{Exit}
I’ve always had a fear of planes. If it weren’t for the dare of half a million dollars, and if it weren’t for my brother who signed me up without first asking for my permission, I wouldn’t even be here, stuck in the brightly spray-painted Dare And Get Rich plane. It wasn’t just any dare either – the aircraft was to journey past the Bermuda Triangle, or at least close enough to the edge to call it a stunt. It made me wonder which genius approved of this contest, because it wasn’t exactly news that most things that went into the triangle don’t get a chance to come out again, and I wasn’t exactly keen on flying anywhere close to such a vacuum.
We were geared in and ready for take off, or at least the pilot was. It wasn’t one of those large planes that could hold both passengers and crew; the jet I was in contained only the pilot and myself. We were both trapped in the giant bubble of a cockpit, and all I could see while peering out of the glass dome were crowds of cheering on-lookers. If goldfishes ever suffered from claustrophobia in their fishbowls, I currently had no problem identifying with them.
As the propellers started their rounds, I silently cursed my brother and thought of ways to get my revenge upon my return. Static crackled in my earphones and before I could plead with the pilot to let me out of his glass and metal prison, the plane began to roll onto the runway. Soon I was thundering along at amazing speed, and as everything melted away with the plane’s gaining momentum, I felt myself ascend into the merciless blinding glow of the sky.
I wasn’t sure about the distance we had to travel, though the estimated time given was forty minutes. Already I felt nervous, and the see-through glass didn’t improve things. It took every ounce of my determination not to hurl my breakfast with each lurch of the plane, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand the beauty of flight. Yes, I had the privilege of observing the Earth’s surface from the point of view of an altitude-defying bird, but really, there wasn’t much to look at from the distance I was from Earth. There were bits of green and brown and silver with a good helping of white mist, but that was pretty much it. And I couldn’t help thinking that any minute, the floor of the craft would give in and we would be hurled through air like stones in free-fall, plummeting to Earth at the mercy of gravity.
It was almost fifteen minutes before the awful wooshing got to our ears. The sky was clear, the uniform green below us calm, but yet there was no questioning the strange sound that seemed to increase in volume. Inexperienced as I was with flying, I recognized a fault when I saw, or heard, one. This time I wasn’t alone – the pilot was visibly in a panic, pushing dials and desperately radioing for contact in vain.
It wasn’t long before the craft wasn’t us to control. We began spiraling towards a concentrated mass in the clouds, and before I could blink I saw the glass splinter and break apart. With the ferociousity of a hurricane, I saw the pilot snatched out of his seatbelt and sucked into the eye of the storm.
Like an insect struggling in vain against the current of a running tap, I too, followed the doomed pilot to an unknown fate.
*****
{Entrance}
I was on shore when I woke.
It was dark and smoky, and for a moment I thought I’d been washed ashore by the tide onto a chalet, amongst party-goers and barbeque pits. Then my memory came flooding back to me, and it didn’t seem possible that I was in one piece, never mind alive. Surprisingly I was, so I gathered my nerves and picked myself up. Nothing seemed broken, or particularly painful, which should have alerted me for what I was about to experience, but I was numb from the accident and the fact that I’d gotten out without so much as a scratch. I wondered if I was dead, but that didn’t seem so either, because my muscles did ache from all the lying on the beach. And then I wondered how long I’d been unconscious, but the pilot was nowhere to be found, nor was the plane wreck.
I began to explore my surroundings, out of desperation for help rather than adventure – and came to realise that the sea I thought had washed me onto shore wasn’t a sea, but an extremely wide, blackish and glistering river. In the distance I noticed a V-shaped object, and then it hit me that a boat was sailing by!
Without hesitation I yelled at the top of my lungs. A hoarse wail came from my mouth, but there was nothing I could do. Near exhaustion and feeling dehydrated, I continued to shout for attention, and it seemed like I was succeeding at getting a response, for the boat began to sail towards me.
It was crowded, more crowded than I’d expected it to be. They welcomed me on board without so much as a nod, and before I could enquire about my whereabouts or where they could take me, I was on the move again. Guiding the boat was an elderly man in his sixties, his hair streaked with silver and his face half hidden in an old fishing hat. It did not occur to me then how odd it was that one man his age could ferry a boat full of people without any physical strain.
