Up in the Air

“Keep your hands and arms inside the airplane at all times,” the flight attendant said to a moderate and unenthusiastic chuckle.

“We’re clear for take off,” the pilot announced. The plane taxied before lift off. My ears popped.

I was excited, this was my first trip to The Democratic Republic of Congo. We'd land in Kinshasa in a little over eighteen hours. I couldn’t wait to explore their world famous jungles.

The plane reached its climax and the seat belt sign went off. I sat patiently until right after I ate lunch, then unbuckled and got up to use the restroom. I was barley able to slide my way past the two people sitting next to me on the way out.

When I did finally make it passed them, I tripped and bumped into a guy sitting in the isle across mine.

"Sorry, sir," I said. He looked at me and growled. I quickly turned away from him and walked to the restroom.

I went, flushed, washed my hands and walked out. I looked around and half the seats on the plane were now empty.

I walked back to my seat and the passenger in the middle seat was gone.

"Where did everyone go," I asked the man in the end seat.

"Who's everybody?" he asked.

"I walked to the restroom and when I got out half the people were missing," I said.

"Like who?" He asked me.

"Like the person sitting in the middle," I said.

"There was never anyone between us. I got the end, you got the window seat," he said.

"Yes there was, I know there was because I could barley get passed you two," I said.

"Did you have the fish or the chicken?” The man asked.

“The fish,” I said.

“That explains it,” the man said.

“Explains what?” I asked.

“I had the fish to. As a matter of fact, everyone did. None of us are feeling good. You’re probably hallucinating,” the man said.

“Ok, sure. Let’s chalk it up to a hallucination. This is freaking me out,” I said and sat down.

“Here’s a vomit bag, some people are throwing up,” the man said and handed me a bag.

“Thanks, I don’t feel nauseous though,” I said. Shortly after, my stomach started hurting and I felt like I was going to hurl. I threw up into the bag. Maybe it was the fish. I threw up a couple more times and the bag was now over flowing onto my hands.

When I looked up, more people were missing, including the man on the end seat. This is ridiculous, I had no idea what was happening. I got up again to look for a flight attendant, hopefully they would know what was going on.

I saw an attendant go into an employee only area of the plane and close the curtain, but followed them in anyway.

“Excuse me,” I loudly said, but when I opened the curtain there was nobody there.

“What the hell?” I said loudly and was starting to sweat perfusly. I turned to look down the isle and there was now nobody left on the plane.

“Hello. What the hell is going on?” I shouted.

I ran to the front of the plane and pounded on the pilots door. Nobody answered and I tried to kick the door in. The door didn’t open and my foot was now in pain.

I grabbed a food cart and ran with it down the isle and slammed it into the pilots door. The door swung open. Nobody was flying the plane.

“Oh what the hell is this?” I shouted.

The plane began to nose dive and alarms started to beep. Panicked, I ran to the seat and grabbed what looked like the plane controls. I forced them to go up until the plane wasn’t in a nose dive. I looked for a radio to see if anyone could help me fly the plane to safety. I found it, grabbed it and held down the radio button.

“Hello, hello. I need help, nobody’s on the plane and I don’t know how to fly or land this thing. Can somebody please help,” I shouted.

“To land the plane safely, sir, we just need you to do one thing. Wake up,” a voice on the other end said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Wake up,” the voice on the radio said and I felt a sharp pain in my arm.

I woke up and was back in my original seat, and the man in the middle seat was shaking my arm really hard.

“I’m up, I’m up. You can let go of my arm, now,” I said.

“Sorry sir. You were talking loudly in your sleep. You kept yelling ‘help help there’s nobody here,’” he said.

“Sorry, I was having a nightmare,” I said.

“I could tell. Must have been the fish. That made me feel sick too, I threw up in this vomit bag,” he said and showed me a full vomit bag.

“Gross. Damn fish,” I said and smiled. He smiled back and he turned to show the bag to the person on his right.

“I told you I could fill it up,” he said to the other passenger who smiled awkwardly, rolled his eyes then looked away in disgust.

I looked out the window and saw a strange looking man standing on the wing of the plane holding what looked like a blow torch. He turned to me, smiled, and pulled his finger across his neck. Then he used his blow torch and lit up one of the planes engines.

I turned to the passenger next to me and yelled, “hey, did you see that? There’s a man on the wing of the plane messing with the engine.”

“No way, man. You must be hallucinating again. It’s the damn fish acting up,” he said and smiled. The plane started shaking.

The pilots voice cracked over the speaker and said, “sorry, passengers, we seem to be experiencing some severe turbulence because of an engine failure and are going to have to make an emergency landing.”

“I told you,” I shouted. Me and the two passengers sitting next to me looked out the window to see if we could see the man on the wing.