(Lara)
I don't remember. I don't remember because I'll never know. The lavatory door was stuck. No one will know anymore, will they? I can only guess what those people were seeing- snow flying in dizzying white storms at the windows, baggage crashing off the racks, blood.
How is it like to die? Does it hurt? Do you see an explosion of colour, blood red, black, or nothing at all? Can you still hear- or even think? Would you die and remember?
And do those we love, truly, truly, leave us?
No, I decided. No, that isn't true. No.
It couldn't be. Or could it? I had never known my mother.
I'd lived. That's right, I wasn't dead. The plane was still intact, too. Or most of it. Upright to say the least. The seats, however, had all flipped over.
My wrist knocked into the toppled sink, which sent a stream of burning water down my hand as I forced open the door. I limped out, alive. A bleeding lump on my head, a scalded wrist, badly bruised knees and shin, a twisted ankle, several bloody gashes- this was the price of survival. Life had little meaning, but death had none.
I would later realize that simply physical pain was an insufficient price to pay for surviving. Far too little.
Where was everyone? Then I knew. I turned over a seat. It was Rose. Her neck was partially severed- she was unmistakably dead. I gasped aloud at the expression on her face- why must we all remember the things we most want to forget?
It was like a game- flipping over seats and discovering, under each, a sight more nightmarish than the last. Miss Millet had died with her skirt straight up and her knickers showing, cowering under a chair. Not one of them was alive.
And then I found the worst sight of all. Rebecca.
She wasn't dead. Her eyes were half closed, and matted over. Her breathing was shallow and distant.
"Rebecca?" My voice cracked and trailed off. She didn't respond. Not at all. "Rebecca?" I grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her. Nothing. Not even a gasping breath, just that slow, steady breathing. Her eyes dulled.
Scream, cry, anything. Just show me you're alive. Please.
Her eyes didn't close but I knew her breathing was slowing down. That was how I spent the last moments with my best friend. Watching her die. She didn't react to me at all. Her eyes were slits now, and completely lifeless, like the plastic disks on a doll. Rattly breathing was the only sound in the desolate mountain peak. I was still holding her hand when her breathing slowed. And slowed. And slowed. And stopped. All was silent, more silent than any calm, bright nights, more silent than my life without true genuine emotion; true, genuine friendship; feelings, more silent than the lonesome days of my secluded life, more silent than the grave. This was, after all, a mass grave.
She was dead, and I was alone. Everything I'd ever loved in my life had walked out without saying goodbye.
In this mass grave, somewhere beneath all the death and grief and blood and my own friends, I thought something inside me had died. I'll never know.
