The Distance Between Us

Chapter 1

ONE

THE NIGHTMARE

Enroute to Faa’a, Tahiti

The lights of the cabin simulated a golden hour, sunset hues danced and contrasted against the night sky outside the window. He took a sip of black coffee, settling into the soft leather of his spacious Business Class seat.

For a moment, all was calm.

Then, chaos.

In a flash, the sunset was gone, and freezing wind struck him like a fist, ripping the air from his lungs.

He struggled for what felt like an eternity to secure the yellow mask over his nose and mouth, gasping for what bit of oxygen he could get.

The window that was next to him was no longer there, replaced in an instant by a gaping hole that stretched across the ceiling above and behind him.

The walls of the fuselage buckled and screamed, metal twisted and tore apart, and severed cables and wires sparked like furious fireflies.

A distant scream from somewhere behind him pulled his gaze to the deteriorating cabin.

He turned his head to see, every moment agonizingly slow and dreamlike, and saw faces frozen in terror, mouths open in silent screams swallowed by the noise.

The roar was deafening, an all-encompassing monstrous howl.

Looking to his right, the woman who had been sitting across the aisle was gone, torn from her loose seatbelt as she had slept.

Her husband, bloodied and wearing a mask, held another in his hand, looking blankly at the empty seat.

Looking for her. The force of the decompression had pulled bodies from their seats and yanked them violently through the gaping hole.

The man in front of him, his tie whipping like a flag in a hurricane, clung to his armrest. His knuckles turned white with desperation before he was ripped away.

Five rows up, the flight attendant who had just served him was wedged with a beverage cart between a seat and the center bulkhead.

Blood flowed from her nose and ears while she shouted silent commands.

Blonde hair, that had once been an elegant updo, swirled around her face.

A vicious jolt ripped overhead panels free and sent luggage flying through the air.

The man across from him was still looking for his wife, and was struck in the head by baggage.

He slumped forward into the seat in front of him, either dead or unconscious.

The plane pitched down dramatically in a desperate attempt to reach breathable air thousands of feet below.

His vision began to blur and consciousness became cloudy.

The tube of the mask he had been wearing for only seconds, his lifeline, lay in his lap.

The plastic severed when the compartment above him had ripped away piece by piece.

Past his lap by his feet, the body of another passenger had tumbled forward, their limbs were twisted and broken at odd angles.

Desperately fighting against his burning lungs, he felt a distinct jolt beneath his seat.

‘This is it,’ he thought as the fatigued metal groaned and shrieked around him.

For a horrifying moment, he was weightless.

The nose of the plane ripped backwards in a sea of sparks like a cheap tin can, and sent his seat hurtling into the abyss with him still strapped to it.

Wind and silence screamed around him, tearing at his clothes as he tumbled through darkness, the earth and sky blurring together.

Somehow, he became stable, and chaos gave way to an awfully breathtaking beauty.

Above, the heavens stretched endlessly, speckled with bright stars that seemed close enough to touch.

Their indifference made his chest ache against the terror of the moment.

Beneath him, the dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean was a sleeping giant unaware of the violence unfolding above.

A macabre meteor shower of flaming wreckage streaked behind him, each streak a reminder of the life he had been a part of only moments ago.

All around him, broken remnants of the plane cascaded.

Some spiraling past fast, others lazily drifting.

For only an instant, time felt slower, suspended in a surreal beauty of clarity and longing.

The stars didn’t care.

The flames didn’t care.

The wind roared, but it wasn’t angry. It was just present.

But the fear was there, sharp and raw in his chest, drowned out by the tragic splendor of an uncontrollable descent. He reached for something, anything, but his hands were only met by biting cold and emptiness.

The ocean fast approached, starlight and flames illuminated the whites of the waves. With a final breath, he mustered one word, a pleading and longing scream, just before the inevitable enveloped him:

“CAMERON!”