When you ride a commercial airplane, you and your fellow passengers temporarily become the most vulnerable people on earth. You can’t really move when you’re sitting down, and you can’t get up unless they allow it, even if it’s to go to the bathroom. They control what water you can drink and even the air you breathe. First graders have more liberty than airplane passengers. Prisoners have more autonomy. Airlines try to get you to ignore this fact with inflight movies and complimentary peanuts, but your animal body knows the truth. It’s what makes flying such a nightmare. Nevertheless, we sign up for this nightmare because the vast majority of flights take off and land smoothly. They say it’s safer than driving a car, right? Well, I know what happens during those statistical anomalies when the plane crashes or, even rarer, disappears.
Before I tell my story, you should know that you will put yourself in danger just by reading it. There are people who don’t want my story to get out; fat cats with fatter wallets who have a lot to lose. They pay big bucks to keep this story out of mainstream news and off of social media, which is why I decided to come here. This place gives my story the plausible deniability of being fiction and lets me remain as anonymous as possible.
I was a history professor on my way to the first big conference where I was a keynote speaker. It was being held in New York City, but my heart was pounding like John Henry all the way back in the Dublin airport two days prior. I’m not Irish, well I am biologically a quarter Irish but I’m not from Ireland. If you couldn’t tell from that last sentence, I’m American (at least I used to be) and I was only in Europe on sabbatical. I specialized in the World War I era, which sounds a little cliché for a single white guy, but I was good at what I did. My research involved new evidence that put a sort of utilitarian twist on the outcomes of the war in a way that other historians found interesting. I think its absolute shit now, but at the time I was quite proud of my work. The cherry on top of my presentation was a prop I was bringing back to the states inside my beat-up, brown leather briefcase.
I paced back and forth in the terminal, never walking out of sight of the gate. I had had nightmares about missing this flight for a week straight and was determined to not let that happen. I even purchased priority seating to be the first one on the plane.
Over the intercom, an English woman announced the arrival of my plane. I raced to the front of the gate, so eager to get to my seat it was like I believed it was on a first come, first served basis. The same woman called for anyone requiring “special assistance” to come be seated first. An old woman in a wheelchair raised a flabby arm, and one of the workers went over and wheeled her past me. I scowled at her as she rolled into the corridor connecting the terminal to the plane. She stuck her tongue out at me as she passed, which my overanxious brain interpreted as “I don’t actually need this wheelchair, I just wanted to get in before you”. Old people think they can get away with anything, I thought to myself. I waited impatiently outside the gate for my seating group to be called, nervously tapping my feet like a puppy who just did a trick and expects a treat. Priority seating was called next, and I rushed down the tunnel before they even finished scanning my ticket.
One thing I’ve neglected to mention is that my mom was traveling with me. She had come out a month after I had and kept the spare room company while I was on what she referred to as “paid vacation”. I paid for her ticket, of course, but decided that she didn’t need priority seating. It was half an hour before she sat down next to me.
“Thanks for making me wait out there by myself.” She said with a huff as she sat down in the middle seat to my left. I had chosen the aisle seat for myself, which Mom was okay with given that I was a good 16 inches taller than her.
“But you didn’t need the priority seating,” I explained.
“Yeah, and you didn’t either.” She scoffed
“You know how worried I’ve been about this flight. I would’ve been dying out there in line with you. Besides,” I lowered my voice “you could’ve just asked for some assistance” I said, pointing at the old woman who had rolled in before me. Mom scowled.
“Flying really does bring the worst out in you, doesn’t it, Tim. Jesus, I thought that by now you would’ve grown out of it. At least you don’t cry anymore…..” she raised a questioning eyebrow, “right?” I was about to answer when a rotund, hairy gentleman with a noticeable lack of antiperspirant motioned towards the window seat, indicating that it was his. We stood up and he waddled and squished his way past us. I mouthed the word “sorry” to Mom. She frowned and sat back down.
The first half of the flight was just like every other flight I had been on. The captain made a joke before takeoff, the crew made sure all of our trays were put away, we went up in the air, and once we hit cruising altitude the seatbelt signs turned off and the lights in the cabin dimmed to accommodate naps. Normal flight stuff. The first sign of problems ahead came from the stinky man in the window seat. He said something in a language I didn’t understand but based on his tone of voice I was able to loosely translate it as “holy shit!” I leaned over to get a look out of the window and saw it. About fifty feet from the wingtip was what at first looked like a weirdly shaped cloud. The lower part of its body was shaped like a like an upside-down teacup, or a hoop skirt. In the middle of the body was a long, spindly neck that connect the base to an ovular head. Like I said, at first it didn’t look too concerning. It was white and fluffy and almost, well, cute. The only concerning thing about it was that as we flew, while most of the clouds looked as though they were moving past us, this weird looking cloud looked like it was coming toward us.
“Oh my God, what the hell is that, Tim?” Mom asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But the way it’s moving looks like it’s probably a weather balloon or something getting dragged along by the air current. I’m sure the pilots are aware of it.” As if on cue, the plane jolted abruptly to one side, tossing our cups of $500 complimentary water to the floor. “See,” I chuckled nervously, trying to put my mother and my own mind at ease. The thing jumped forward again. Our whole row gave a startled jump. It was now floating above the wingtip. Whatever this thing was, there was no evading it.
“Oh my God, Tim,” Mom gasped and squeezed my arm. The thing was changing. It was becoming…darker, and more definite in its shape. Slowly it turned to gray, like a storm cloud, and then finally jet black. The lower part split into section, which separated and began to writhe like floating tentacles. My mother was now screaming, “What do we do? Oh dear God, help us please, please!” Not knowing what else to do, I called out;
“Flight attendant, you need to see this.” I looked around for the nearest flight attendant and found none. That’s when I noticed the repeating Thud coming from the front of the plane. I stuck my head into the aisle and saw four of the flight attendants pounding on the cockpit door while the other two performed CPR on the old woman in the front. Soon one flight attendant took to kick the door, and the rest followed suit. After what seemed like too long, there was snap and the door flung open. I gasped. There was another, identical thing with its tentacles pressed against the glass. It had a mouth that was surrounded by a ring of razored teeth, with two other rings of teeth that opened and closed further down its “throat”. The mouth had broken through the windshield and moved as though it were sucking the air out of the plane. The bravest flight attendant rushed into the cockpit, making sure to keep a distance from the creature’s pulsating mouth. I couldn’t hear what she said over the growing commotion coming from my fellow passengers, but I didn’t have to. I could see it for myself; two empty seats. The pilots were gone. I may have only been a history professor, with almost no knowledge of aviation, but I knew this was not good news. Somewhere, a woman shrieked.
“What’s going on up there!” Mom yelled more than asked.
“The old woman is having a heart attack,” I stuttered, hoping that she wouldn’t know from my tone of voice that a flying squid monster had just eaten the pilots. I thought about my options for survival given the current state of affairs. I looked out the window to my left and realized that the thing had left, or maybe it was what had eaten the pilots. Okay, I said to myself. One monster isn’t that bad. It isn’t good, per se, but it isn’t hopeless. We can probably figure out how to fight it off, at least long enough for the military to come blow it up, and it seems like the cockpit is still airtight because everyone can breathe just fine, and the oxygen masks haven’t popped out. That’s a thing, right? We can take this thing.
But I was wrong, on many accounts. The plane flew through the surrounding clouds into an opening and what I saw took away any feigned hope of survival left in me. Surrounding the plane was a colony of cloud monsters as far as I could see out the plane window. As the plane drew nearer, they all began to change from their harmless looking cloud-like state to black, tentacled monsters. That was when I heard what sounded like the spray from an aerosol can from the front of the plane. I turned towards the cockpit and saw why the monster in front had been careful to keep the cockpit airtight. A gray mist came billowing out from its mouth into the cabin. No air leak meant no masks. I began fumbling with the four-digit lock on my briefcase, which, thanks to my paranoia, was sitting in my lap. This, I thought to myself, will be the first time when being a WWI historian really pays off. The lock on my briefcase clicked and I tossed it open to reveal the WWI replica gas mask inside.
“Let’s see if these things suck as much as I’ve read about” I said before slipping it onto my face, and not a moment too soon. The gray mist had spread throughout the cabin and passengers were starting to act strange. They were taking off their seatbelts and mingling like it was a singles mixer. Then we took the first hit.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have said that a bomb exploded on my right. Instantly, people and bags went flying. I landed hard on my side before another hit sent me into the ceiling, as I struggling to keep my mask on. The terrible sound of cutting metal made the hairs on my arms stand up. They were biting through the sides of the plane. People began walking dreamily towards the mouth holes where they were readily devoured by the grabby mouths. I screamed when I watched a man’s head get bitten off. Blood splattered against my mask. A man strode up to the mouth in the floor and hopped right in like it was a swimming pool. He wailed in pain but kept on smiling while the mouth slowly gobbled him up like paper in a shredder. Once he was gone, the monster left and a second one took its place too quick for the difference in air pressure to suck anyone out. Soon lines were forming in front the mouths. When one person went in, the next stepped up to the plate and everyone else took one step forward. I started feeling woozy, and not just from the gore. My lungs were screaming at me. These masks really do suck, I thought. I looked around, hoping to find someone who wasn’t affected by this mind-control gas. All throughout the plane, people were lining up to be eaten. I spotted my mother towards the back of one of the feeding queues and ran over to her.
“Mom, what are you doing!” I shouted as I yanked her out of line. The zombified passengers behind her shuffled forward, a relaxed smile floating on their faces. Mom ripped herself out of my arms and scrambled back towards her place in line, but the other zombies wouldn’t let her in.
“Back of the line, pretty mama,” a dazed senior citizen thrust his thumb in a backward motion. I caught up to Mom as she was making her way to the end of the line. I asked her what she thought she was doing again, and she frowned at me.
“Thanks a lot, Tim! Now I’ve lost my place in line!” she shouted at me in slurred speech, like an angry drunk. “You just got on my bad side.”
“Mom, what do you think happens when you get to the front of the line?” I pleaded with whatever kernel of reason and self-preservation was left in the depths of her mind.
“I get out of here,” she explained calmly. “This plane is going to crash, but luckily the plane companies put in this emergency hole for us to jump through to get back home.” I thought about pointing out that she didn’t have a parachute and that we were thousands of miles above the Atlantic Ocean, far away from home, but decided it wasn’t worth what little time I had left. If she couldn’t tell that there was a human garbage disposal attached to the holes in the plane, my guess was that she was too far gone to worry about something like a parachute.
“It’s a trap, Mom!” I screamed through my WWI mask as loud as a I could. “There are monsters on the other side of those holes. You can’t jump through them!” When I said this, everyone in line suddenly turned towards me. A new sort of fear entered my chest as I noticed the look of malice on each of their faces.
“How dare you say something like that!” One man yelled.
“You’re being irresponsible, and you’re going to get us all killed!” shouted a woman.
“I say we do something with him,” another man said menacingly. He and two other men stepped forward out of line with their arms outstretched towards my neck, opening and closing their fists like crabs coming to pinch my windpipe shut. I backed up between two rows of seats and scanned the area for something I could use to protect myself. That’s when I saw a flight attendant who I hadn’t noticed before. She looked calm, but not in a zombie way, and she wasn’t in line to die. I hopped over a few rows of seats, easily evading my drugged pursuers who quickly gave up and got back in line, and ran in her direction. Before reaching her, I watched her lift an arm and whisper something into her sleeve.
“Hi, um, have you been mind-controlled?” I asked. She jumped back a little when I asked this question, apparently unaware that I had been approaching her. She looked into my eyes, paused for a moment as though she were deciding what her answer should be, and then drooped her eyelids and grew a dopey smile like the rest of the passengers. My heart sank for a second when I believed her act, but then I noticed what had looked like a normal backpack on her back. Up closer now, I could see what it was. She had a parachute.
“Hey!” I yelled as hard as my oxygen-starved lungs could manage. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I need to get in line,” she said in a monotone voice. I gripped her by the shoulders.
“I just saw you say something into your sleeve, and you’re wearing a parachute. I know you haven’t been drugged like the others.” I paused, the wheels turning in my head. “Wait, did you know this was going to happen?” She paused again, this time with a dash of fear in her eyes, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar desperately trying to think of a good excuse for their behavior. Or perhaps like a spy whose cover has been blown. Suddenly, she punched me in the diaphragm and knocked the wind out of me. I doubled over in pain, and she seized the opportunity to rip off my mask. Everything happened so fast that I barely registered it, but when I felt that mask start to peel off my skin, I drew in a quick breath. On my knees, I rushed her legs and toppled her onto the floor. Quickly, with instinctual movements I didn’t know I could execute, I hopped on top of her, pinning her arms down with my legs, and pried the mask out of her hand. Dark spots floated in my vision. I desperately needed to take a breath. I pressed the mask to my face, not even waiting to secure it on my head before taking a gulp of air. After a few breaths I put the mask on properly and looked down at my captive.
“Whatever,” she said hotly. “You’re not making it out of here alive.” In that moment the plane took a huge hit, and I went headfirst into the wall of the cabin.
After that, I can only remember pieces of what happened, like PowerPoint slides or snapshots in a scrapbook depicting the final moments of our flight. I came too briefly when a swarm of the monsters ripped the plane in two, snatching up as many people as they could and letting the rest fall back down to earth. I saw the spy run out of the split cabin and dive into the air like an action movie stunt double. The next memory I have is just a flash, and it’s of me falling through the air. Then, I remember being wet and flopping around for something to hold onto. Finally, relief.
My first real memory after regaining consciousness is of lying face down on something that was buoying my chest and head above water. I panicked when I noticed that my mask was missing before realizing that we were out of the plane and in fresh air. I lifted my head up to look at what had saved me. It was a human body, and, given that its own head was limp and underwater, a dead one. I shoved it away in disgust and it went bobbing and floating towards the partially submerged wreckage that had been our plane. Without even thinking, I scanned the surroundings in high alert. It is interesting how much your body acts on instinct when its life is at stake. I saw that an unmarked tandem-rotor helicopter, like the kind the military use to transport people, had landed in the water next to the plane. It was far enough away that I couldn’t make out the faces of the people inside, but I know I saw a person in flight crew attire climb in. Was that the woman who attacked me?
Then, I remembered my mother.
“Mom!” I shouted out and turned frantically from side to side. I saw floating luggage and pieces of bodies, but no Mom.
While I searched, an orange raft pulled up next to me. I turned and a man in an orange life vest offered me his hand.
“Have you guys found any older women…alive?” I asked hopefully. He shook his head.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t found anyone still breathing except you. I know this is hard to hear, but, well…chances are you’re one of maybe two or three who made it out alive.” He let his words linger. I thought about my mom, how she had wanted so desperately to hop inside that monster’s mouth. It hurt to think about her being gone, but I knew that the rescuer was right. She probably hadn’t even made it back down to earth.
“Are you hurt, son?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered, accepting his help into the boat. “I think I hit my head before we fell.” His next question shocked me and instantly put me on the defensive.
“Do you remember what happened on the plane?” he asked in an authoritative tone, almost like he was a police officer, and I was a suspect. It could have just been a genuine question or a way to check if I had suffered any brain damage, but I decided to play it safe.
“No,” I said, feigning confusion. Then I decided to test the waters, if you will. “All I remember is…is…getting in line for something.” The man glanced at his partner, who was brandishing what looked like a pistol. He shook his head a little, and the man looked back at me.
“Well, you probably suffered some sort of brain contusion that’s got you a bit confused,” he said. His partner noticed I was eyeing the pistol in his hand and quickly added,
“Just a flare gun. We fire it off when we need more help, if there are too many people in one area and what not.” I nodded like I understood. They offered me a bottle of water and ibuprofen and promised to get me to a hospital where they would examine the extent of my “brain damage”. As we rode around looking for survivors, I felt something heavy in my breast pocket. It was my phone! I couldn’t believe it. The pocket was buttoned shut, and somehow it had managed to stay that way despite everything. I checked it out and found that not only was it still functioning but that it also had one bar of service. I chuckled. Would you look at that, I thought. For some reason it seemed so ironic that, after everything, my phone had come out without so much as a scratch. It would prove to be a godsend.
Eventually I was loaded into the helicopter along with what I learned were the only two other survivors, a Spanish woman who held the lifeless body of a toddler in her lap and wailed unconsolably, and the spy. The hardest part about the whole accident was having to look that fake flight attendant in the face and converse with her as if I didn’t remember what she had done. Before we took off, the co-pilot turned around to look at me.
“I hear you hit your head pretty hard in the plane,” he said in a way that sounded more like a question. He was testing me.
“I’m not sure what happened, exactly. All I know is my head hurts like hell and I can’t remember anything after we boarded.” Just like in the raft, the co-pilot turned and looked at his partner, then shifted back to me.
“What is it you do again?” he asked.
“I’m a history professor,” I explained. Then, hoping to secure my safe return home, I lied a little. “I’m supposed to give the keynote speech at a conference in two days, and you’ll never believe this, but my phone is still working,” I pulled the phone out of my pocket and pointed out the bar of service, “so I gave them a call and told them that everything was okay and that I would be there on Friday!” I chuckled, pretending that I had only said this to point out the irony of my situation. The men looked at each other, and the pilot nodded.
“Well, good for you.” He said, starting the helicopter’s engine as he did. “Let us know how it goes!”
I’m still not quite sure what attacked our plane that day, but whatever they are, the people in charge know about them and want to keep their existence a secret. I’ve tried researching the topic, but all I have found so far is the story of a man who survived a plane crash but with severe injuries. In the hospital he told stories of a hole that opened up in the plane’s floor and how everyone decided to line up one by one and jump through it. He explained that in the heat of the moment it seemed like the right decision. Of course, the planned had crashed before he made it to the front of the line, which is probably what saved his life. He kept talking about this, almost obsessively, until he died three days later from a seemingly unrelated heart attack.
Why lie and cover up the existence of these creatures? Maybe they are aliens who struck a deal with the world leaders, or maybe they are ancient inhabitants of earth who require human sacrifices in exchange for relative peace. Maybe the cover up is just to keep people buying plane tickets. What I do know is that the United States military is aware of these things and continues to do nothing about them except feed them more humans, and that makes me think that, whoever they are, they are strong enough to give the biggest war machine on earth a run for its money. Thinking about it makes me shudder. Giant beasts, stronger than the military, hiding amongst the clouds. What happens when they decide to come down and pay us a visit?
There is a reason why, even with military-grade technology and a million different safety checks, plane still go down and even go missing. People need to know that these things are out there, and that by flying they put themselves at their mercy. If they are unlucky enough to be attacked, there isn’t anyone on earth who can save them.
Since coming back home, I have noticed people following me. Sometimes they are big men who trail me through the city in trench coats. Sometimes they are beautiful women who I keep running into and are suspiciously interested in me and my “plane crash story”. I’m leaving this here in the hopes that at least one of you takes me seriously and does something about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. There was just a knock at my door, and I have a sinking feeling that I know who’s there.