Trigger warning! If you are scared of planes/plane crashes, this might not be the fic for you!
The turbulence scared me. I would never admit that, but it's true, a hazy kind of panic rose up and around my brain like smoke from a cigarette in a windowless room. Some voice in the back of my head wasn't surprised we were having a choppy ride, after all, that's what these tiny cargo-planes were known for right? But in the split second when the plane stopped flying and started falling, the smoke cleared. I saw everything, my life was never as clear as it was then.
All the seemingly important things, like my jealousy of other girls and my need for approval from a father that would never give it to me, were pushed away instantly. In the space they had once occupied, I saw the blessings I had, a loving boyfriend, a fiercely loyal best-friend, a group of amazing people that stuck by me even when I pushed them away. These people were the ones who really mattered, and I saw that clear as day.
Even though I was having some sort of epiphany, I still was able to see everything that happened when the plane fell. I was sitting beside Beck who was pale and immobile with his eyes screwed tightly shut. For a man that claimed to be unscareable, he looked pretty damn scared. Then again this wasn't a stupid jump scare at a halloween party, Beck was frozen with horror as he knew the plane was going down, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Tori and Andre were behind me and Beck, in the farthest back seats in the plane. The pressure of hurdling downwards at the speed of light didn't let me turn my head to see them. But I heard them, or at least I heard Tori. She was screaming I think, but the force of going down sucked her shrieks out of the back of the plane. I didn't know what Andre was doing, hopefully he passed out and didn't have to witness what the rest of us had to see. I hope Tori knew that she was my friend, no matter how many times I denied it and that I was sorry. For some reason, I got the feeling she did know. I hope she did know.
Cat and Robbie were in the only seats in front of us, Robbie wanted to sit there so he could see the pilot and the plane controls in action. I wondered what he was seeing at that moment. I wondered what happened to the pilot. I was surprised Robbie hadn't passed out, I wouldn't have blamed him if he did, but he held onto consciousness as strongly as he did to Cat.
Cat, my best-friend. She didn't deserve this fate, none of us did but Cat was so pure, so happy, so loving. Through the threadbare seats that had probably been out of code for twenty years, I saw her hold tight to Robbie with one arm, and clutch her silver crucifix necklace with the other. Her and Robbie were curled into each other, hiding their faces in the other's sweater. Her signature cupcake-red hair was blown behind her head, long tendrils of red flowing over her seat like one of those red kelp forests deep in the ocean.
I don't know how I had my epiphany and made all the observations I did in the time we were falling, because it wasn't very long. In Fact it seemed like less than a second between the end of the turbulence and the end of the falling. I vaguely wondered where we'd land, the ocean or maybe a stretch of dry land, maybe we careen into a forest and knock down a bunch of pines. I still couldn't turn my head to look out the yellowed and dusty windows, but I knew deep down it didn't matter because we'd almost certainly die on impact. I could have mourned our impending doom, cried for our lives ended too soon, but I didn't want to have our last moments alive ruined by sadness.
Faintly I noticed that Tori had stopped screaming, and it was silent. Then the world went black.