I must have fallen asleep again because I came to with one of the omnipresent cabin crew beaming at me,
“Can I get you anything? Drink? Snacks and nibbles?”
“Uhh? Oh… no, no thanks,” I mumbled, still groggy from the last round of refreshments.
“Okay, then,” came the cheery reply as he went on to give the same spiel to the next passenger.
The screen in the back of the seat in front was blinking at me, indicating that I had another ‘urgent’ message waiting. I sighed, put on my headphones and tapped the touchscreen, which proceeded to tell me that Skyflix had a new range of movies and boxsets available, specially chosen for me based on my previous purchases.
I took the headphones off and closed my eyes. I had a headache and some kind of strange ringing in my ears.
I fumbled in my pocket for the foil strip of painkillers and took one with a swig of bottled water. After a few minutes the headache started to fade but the noise didn’t. I frowned and opened my eyes again, turning my head to try and pinpoint the sound. It definitely seemed to be external, like, really external, as in outside the cabin.
I pushed up the blind and squinted out of the little window into the sunshine. Below us the tops of the clouds were a dreamscape of melting ice-cream while the sky above was a very dark blue.
I caught the crew members attention as he passed by again, still smiling, “Excuse me, but what’s that noise?”
“Noise?” he looked up, smile temporarily replaced with open-mouthed concentration, before giving a slow shake of the head, “No, sorry. I can’t hear anything.”
“It’s really quite loud,” I grimaced.
“Well, we are still accelerating. Maybe that’s it. Nothing to worry about,” his smile returned and he carried on along the aisle.
The screen was blinking at me again, but this time I ignored it completely and tore a couple of corners from a tissue which I rolled up and stuffed in my ears, then went back to sleep.
I started to dream I was flying over huge green plains and grasslands, before I found myself being shaken awake by the attendant, whose mouth moved silently until I remembered to take out the earplugs,
“Sorry, Sir but you’ve gone over the allowed number of unread messages,” he pointed at the screen which was now flashing and beeping furiously. I put my thumb on the touchscreen wearily to stop the alarm but didn’t put the headphones on as the messages started playing. The attendant looked from me to the screen and back again, expectantly.
“I don’t want to hear it anymore,” I said.
He frowned, “Sorry?”
“The ads. I don’t want them.”
He looked confused for a moment, then regained his smile, turned and walked back down the aisle.
I put the makeshift earplugs back in and closed my eyes, hoping to recapture the dream of flying. After what seemed like just a few seconds I was jolted awake so violently the earplugs fell out and I was thrown into the noise of passengers screaming above the whine of the engines. I felt a pain behind my eyes and ears and couldn’t work out how much of the high-pitched ringing I heard was in my head.
One of the cabin crew was now holding on to the seat in front of me for dear life, professional smile contorted into a rictus grin.
“What the hell was that?” I shouted over the noise.
“Oh, nothing,” she shouted back with her now bloodshot eyes swivelling like those of a terrified horse, “just a little turbulence.” I noticed her nose had started bleeding.
“That’s a terrible noise the engines are making,” I said, “Surely we shouldn’t still be climbing? Isn’t the air getting too thin?”
“Yes, that’s right!” she nodded and grinned manically,dabbing at the blood pouring from her nose with a tissue before turning and trying to pull herself forwards along the aisle, which now pointed up steeply.
I looked out of the window and saw sparks and flames flying out of the engine, accompanied by horrific scraping noises.
The intercom buzzed and crackled into life with a badly distorted, overamplified voice,
“EZ ZAPTAIN… ZURBULENCZ… ZELERATING… ZUPWARDSZ…”
With that the cabin suddenly pointed up at an impossibly steep angle and almost immediately one of the cabin crew flew back and crashed into the back wall of the cabin, closely followed by the refreshments trolley that landed with a sickening thud on top of him.
Some of the overhead lockers burst open and a couple of passengers were knocked out in the ensuing rain of overfilled hand luggage.
An alarm went off and I was smacked in the eye by a falling oxygen mask.
Over the maelstrom of screaming, vomiting passengers I caught a couple of words from another crew member as they fell past, still smiling,
“…keep going..”
The whole plane shook with a series of massive concussions as the engines, pushed beyond all possible limits, finally exploded, one after another.
As I blacked out, my screen was flashing at me, telling me I had urgent messages.
Worlds end 