I stared out through the small oval window as the ground, miles below, lazily crawled by. The snow capped mountain tops, and rolling green hills of the Rocky Mountain Range could be seen through the gaps in the thin cloud layer as the airplane passed over the state of Colorado. I was bored. Really, really bored. I mean, usually I'm pretty good with sitting still, and finding entertainment for myself, but there was absolutely nothing to do. My phone had died in the third hour of the flight, and my laptop wasn't in my carry-on. What's worse, is that the guy sitting next to me was one of those no nonsense types. I'd tried to start a conversation earlier despite my social anxieties, I really did, and I was nice about it too, but the look he gave me after about two words quickly shut me up. He'd long sense fallen asleep, but that just left me terrified of accidentally waking him up with my constant squirming. Four hours of sitting in the same chair really gets old, really fast, and it seemed that no matter how I sat down, I could not get into a comfortable position.
I glanced at one of the many TV monitors dispersed throughout the cabin. You know, the ones that show your flight info. Speed: 496 mph, altitude: 31,000 ft, headwind: 96 mph. It happened to be the only source of entertainment available to me, other than, of course, staring blankly out the window. I'd been lucky enough to score a window seat for this flight which was one upside, I guess.
The Image on the TV shifted to another short list of info. Current time: 4:58 pm, departure time: 1:05 pm, arrival time: 7:35 pm. That meant that I still had to sit through two and a half more hours! The problem was, that was more than I could handle, and surely longer than I could retain my sanity. I'd go crazy long before we landed! It just wasn't fair! And I just happened to FORGET to bring my phone charger which meant I never got to charge it during my layover in Atlanta. Maybe if I had been a smart person and actually brought it with me then I wouldn't be practically crawling the walls when there was still more than two hours of flight time left to sit through. Even the movie they played on this plane was terrible. I couldn't even get halfway through it before I had to stop. It was just too cheesy. Something about two star crossed lovers who had to do sum shit to defy their families and live happily ever after. You get the gist of it though, right? Just way too cliche.
Anyway, back to staring out the window since it was all I had left. I guess it's all I would have for the next two hours too. I just stared blankly, not focusing on any one thing, but apparently I didn't focus enough because a soft bump of turbulence caused me to bang my nose against the window. A few rougher waves of turbulence later and with a soft ping the seat belt light came on. Now, I don't know about you, but I've always been a little paranoid when it comes to airplanes because I know that if anything at all goes catastrophically wrong, there's little hope for survival. I know, the chances of that are about one in a million, but like I said, I'm paranoid. So as the sign suggested, I quickly clipped my seat belt together, and prayed to the universe that the whole damn plane didn't explode. Several minutes later, and the turbulence hadn't died down. If anything it was getting worse, and if the scarred whimpers of several of the other passengers were anything to go by then I wasn't the only one who was beginning to get a little worried that something might actually be wrong. Even the angry old man sitting next to me was awake now, though, he wasn't exactly old. He definitely was angry, and it wasn't hard to imagine that in several years he'd fit the profile rather well. Right now, though, he along with several other passengers, not to mention me, were beginning to actually get frightened. A quick scan around me showed that almost everybody had their seat belts on including the flight attendants, and since their personal seats were at the front and back of the airplane's cabin, that meant I couldn't ask them if we were going to die in a big fiery explosion. A sudden, massive lurch of the plane quickly dispelled any doubt in my mind that we actually were in real danger. Airplanes this big weren't meant to move like that, and if the deep reverberating sound of groaning metal was as real as it sounded then the airplane obviously didn't have much time left before it snapped in half. Another two quick, but amazingly even more massive, rough bumps up and down later, and several passengers were screaming. I'm pretty sure I was screaming too, bit it was hard to tell the sound of my voice from the sounds of so many other terrified voices.
Then, suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, a soft but bright glow that seemed to come from everywhere began to eminate from everything. It whited out the windows, and almost everything else inside the plane as well with an intensity that nearly blinded me, and when the sounds of screams, and the grinding of metal began to meld into one omnipresent wall of noise, I was sure I was blacking out. It was almost as if the world itself was fading away into nothingness, and the ever increasing brightness of the impossibly bright light that seemed to consume everything around me along with the steadily increasing sound of silence only furthered that assumption. A second later and all that was left within my fields of perception was an empty, and blank void. No sound, and nothing to see. That was, at least until I began to feel an inexplicable pulling sensation. Pulling me where, I could not say, but if I had to choose any direction I would probably have to choose 'beyond'. I know, it sounds cheesy as hell, but there really was no other word I could come up with. This force didn't push or pull me any any direction that I could comprehend. It just wanted to take me somewhere, even if I didn't exactly know where. Maybe I was dead. Maybe I died in magnificent fireball when the plane violently slammed into the ground, and this was my soul ascending into the ever after, or whatever your religion has you calling it. I was never a believer in any divine deity, but as my current situation progressed, I was begining to reevaluate my faith in religion. That would have to wait until later, however, as the sensation within me began to intensify, much like the light had earlier, until it was border lining uncomfortable. Wherever it wanted me to go didn't matter to me anymore as long as it would get this sensation to stop. Then, without warning I felt a rough yank, and a small push that felt as if it was tearing me in two, and in a sudden moment my world unseramonially shifted from white to black.
