It was probably ten in the evening. My body was telling me that it was about this time of the day. But the sun was just starting to tint my skin with a subtle orange tone while it slowly sank into the horizon of the wide, wide, pacific blue. I sat beside a window, silently gazing at the clumps of clouds: that one’s a crow, that…a yawning T-rex, I thought childishly. It was shortly after this that I would fall into a sleep that could have been my last.
A sudden tremor had woken me up. We were told to be calm but the vastness after the glass was now filled with gleaming fissures that had made a child or two bawl so jarringly it had affected the adults’ temperament. After a few minutes, the plane began to tremble as if it was shivering from the cold of the raging storm that had then blanketed its entire body. An oxygen mask fell on my lap, while the other passengers shrieked in terror as if a colossal creature ahead, that we could not see, was about to swallow us whole. Soon, its roar was heard. The wind howled violently as thousands of water needles entered the plane through a gaping entrance—I do not know how it was done but someone had opened the rear door. “Jump!” a man yelled, followed by two consecutive screams that quickly faded in the sound of wind.
After that, hell broke loose. Everyone just went mad, fighting over a parachute that was no more to be found in that long wobbly space. I do not vividly remember much of what happened after, but my mind does know this for sure: The plane spun as it plummeted toward the ocean below! We were all underwater before we knew it. All were either passed out, dead, or struggling to swim toward the openings of the wrecked plane. I went dizzy from the impact, and completely out of breath, I fainted shortly after I managed to squeeze myself out of a hole near one of its wings. I dreamed about my life back in the country: I was lying in a hammock, listening to my mom’s singing as she winnowed rice to the rhythm of the song.
Then, suddenly, I felt poked by a small blunt object. I felt my right leg sting and I slowly regained consciousness. The hammock turned to sand, the singing turned to chirrs, and the sound of thousands of pearly grains jumping and falling toward the circular basket became the sound of the waves rolling back and forth beside my ears. I lifted my chest and spat the sand that had accumulated inside my mouth. When I opened my eyes, I saw a child, reddish-brown in complexion, and wearing a green scruffy
oversized jersey. He was holding a stick and stood there frozen as he silently gazed at me. He looked startled before hastily running away and uttered something in a language I could not understand. I tried calling him back with all my remaining energy but it was futile.
I noticed the wound on my right leg. It was not deep but it had been bleeding for a long time and needed immediate bandaging. I tore a piece of my shirt to wrap it with. I walked with a slight difficulty and had to use a piece of driftwood as a cane to support my pacing. I anxiously scanned the ocean and saw the protruding tail of the plane not so far ahead. With my heart beating fast and my stomach painfully tensing from the inside, I returned my eyes to the tropical foliage. The sight was what you would typically expect to see on a tropical beach: a few dozen coconut trees with slightly slanted trunks, there’s the rocky part with weathered chunks of boulders, and some thickets of various short, leafy plants. I was panting from my perturbation, but then the thought of the kid calmed me down somehow. I was not alone on that island, I consoled myself, and decided to look for the locals.
I left the shoreline, and after a long stretch of coconut trees, I reached a small river. I knelt beside it and saw a small, shabby jar on its bank. I peered inside but it contained nothing substantial. I removed all the dead leaves inside of it, filled it with water, and drank all the contents in a single thirsty chug. I then cleansed my face in that stream, I also cleaned my wound. While doing so, I wondered how I even managed to survive that crash. I thought that I may not be the sole survivor but I realized that I was not able to search for other people washed ashore. I remembered that there were also those two who jumped; they had used a parachute
and might have landed somewhere in that place. After a while, I decided to follow the river upstream in hopes of finding a house alongside it. At a certain point, I saw a dog gnawing a small fowl. Had it been bigger, I would have mistaken it for a tiger. It had a striped, light brown fur that resembled that of such an animal. It had noticed me right away, looked at me with its
last eye, and growled while showing me its bloodied fangs. I looked at it as calmly as possible and after some time, it ran away carrying the mangled bird.
I continued to walk and had a sudden rush of energy after smelling smoke. “Help! Is anyone
there?”, I yelled about a dozen times but the only reply I got was the sound of my voice being
yelled back at me by the forest. I then quickly searched for the source of the smoke and
eventually, I found a small hut nearby. It had a rack of small fish being smoked beside it. “Is
anyone there?” I yelled again, but there was no reply still so I decided to break in. Inside, I saw a
thin, decrepit-looking old man, fast asleep on his small wooden bed. I woke him up but he just
stared at me with his small, inexpressive eyes. He did not utter a single word no matter what I
said to him so I just sat there inside his hut, palming my face. Just before the sun had set, he cooked some rice and handed me a bowl of it with two pieces of dried fish. The dog that I had
seen earlier was his. It had returned home and began barking at me tirelessly. Despite the
canine’s unceasing noise, I fell asleep immediately after finishing my meal.
When I woke up, the old man and the dog were nowhere to be found. I decided to leave the hut
and explore the shoreline in hopes of finding other people who might have also survived.
However, on my way, I noticed something peculiar that I had not seen the day before. Far across
the coconut woods, there was a long stretch of mossy wall. I decided to check it out first and
when I got to it, I saw a torn-down parachute caught up in a tree beyond. I went around the wall
and found an opening. I went inside and I was shocked at what I saw.
There was an abandoned mansion. It looked like it used to be the vacation house of a wealthy
family. In the stairway towards the house’s entrance, lies the corpse of a woman who had left a
long trail of blood from trying to crawl towards the mansion. When I drew closer to the dead
body, I found out that she had been impaled by a tree branch. But what did not make much
sense to me was why she was trying to crawl towards the mansion. Then, there, I saw it. On the
house’s roof, there was another corpse that had been brutally bashed down by the world’s
downward pull. The impact must have been so strong that such a wide space of the overgrown
ceramic tiles turned black from the splatter of his blood. It seemed to me that those two were
couples and that they had tried to share a single parachute which led to their horrifying demise.
I vomited at the harrowing sight.
The day after, I followed the old man to the beach and began my fruitless search for other
survivors. I found out that he was deaf and after three more days of living with him, the
rescuers arrived. I had been transported to Kuala Lumpur, and it was there that I found out that
I was the only one who survived that plane crash. During my stay in that city, I was featured on
news all over the globe. Two weeks later, I reunited with my family in the Philippines and stayed
there for three years, not taking a single step at any airport ever again, until recently. Now I am
glad to have survived two. Just where the hell are we?