Status: completed 5/5
747
Gasoline
Listening
Stiff & fastened,
and when the panic breaks out
You are smiling slightly
They all waited. Even as the other flights came and went, and the phones saturated their ears like they were used to, they never lost grip of the story unraveling somewhere above them. Hill got in touch with authorities of the airport to notify them of the situation right before he got the call from the chief ground controller, who had cleared 2 runways just in case. He knew the absorbed and peaceful Hill personally, and the way he had ordered his employee to make space for the emergency descent indicated something was dead wrong. This all took space within no more than 10 minutes, time in which, according to the radars, the 747 had avoided spiraling down into the foothills. But silence is never good.
“DFL-589, answer”
DFL-589, we copy. Over.
“Alright, you have to make it past the slopes in front of you. How’s your condition? Over”
Same. We’re trying. Over.
“Good… good. We have, uhm, cleared runways 5 and 6 for you guys. According to radars your descent should be 40 degrees left at this speed. Over.”
Roger.
“Just get here, we’ve got your back. Over”
Thanks. Over.
“Over and out”, he ceased communication and struck his elbow on the desk, sweating. He replayed the sounds in his head, and begun to notice new ones. There were more buzzers and alarms shouting than ten minutes ago, accompanied with grunts from the crew in the background. And also much less words from the pilot, he realized. “God bless them”
Along the struggle, the only person who had been given authorization to interrupt duty and help him in anything he needed had been the telephone girl, whose name he now remembers to be Neve, for no other reason than her being in front of his eyes when it was time to assign someone. She sits behind him now, waiting for instructions. He turns his chair around, slowly.
“How many are in there?” His voice is languid, trembling.
She shakes too inside her pale skin, for she had already checked the flight books. “Four hundred and seventy-one. And crew”
Hill collapsed into the desk, and searched for solace in his black, bitter coffee.
∞
A man tended to his wheat fields when the squawk of a distant bird makes him raise his head. That thing seems rather low, he thinks, before noticing the gray track of shrapnel that falls from its tail and into the forest.
“Jesus”, he mutters, and runs back into the cabin.
∞
The turbulence has become a nightmare. People clutch each other with all the grip their asphyxiating seatbelts allow. Some yell through the oxygen masks, while others still refuse to believe anything’s gone truly awry, and envelop tightly in their cloth of darkness. The smiles on the crew’s faces have dissipated under a slab of wounding menace.
She tries to calm Brandon down, for beneath the furious swarm of sounds, the only one her ears catch is the one of his cries. But calming someone down is awfully hard when tears threaten your cheeks with their glisten. With each loll of the craft, he hollered into the decompressing air for a life never lived. For the childish, or maybe not so childish fear of perishing with no reason or avail to the world. None of the souls inside the crumbling vessel imagined why they were the ones to go. To know the time your life’s to end would shatter everyone to pieces as it comes closer, but to know the reason would probably make it a bristle more acceptable. An orb of clarity inside the darkness that consumes your last minutes is never despicable. A word, a warning. Nothing. The angle of the plane becomes steeper. Chaos. For chaos is truly what reigns in our world. The only one. The common denominator and the numerator too, for that illogical is its nature. We live in a petty fraction of an everything which might as well fade away forever in an instant, in an explosion. Without past or future, or consequences. Where our buildings crumble down, or our blood is spilt with no previous outcry. Where men sit quietly in dimly lit living rooms, or luxurious presidential offices to ponder about the lives they’ve ended, and the ones they can dispose of in the future. Brooks tries once again, to level the nose. Where a grandmother in Whitehorse prepares a dinner feast her loved ones will never taste. Where chilling shouts may be the last thing you hear as your dreams plummet among scrap metal. Where lunacy exists and thrives. Where no dream, or hope, or man is safe. A mountain rises from its sleep. Where the good cry tears of fire.
And birds fall from the sky.
Once upon a time comes a moment in which people are united. A parade, a festival, an endless sing-along. Or a time of darkness. It’s in the deepest sorrow where multitudes can finally join hands, even with kilometers between them. All of us are born, and all of us are gone. And just as a newcomer causes a gathering in the hospital, the end of the march for one is a time of togetherness. And the end of the march for a flock of spirits is a supreme moment. One of extreme despair and also utmost appreciation for one’s continuing path. It’s a bomb that drops in your sleep, waking you from the lethargy. People gather behind Hill as he screams for Brooks to pull up. In moments like this, what is felt inside people’s chests is the closest existing thing to something called frozen fire. It’s a cold void, but it’s a never-ending myriad of anguish too. It’s all the screaming and crying one would expect, but it’s also the sudden realization that there’s no one there to listen. West stares at the TV, it should be any minute. She releases her seatbelt and holds Brandon with both arms, barricading him from a slight bit of impact, as he burns his throat with screaming. She leans in, into his cheek, when a sudden dry sound ended all others. Hill put down his headset, and walked to the window once again. The room was breathless.
“Send somebody there”, he said without seeing who answered, with his eyes to the southwest.
Death is a period in a sentence, even for the ones outside of it. Nothing ever goes back to being the same after you lose someone, or after you make someone get lost. It’s not an earthquake, but an airquake. Something that you breathe out of, taking in all the pain, and trying to bloom from it. Again.
Stiff & fastened,
and when the panic breaks out
You are smiling slightly
They all waited. Even as the other flights came and went, and the phones saturated their ears like they were used to, they never lost grip of the story unraveling somewhere above them. Hill got in touch with authorities of the airport to notify them of the situation right before he got the call from the chief ground controller, who had cleared 2 runways just in case. He knew the absorbed and peaceful Hill personally, and the way he had ordered his employee to make space for the emergency descent indicated something was dead wrong. This all took space within no more than 10 minutes, time in which, according to the radars, the 747 had avoided spiraling down into the foothills. But silence is never good.
“DFL-589, answer”
DFL-589, we copy. Over.
“Alright, you have to make it past the slopes in front of you. How’s your condition? Over”
Same. We’re trying. Over.
“Good… good. We have, uhm, cleared runways 5 and 6 for you guys. According to radars your descent should be 40 degrees left at this speed. Over.”
Roger.
“Just get here, we’ve got your back. Over”
Thanks. Over.
“Over and out”, he ceased communication and struck his elbow on the desk, sweating. He replayed the sounds in his head, and begun to notice new ones. There were more buzzers and alarms shouting than ten minutes ago, accompanied with grunts from the crew in the background. And also much less words from the pilot, he realized. “God bless them”
Along the struggle, the only person who had been given authorization to interrupt duty and help him in anything he needed had been the telephone girl, whose name he now remembers to be Neve, for no other reason than her being in front of his eyes when it was time to assign someone. She sits behind him now, waiting for instructions. He turns his chair around, slowly.
“How many are in there?” His voice is languid, trembling.
She shakes too inside her pale skin, for she had already checked the flight books. “Four hundred and seventy-one. And crew”
Hill collapsed into the desk, and searched for solace in his black, bitter coffee.
∞
A man tended to his wheat fields when the squawk of a distant bird makes him raise his head. That thing seems rather low, he thinks, before noticing the gray track of shrapnel that falls from its tail and into the forest.
“Jesus”, he mutters, and runs back into the cabin.
∞
The turbulence has become a nightmare. People clutch each other with all the grip their asphyxiating seatbelts allow. Some yell through the oxygen masks, while others still refuse to believe anything’s gone truly awry, and envelop tightly in their cloth of darkness. The smiles on the crew’s faces have dissipated under a slab of wounding menace.
She tries to calm Brandon down, for beneath the furious swarm of sounds, the only one her ears catch is the one of his cries. But calming someone down is awfully hard when tears threaten your cheeks with their glisten. With each loll of the craft, he hollered into the decompressing air for a life never lived. For the childish, or maybe not so childish fear of perishing with no reason or avail to the world. None of the souls inside the crumbling vessel imagined why they were the ones to go. To know the time your life’s to end would shatter everyone to pieces as it comes closer, but to know the reason would probably make it a bristle more acceptable. An orb of clarity inside the darkness that consumes your last minutes is never despicable. A word, a warning. Nothing. The angle of the plane becomes steeper. Chaos. For chaos is truly what reigns in our world. The only one. The common denominator and the numerator too, for that illogical is its nature. We live in a petty fraction of an everything which might as well fade away forever in an instant, in an explosion. Without past or future, or consequences. Where our buildings crumble down, or our blood is spilt with no previous outcry. Where men sit quietly in dimly lit living rooms, or luxurious presidential offices to ponder about the lives they’ve ended, and the ones they can dispose of in the future. Brooks tries once again, to level the nose. Where a grandmother in Whitehorse prepares a dinner feast her loved ones will never taste. Where chilling shouts may be the last thing you hear as your dreams plummet among scrap metal. Where lunacy exists and thrives. Where no dream, or hope, or man is safe. A mountain rises from its sleep. Where the good cry tears of fire.
And birds fall from the sky.
Once upon a time comes a moment in which people are united. A parade, a festival, an endless sing-along. Or a time of darkness. It’s in the deepest sorrow where multitudes can finally join hands, even with kilometers between them. All of us are born, and all of us are gone. And just as a newcomer causes a gathering in the hospital, the end of the march for one is a time of togetherness. And the end of the march for a flock of spirits is a supreme moment. One of extreme despair and also utmost appreciation for one’s continuing path. It’s a bomb that drops in your sleep, waking you from the lethargy. People gather behind Hill as he screams for Brooks to pull up. In moments like this, what is felt inside people’s chests is the closest existing thing to something called frozen fire. It’s a cold void, but it’s a never-ending myriad of anguish too. It’s all the screaming and crying one would expect, but it’s also the sudden realization that there’s no one there to listen. West stares at the TV, it should be any minute. She releases her seatbelt and holds Brandon with both arms, barricading him from a slight bit of impact, as he burns his throat with screaming. She leans in, into his cheek, when a sudden dry sound ended all others. Hill put down his headset, and walked to the window once again. The room was breathless.
“Send somebody there”, he said without seeing who answered, with his eyes to the southwest.
Death is a period in a sentence, even for the ones outside of it. Nothing ever goes back to being the same after you lose someone, or after you make someone get lost. It’s not an earthquake, but an airquake. Something that you breathe out of, taking in all the pain, and trying to bloom from it. Again.