Flying into the Unknown

In the swirling white mists of the clouds ahead, a large shadow arose obstructing the path of the flying plane. The pilot gasped and twisted the wheel controls round to the side as hard as he could, swerving the plane to avoid the mysterious dark rising mass. The sudden swerve caused absolute chaos for the passengers. One passenger was an elderly man who was in the middle of peeing into the toilet, he was flung against the wall from the sudden jerking of the plane’s trajectory and his wee sloshed around everywhere. Outside the toilet a rather obese passenger was waiting to go next and was flung against the toilet door, breaking it and fell on top of the poor elderly man. In the passenger aisle the hostess was working her way down with a trolley of refreshments. She was mid-pouring a cup of tea for a woman just as the plane swerved, the hot water splattered against a window and the hot tea bag smacked a moody teenager in the face. Everyone started yelling and rowing and demanded to speak with the pilot while the hostess tried to prevent the hoard of people from coming into the cockpit. The pilot made an announcement for everyone to “strap in right now”.

The obstacle the pilot had swerved to avoid was something that should have not been at this height or in their flight path. Their plane was currently 35,000 feet up in the sky... 15,000 ft clear of any known mountain peak on earth, but the pointy shape the plane had just dodged resembled the summit of a mountain.

The main pilot kept his eyes fixated ahead, his knuckles whitening as they gripped hard on the wheel. The co-pilot checked their altitude readings “Sir, you know how high our altitude is and how high the mountains are…”

“Yeah I know son... Make an announcement to our passengers, we’re going up higher.”

The co-pilot grabbed the radio close to his lips, breathing heavily with fear, but steadied his breath to make his voice not quiver. “Okay passengers, we are incredibly sorry about that disturbance, just a bit of turbulence nothing to worry about… this is another urgent reminder that all passengers are required to fasten your seat belts as soon as possible. We’re going up to a higher altitude.”

The main pilot pulled the leverage of the wheel closer to his torso to steer the plane upwards. As they ascended the clouds still remained white and consistent.

“The clouds should not be this thick, what is going on?” asked the co-pilot.

“How am I supposed to know?” said the main pilot as he pulled on the steering lever.

Another menacing mountain peak emerged from the clouds ahead, the pilot twisted the control wheel a lot harder this time. The entire plane corkscrewed, turning the whole vehicle sideways, spinning its wings over like a giant elegant bird. Every passenger screamed as their belongings flew sideways and tumbled along the curvature of the ceiling as the plane twisted upside down. Some passengers threw up, literally up, their puke spluttering up into their face, their hair, then onto people’s belongings that had momentarily congregated on the ceiling during the plane’s sideways flip.

The pilot finished the corkscrew maneuver adjusting the plane back to normal. Everyone growled and sighed as all their puke drenched belongings dropped back down from the ceiling. The pilots both adjusted themselves as the plane levelled out and the two of them squinted into the vast thickness of the clouds ahead. In front they saw a mountain literally growing in height, entering into their path almost with a life of its own. They were about to steer to go round it when a spire of rock pierced through the bottom of the plane itself. People leapt back in their seats as the spire of rock pushed up through the centre aisle, ripping through the flooring. This rendered the jet’s engines useless as they were now literally pinned. The pilot shut the engine off instantly to prevent the plane from tearing in two. The co-pilot turned to the captain for reassurance on what they should do.

“Tell the passengers to get out of their seats and move towards the back of the plane. If everyone’s mass is moved to the rear end of the vehicle, there’s a chance we can tilt backwards off of this thing.” said the main pilot.

“Okay..okay.” The co-pilot picked up the intercom and spoke into it. “We need all passengers to get out of their seats and move towards the back of the plane. We need to tilt the plane back to dislodge the spiky rock.”

The passengers all struggled to understand. The main pilot snatched the radio off his co-worker and yelled into it. “EVERYONE GETS TO THE BACK OF THE PLANE NOW!”

Every passenger obeyed.

“Let’s pray to every god that this thing doesn’t tear us in half... I’m gonna need you to spray that rock with a fire extinguisher, the liquid nitrogen will freeze the rock, make it brittle and make it easy to break off.”

The co-pilot nodded as he undid his seatbelt and climbed over to the wall to get the fire extinguisher. He slid down from the cockpit through the tilting plane until he planted both of his feet firmly against the thick rocky spike. The co-pilot showered every inch of the thing in the extinguisher’s mist, frost coating it’s uneven textures. The co-pilot yelled down the plane to all the passengers “Clear the aisle, but remain as near to the back as you can, hold onto one another!” The passengers cleared the centre aisle and gripped onto each other tightly in an interweaving of limbs as the terrified people all stacked up upon the seating and headrests.

The co-pilot bashed the back end of the fire extinguisher against the rock, a crack spread along its surface. He hit it again and more cracks appeared. He jumped up and down on it multiple times as the tilted plane’s gravity enabled him to stand on it. He bashed it again with the back end of the fire extinguisher and the thing shattered into fragments of ice. The plane instantly began to fall as the one thing that kept it secure was no longer pinning it.

The main pilot in the front of the plane pushed every control into full throttle as the plane fell backwards. The turbines hummed with energy as they gained speed. The falling co-pilot in the passenger aisle fell down as all the passengers began to float up, the illusion of floating as when everyone was falling. The co-pilot yelled at the falling passengers to return to their seats and strap in as they floated up past him.

The high speed spinning turbine blades whipped at the cold frosty air outside the plane contradicting the weight and gravity of the huge vehicle. Eventually when they had spun to a high enough speed the pilot managed to get the jet to start flying back up, and it skimmed against the surface of the mountain that earlier stabbed into the plane.

While the pilot flew upwards he gritted his teeth and strained like someone taking a massive poo. The pilot thought back to something he learned in school about mountains, they did grow in height, only extremely gradually, 1 cm or a couple inches a year, nothing quite like what he had just witnessed. The growth of mountains is always caused by earthquakes, so there must’ve been some almighty earthquakes happening below them, that’s why he’d gone so long without hearing from the ground control, the earth must be in a state of monumental destruction with land masses like these ripping up from the ground.

As the plane skimmed upwards near the mountain, the mountain began to grow in height, the widening lower parts of the mountain were catching up with the ascending plane, offering a threat of scraping against it. The pilot steered diagonally across to go round the circumference of the moving mountain. As soon as he thought he was in the clear, another mountain pierced up through the clouds yet again. The pilot swerved again to dodge but this time smashed a wing off of the plane, an almighty 40 ft piece of metal just gone, disintegrated against the mountain side. Passengers screamed as the plane began spinning out of control. The blinding white clouds blurred with the views of the mountains out the windows, the glass of each window shattered from the sudden changing of air pressure.

Another mountain peak shot up through the clouds scraping the side of the plane, causing it to create sparks which bounced sending flashing specs of yellow and orange up into view of the window holes. The vehicle began to slide down against the steep surface of the new mountain. As the plane slid it spun round due to the unbalance of it’s one remaining wing, offering more bad than good in their current situation. The problem was sorted when a large boulder protrusion on the side of the mountain smashed against the wing detaching it from the non-flying aircraft. The wingless plane carried on sliding down the mountain like a high speed missile, whistling against the winds while the screams of passengers were drowned out by the noises of scraping metal and earth shattering quaking crumbles of the moving mountains.

The dart-like plane headed straight down until the steepness gradually became less. They were reaching a point near the base of the mountain leading to a large frozen lake. The point of the plane seamlessly punctured and shot into the surface of the ice like an injection. The icy water flooded in, no one even had a chance to have a final breath as they’re bodies instantly numbed from the cold and everyone became unconscious from body shock. Every single person on the plane was frozen, in this mountain lake forever.