‘This is the final boarding call for passenger Christian Fielden booked on flight 372A to Perth. Please proceed to gate 3 immediately. I repeat. This is the final boarding call for Christian Fielden. Thank you.’ A flight attendant announced as Christian rushed towards the gate.
‘I’m here! I’m here!’, exclaimed Christian, his pulse racing.
The attendant gave him a hard look and soon Christian had boarded the airplane and was sitting beside a pretty lady.
‘Hey! I’m Christian’, Christian tried to begin a conversation with the fellow lady passenger.
‘Keisha’, She smiled back and they indulged into a chat.
It had been around 10 minutes or so since the flight took off when they got interrupted by a loud thud. Before the passengers could react, the aircraft’s lights went off. The attendants told the passengers not to panic.
‘What’s that!’, a passenger shouted, pointing at a blue fluorescent light outside the window which was approaching towards them. All eyes shifted towards it. As the light entered through the windows, the passengers passed out.
*
Christian woke up dizzy. As he regained composure, he realised he was inside something. He tried to move his hands but he was tied. Tied by something invisible. He fidgeted and as his toe touched the box it became transparent. Christian was floating in air. He looked around and could see nothing but hundreds of boxes, aligned in rows and floating in air.
‘Holy Sh*t!’ He was horrified. For a second, he thought he was dreaming. Now, he could see what he was tied to.
It was a flame, a blue flame, in form of a rope attached to a plate at the other end. Nothing seemed real to him. He tried hard and managed to slip his wrists out of the flame bond. As he got free, he felt a shortness of breath. He couldn’t breathe. Meanwhile, the flames encircled him in a sphere and formed a cage around him, letting him breathe. The flames supplied him oxygen. He could control the sphere and could move around. He managed to get to the nearest box and touched it. It too turned limpid and Christian recognized Keisha lying inside.
‘Keisha!’ He tried to wake her up. ‘Hey, get up!’
Keisha did not respond. Christian shook her and she opened her eyes.
She spoke something, but Christian couldn’t hear. Terror could be seen clearly in her eyes.
‘Are you alright?’, asked Christian.
Keisha used sign language to tell him that she couldn’t hear him. Soon, Christian remembered that there is no air around. He freed Keisha’s arms and waited for the flame sphere to enclose her.
‘Can you hear me now?’, asked Christian.
‘Nothing!’, mouthed Keisha.
Christian stepped closer to her and to their surprise both flame spheres merged and became one giant sphere.
‘Whoa! Aren’t you a genius!’, chuckled Keisha.
‘This isn’t funny’, replied Christian in a serious tone, ‘I don’t know where we are, I don’t remember what happened.’ They could now hear each other.
‘Come on, we need to get out of this place. Stay close!’, commanded Christian.
Both of them set out in search of an exit. They crossed the hallway and came to an end. They glanced at each other and Christian touched the end wall. With a blink of an eye, they were out of it. Where they landed, was a surprisingly mysterious place.
They stood on a platform which ended around 20 feet ahead them. At its edge was a gate, an uncanny one. Possibly made of rocks. The sky was pitch black with a giant planet neighbouring theirs. Celestial bodies and rocks, of different sizes, floated all over the sky. A dazzling blue light, in a wave pattern, seemed to connect the two planets with each other. Everywhere else were blue clouds.
‘This isn’t Earth!’ exclaimed Keisha, her voice breaking.
‘Definitely not!’
They were both awestruck by the view.
‘We should move’, said Christian.
They headed towards the rock gate. It opened automatically as they reached there. Christian got in and Keisha followed. The path led into a cave which had several tunnels. Each entrance shone with a blue light.
‘Are you sure you wanna do this?’, questioned Keisha.
‘We don’t have any other option!’
They headed towards a tunnel. Faint blue light shone on their way. They walked for a while when they heard unusual noises. Ultimately, they reached the tunnel ending. They were stunned to see what lied ahead of them.
‘Are these…?’, Keisha couldn’t complete her question when Christian interrupted,
‘Aliens!’
They were tall, slender, creepy creatures with leathery bodies.
They stood to their full height, slightly taller than a grown man. Their blue-grey skin and pale white abdomen reflected the blue light. A leathery veil like outgrowth covered their faces.
One of them stood on a rocky platform at the center. A human body was floating above him. Christian recognized him as one of his fellow passengers. The alien lifted up his arms and his head sparkled with light. Soon after that, a white smoky liquid started oozing out from the floating body’s mouth and entered straight into the alien’s head. Meanwhile, the human body turned black, shrunk into a tiny figure and vanished into a black smoke. After the ritual ended, the aliens disappeared into thin air.
‘Come on! Let’s go down and have a look’, said Christian.
‘What? Are you crazy?’, Keisha grabbed Christian’s arm. ‘Didn’t you see what they did to him! Let’s get the hell out of here!’
‘Keisha, we got to find a way out! Just come with me. They are gone.’ Keisha followed Christian’s lead. They climbed on the rocky platform and were looking around to see if they could find something useful when Keisha stepped on something.
A large rock shifted and from beneath the ground arose a bright shiny blue stone. It was the brightest thing they saw on that planet. Christian moved forward and grabbed it. The blue light dimmed. At the same instant, all the lights of the cave went off. Darkness covered them.
‘Let’s get out!’ Christian grabbed Keisha’s hand and moved towards the exit with the help of the dim blue light of the stone.
At the exit stood 3 aliens, blocking their way out. Their planet was a chaos. The blue light from all over had disappeared. Creatures were dying. Somehow, Christian knew that removing the stone from its place was the cause of this disruption.
‘Let us leave!’, shouted Christian ‘else I’ll destroy this thing of yours!’, he extended out his arm and held the stone from its tip, so as to drop it.
‘You dare not, creature of Earth!’, Christian heard a voice in his head. The alien was communicating with him, telepathically.
‘I said let us go!’, he shouted again.
‘We cannot!’, the voice said, ‘You are important for our survival. Without you, we’ll die.’
‘Then i guess you don’t need this!’, Christian placed the stone on the ground and kept his feet over it.
‘Alright!’, the voice in his head said. ‘We’ll let you two go,’ there was a pause, ‘but mark my words, you won’t be able to stop this!’
Before Christian could say something, the creature closed its eyes and Christian and Keisha passed out.
*
Christian woke up at the airport bench. He looked around and everything seemed normal. He was back to Earth. An announcement was being made.
‘This is the final boarding call for passenger Christian Fielden booked on flight 372A to Perth. Please proceed to gate 3 immediately.’
‘Holy Sh*t!’ Christian rushed towards gate 3.
‘Don’t let the plane leave!’, he shouted as he reached the gate. ‘Is everything alright, sir?’, the attendant asked.
Christian looked around. There was no sign of Keisha. Assuming Keisha might be on the plane, he said again
‘Just don’t let the plane leave, please!’
‘Sir, calm down. Everything is fine and sound with the aircraft. I assume you are Mr. Fielden. Do you wish to board the plane?’
Christian remembered the alien telling him that he cannot stop this. After a long pause, all he could reply was, ‘No.’
*
Christian is sitting in his living room, watching TV, listening to a news reporter say, ‘It has been over three months since the aircraft 372A, from London to Perth, has been missing. Government officials claim to have being done every possible research on the sudden disappearance of the aircraft. Since no results have been found, they are ending the search operation now.’
–END–
