do something…
Helga ran after me and grabbed my arm spinning me around to face her.
"Gerald...didn't make it…I'm...I couldn't do anything" She couldn't look at me.
"Didn't make it?! What the fuck do you mean he didn't make it?"
"He's still in the plane...he got impaled by a metal rod..." She began to ramble and pace. Her whole body shook and she became completely incoherent as I noticed gashes all over her body and seeping through her clothing.
Gerald was my best friend. I'd known him since I was five. We did everything together. That's why he came. This was our greatest adventure and we were supposed to do it together. We worked so hard washing cars, cutting lawns, painting houses, waiting tables and anything we could do to make the air fare to get here. He spent years saving up with me. He cared, even when Silas told me to move on and accept what had happened.
Finally, I turned my attention back to a sobbing Helga and back to reality. My best friend was dead. We were just in a plane crash. In the distance I could see a threatening darkness coming our way and by the looks of it the plane was about to combust. This was all my fault. If we hadn't come here then Gerald wouldn't be dead. They both came here for me and now look where we were. Tears threatened to come out of my eyes, but now wasn't the time. If I really sat and thought about the urgency of the situation, I would just give up. We had to find somewhere to go...find out where we were.
"Helga, this is bad…this is really bad, but we need to get out of here. The plane could combust any minute and there's a storm rolling in," she didn't react, she remained
on the ground sobbing. Grabbing her arm I pulled up off the ground and began to lead her toward the forest beyond the beach. Smoke from the plane had seeped into the forest clouding my vision and flowing into my nostrils causing me to become light headed. It seemed as though we were on one of those deserted islands you would see in some freak accident movie so I assumed there would be a cave or something we could go in while we waited on the storm. The more and more we walked the denser the forest got, the smoke slowly began to dissipate.
We walk and walked. Hours had passed, the forest grew denser around us. Helga didn't speak. She had a look on her face that I had never seen before. She looked terrified. It was as if someone took ten toughest girl I'd ever met and left her shell. Instead of shooting me snarky retorts when I spoke to her she would just nod, a vacant look in her eyes. We spent an hour in complete silence as darkness began to set in. Approaching the edge of the mountains I noticed that there were several entrances to caves spread around hidden behind tree.
"Helga, let's camp out in one of these caves for the night."
She nodded in response. We made our way into the cave with the largest entrance. We were met with cool air and silence as we cautiously walked on the bumpy floors. We chose to stay close to the entrance. Unfortunately, we had lost all our supplies in the plane crash. The most we could do would be to gather sticks and start own fire which, at this point, would be useless due to moistness of the forest.
"Do you want to find sticks to try to build a fire?"
"We could try...I don't really know how to start a fire."
"Arnold. Didn't you research any of this?" She rolled her eyes and huffed before leaving the cave in search for wood. I followed.
"I mean...we had all the supplies we needed. I didn't assume we were actually going to crash."
"You know what happens when you ass-ume."
"Yea yea I know."
She found some wood and walked back into the cave. Then in a matter of moments she had started a fire and found a seat against the cave wall.
"You're amazing." She blushed at this, but the softness of her fast quickly stiffened as she noticed me looking at her.
"I know I am." She poked at the fire and it grew.
"I'm being serious Helga. You hate me, yet you choose to come with me on this trip. You hate me, yet you continue to follow me even after our plane crashes. I'm beginning to think you don't hate me that much."
She began to sputter. "Of course I hate you...I've always hated you."
I sat down next to her.
"You sure?"
I moved closer. After everything that had happened today, I was no longer willing to wait around on things.
"Of course I'm su-"
That's when I kissed her. She didn't protest. She just kind of melt into me. Her hand coming to the back of my head and my hand falling on her hip. Then as quickly as she had melted in me, her body became rigid again.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"I uh..."
"Like, are you just kissing me because you're mad about this situation?"
"No, Helga. It's not like that."
"Because it certainly seems that way." She pulled her knees into her chest.
"You hate me anyway? So why do you care why I kiss you huh?" I smirked.
"Don't you feel wrong? Like, your best friend just died. You just witnessed people die and now you're trying to kiss me and flirt with me? Something about that just seems a bit sick."
"I know my best friend is dead. Helga, you know it's killing me, but can I do? I can't bring him back. When everything happened I realized that life...life can be taken from you at any more and I know this is cliched as fuck, but hear me out. I love you. I've been in love with you for years. I love-"
That's when she pulled me in. She no longer melted under me, but instead there was now a certain roughness in her. She ran my finger through my hair as she ushered me to come as close as I could. I placed both my hands on her waist and pulled her against me. She pulled back for only a moment and looked me in the eyes.
"I love you too."
#
I woke up the next morning. Helga was pressed against my chest and light was pouring in the cave. Then it hit me, I came here with a plan, but all my plans were in my luggage. Every map, every journal I had were gone. For all I know we landed on the side of the island furthest from where the predicted wreckage was.
I shook Helga a bit to wake her up. She looked up at me and smiled.
"Good morning," she yawned
"Good morning, we need to get going soon. We probably slept later than we should have and we need to have the whole day to search."
#
The past three days had been a blur of trees and fruitless searches. Each time I thought we were coming close it would lead us to another dead end. Everything on the island felt identical. We barely ate, we barely slept. I slowly began to lose hope. I began to wonder it had been stupid for me to go on an expedition that had been conducted years ago, when the trail had been fresh.
We had finally wandered into territory that was new to us. Instead of trees surrounding us the land was cleared out ahead of us and a steep waterfall lay about forty yards away.
"Oh my god, water." Helga practically drooled at the sight.
"This would probably be the perfect time to take a swim. It seriously feels like I haven't showed in a week." I glanced down at my body that was now caked in layer of dirt and other substances.
The waterfall must have been half a mile tall, climbing up the side of the mountain. We both jumped into the crystal clear waters without hesitation. The sun shone down on both of us and for the first time this week I felt the tenseness release my body.
"Hey, you know how some waterfalls have caves hidden behind the falls?" Helga had a curious grin on her face.
"Yes! We should totally check! Race you!"
Helga beat me to the waterfalls edge as she disappeared behind the curtain of water. I quickly climbed through behind her and pulled her in for a kiss.
"You beat me!"
"Arnold." Her face had turned white and her eyes were locked on something.
I turned to see a pile of rubbish, but as I looked closer I realized it was plane, but how did it get in here? It had crashed. This was a plane crash. I began to feel sick, anxiousness washed over my entire body. Helga stared at me, eyes wide.
"Do you think?"
I walked over to the plane, it had crashed nose first and cracked in half. It was small. It could fit maybe three people tops. I glanced in the cock pit and in that moment my darker fears were confirmed. Two rotting skeletons sat in the seats, both looking to have been thrown forward as the plane crashed. I legs gave out from under me and I fell to my knees. All these years of fantasizing about the adventures my parents were having while getting back to me flashed before my eyes. All the positivity, all the looking on the bright side. For what? For fucking what? I punched the ground and the tears began to fall. Pure anger had reached every corner of my body and I shook. I felt Helgas hand on my shoulder and I shook her off.
"Arnold...I don't know what to say."
"Then don't say anything."
Fuck. What the fuck? This isn't what was supposed to happen. They were supposed to be alive. They deserve to be alive. What did I do wrong? I devoted the past ten years of life to this and for what? My parents are dead. My best friend is dead and all for nothing. It all unraveled before me and I realized that I had spent the past ten years obsessed by an idea, I lived in the past and now, I had no future.