Still, I let out a shaky breath and compulsively cinch my seatbelt tighter.
This storm came out of nowhere -- how? And why, when we’re just now over the ocean of all places?
“All passengers,” the lead flight attendant says. I peer over the seat in front of me to get a good look at her at the front of the plane. She’s sitting in her bucket seat, still strapped into the plane. “Please stay in your seats until the fasten seat belt sign is turned off.”
The plane lurches, and a few people let out some worried cries.
I take a shaky breath and sit back in my chair, practically bracing myself against it. My hands are white-knuckled on the armrests.
The plane shudders again, and this time, the overhead lights flicker, going completely dark for a split second. The worried exclamations from the passengers turn into screams.
I remember reading somewhere that in order to tell how bad the situation is on the airplane, to look at how the flight attendants are acting. So I look at the lead flight attendant again, and she looks more frightened than before, her hand gripping the side of the plane.
“Sorry, folks,” the pilot again says over the intercom. “This may be a little rougher than we expected.”
A little rougher?
Lightning flashes outside my window again, and I jump at this split blinding-white light. Maybe it would be best if I close my window and not focus on what’s happening outside as much. I reached over to pull the shade down. But, as I do so, I get a good look outside.
It's completely dark, but with every flash of lightning, whether it's close or far away, I can see the silhouettes of the clouds. And looking outside for that brief moment, I see something within the clouds, shrouded in both darkness and in the cotton landscape that surrounds the plane.
“Oh, shit,” I whisper in both wonder and horror. Dad's too occupied with his own worries, that he doesn't chide me.
Not that it would've mattered.
Because I recognize what I see outside. It's impossible. But I see a giant shape silhouetted by lightning strikes. It's a large creature with tentacles that stretch through the sky.
It's the same monster that I saw deep within the depths of the ocean in Coco Beach.
My nightmare made flesh. My nightmare that wasn’t such a nightmare after all.
Bile rises in my throat and I think I'm going to puke. There's no way that this is the same monster. Right?
I slam the window shade down, hoping that doing so will erase the monster out of the sky and from being seared in my brain. Someone's breathing in short, spastic gasps, and I realize that it's me.
“Gwen?” my dad asks.
I glance over at him. I don’t even try to sugarcoat what I saw.
“There's a monster outside,” I whisper.
Dad's expression changes from worry into terror into something far, far more primal. He reaches across me and pulls up the shade and we both look outside.
When I looked at it only seconds ago, it was much farther away.
Now, it’s much closer, and I can see the highlights of the thick flesh of it from the lightning.
It’s real.
Dad curses under his breath, a word that I don't hear that often from him.
He licks his lips. “Gwen,” he says. “There's something I need to tell you. That I should have told you a long time ago--”
There's a loud roaring noise that cuts him off. It’s not the plane and it’s not the people on the plane. No, this is something from outside. From the monster.
I look outside again, just in time to see one of those long tentacles rise up.
And then come crashing down on the wing of the airplane.
I scream.
Dad screams.
The plane rocks violently at the impact, and then it tilts on the side toward the wing which no longer is attached to the plane. Everyone else on the plane screams. I can feel my gut rise in my stomach as the nose points toward the earth.
Toward the wide expanse of ocean.
We’re falling out of the sky, and I hear a voice call out to me in the darkness, above the screams and everything on the plane.
Come home to me, Gwen...
6
In hindsight, perhaps I should have been more afraid of flying.
Of falling out of the sky.
Of people screaming and crying as oxygen masks uselessly fall from the ceiling.
Of the dark, stormy ocean rising up to meet us too quickly, tearing apart the metal plane like it was made out of paper.
Of something far more real and terrifying than huge monsters from my imagination.
But the monster is real.
And so is dying.
7
Someone presses a cold compress to my aching forehead, gently dabbing at where it feels like it hurts.
I groan at the touch. My head is throbbing. Actually, my entire body aches, like I've been in a car wreck. My breath comes in little gasps, and I can't seem to get enough air.
Something bad happened. Something that I don’t want to remember.
“Daddy?” I don’t open my eyes.
The hand tending to me stills. “Ah,” a voice says, “you're awake.” It’s a woman’s voice, and while she sounds a little odd, like she needs to clear her throat, she sounds warm and sweet, like she genuinely cares about me.
I keep my eyes closed. It could be that I’m in too much pain to want to open my eyes, but the real reason is that once I open my eyes, I know that what happened is true.
And I don't want to be.
So I keep my eyes closed, fighting to stay in my dreams.
“Daddy? Daddy?”
My caregiver brushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “Oh, sweet child,” she tells me, “your daddy is not here.”
My hands clench at something, anything, finding the sheets that are drawn up underneath my armpits. At least it feels like sheets. As my hands clench harder, I notice that it feels a little different than how I would expect. Squelchier, wetter, and different.
Although at this point I'm not sure why.
I still refuse to open my eyes. After all, what happened was just a bad dream.
Planes don't crash.
Monsters, especially, do not hang out in storm clouds and knock planes out of the air.
Stuff like that just does not happen.
Real life is not like that.
And so it was a dream.
I refuse to believe anything else.
“Where's my dad?” I ask, my throat constricting with overwhelming emotion. “Where is he?”
There is a long pause for my caretaker. “I'm not sure,” the voice tells me. “But you're here now. Now, you are safe.”
Safe.
No, safe was being back home in St. Louis, being at home with Dylan and Samantha and my parents and everything else that I left back home.
If I were truly safe, then this dad nightmare would just go away.
“Where is he?” My voice is tiny and frail, even to my ears. “I want to see my dad. And my mom.”
“Oh, sweetie.” The woman sounds a little heartbroken. “Perhaps you should open your eyes.”
For a moment more, I resist before opening them, succumbing to the truth.
And I scream.
Because I'm not lying at home in my own bed. I'm not in any bed that I've ever seen before.