Lucky People

by Mitch Goth

his single focus now was to close the gap between himself and that icy, rushing water beneath him. He needed it. Several months before this day, he wanted to be an NFL star and be on top of the world, now all he wanted to be was at the bottom of this river.

  2

  The day was bright, the sun was shining and the sky was cloudless. Birds could no doubt be heard singing somewhere, but through the ears of one man, they simply couldn't be heard. A man sat beside he wife and daughter on a small commuter plane, waiting at the gate for all others to get on board. His wife read through one of the magazines attached to the seat in front of her, his daughter, on her first plane ever, was enamored with staring out the window, looking at every tiny thing that there was to see.

  While his family passed time idly, the man was too focused to worry much about the time. He was always a people watcher, and today was no exception. As bodies shuffled by him, he made sure to smile and nod as if he were just giving a greeting as a passing glance instead of staring at everyone that went by. Most people would stop watching everyone when they first got noticed, but this man found the subjects on this flight to be just too interesting to look away from. You had the airplane stereotypes like the mother with crying infants, the highly obese man who had to purchase two seats. All the normal passengers were there.

  But there were also more peculiar types of people passing by him to find their seat. There was a woman in the far corner of the cabin with a typewriter on her tray-table. There was a young man decked out in some college's athletic wear talking three times too loudly on his cell phone, as if he wanted the entire plane to realize what a dreg he'd eventually grow up to be.

  All of a sudden, a jolt shook the man out of his trance of observation. The plane was moving away from the gate and slowly rolling towards its runway. Seeing progress begin, the man did what he always did on plane trips, shut his eyes. He wasn't one for heights or the cabin pressure planes always put on. The flight was only a short trip home to their little regional airport and wouldn't be longer than twenty or thirty minutes, but the man was tired enough, and figured any sleep was better than none. And so, hoping to get to slumber before take off even began, the man took a few calming breaths and hoped that he wouldn't awake until landing.

  When the man awoke, it was due to a rather peculiar feeling on his face. He opened his eyes in a daze to try and figure out what little thing was bumping into his head. Was his daughter dangling a toy in front of him. When his vision finally focused, he was heavily confused. All he saw was yellow and some dirty translucent thing. The man shoved the object away swiftly, and at a further distance he saw what it actually was, his heart dropped. His oxygen mask had fallen from the ceiling, as had everyone else's.

  Another jolt shook the man completely back to reality. People were screaming, children were crying, the flight attendant was trying to keep everyone calm. It was a high tension melting pot of emotion. But, above all the yelling and chaos, one thing struck the man harder than anything. The sound, the high pitch sound that came through over all else. The plane was ripping through the air, sending this whistling noise all the way through the cabin. He'd never heard this sound before, but he knew what it meant.

  Looking to his wife in a panic, he saw that she was one of the panicking many. She held their daughter tightly and had bent over into the safety position demonstrated in all the airplane emergency manuals nobody reads. He saw his daughter crying, he wanted to help, but he knew nothing would do any good. Even in her young age, she knew what was about to happen. A plane was falling out of the sky, and it would hit the ground hard, and they were all unlucky enough to be along for the ride.

  Beyond his frightened family was the window. The man watched, mesmerized by the sight, as the ground came closer and closer into view. The trees became more vivid, the scenery was coming together before his eyes. It was a strange thing to see, that everything around him began to get clearer, only for it all to go to darkness.

  The plane struck ground.

  When his eyes opened again, the only thing the man could see was blur, all he could hear was ringing. Despite being there, he wasn't sure what'd happened. All he remembered was fear, and the sobs of his young daughter. Instantly, with the remembrance of his only child, the man flashed back to life. He needed to find his family.

  Lying on his stomach and fearful to get up, afraid that he may have broken something that may not be apparent to him, the man gauged the situation from the safety of his place on the ground. He could only see out of one eye, as the other was caked in blood. As he looked around, he was actually glad that one eye couldn't see the horrors that encircled him, at least one part of his body can stay oblivious to the destruction.

  All around him there was smoke, fires, and twisted pieces of fuselage. He saw seats, burning and ripped to pieces. The man recalled that every seat on the flight was full up. Now, each time he saw an empty one torn to shreds in the wreckage, a shiver went up his spine. Part of his mind wanted to know what happened to the people in all these empty seat remains, while the other half never wanted to hear a word of it.

  It didn't take long for the man to have his fill of being a bystander towards the destruction. His wife and child were in this hell somewhere, and he needed to find out. Slowly, he made an attempt to stand. Pushing himself up with both arms, he buckled beneath his weight. His right arm felt fine, his left however, shot unimaginable pain through his entire body. It must've been broken. With his one good arm, he brought himself onto his knees, expecting one of them to be broken as well. But, with an ounce of luck still on his side, neither of his legs were shattered or fractured, and the man was able to stand.

  As soon as he'd regained his balance, the man started on his search for his family. He figured they couldn't have fallen too far from where he'd landed, and so he began his search in the nearby portions of the crash. As he quickly found out, simply searching for his family though all of this was nothing short of a nightmare.

  The torn up grass and dirt made for an incredible uneven surface, the man couldn't manage to take more than a few feeble steps without tripping and nearly breaking an ankle. Across this wavy ground he made his way through thick, choking puffs of hot smoke that smelled rankly of jet fuel. Through this hazardous haze he had to weave all around metal contortions that were as sharp as razors. Every so often, he'd come across blood dripping off some of these twisted shards or see a pool of it on the dirt. He tried to ignore it, but it was of no avail. The images he was seen would be burned into his memory for the rest of his days.

  Through all the horror the man saw across those few minutes spent searching for his family, no fear came close to the feeling he got in his stomach at the feeling of not finding them through the crash. Or worse, not finding them alive. Some people would have been slowed by that thought, but this man only searched and dug harder. If they were alive and hurt somewhere, he needed to find them. For his sake, as well as theirs, he needed his family.

  Second after second, minute after minute, they all passed by like little, hellish eternities. The man was beginning to think he'd never find them. The wreck spanned a great distance, but he felt like he'd covered all the possible areas. Not knowing what else to do, he simply stood and scanned the space, hoping to catch anything, if only just a glimpse, that might tell him where his wife and daughter were. And in that moment he saw it.

  His wife's red blouse. It was a bright silk number, something he always thought she'd looked good in. Now it served a new purpose, a bright beacon to her location. Ignoring the pain in his ankles as well as his arm, the man sprinted as fast as he could over the uneven terrain over towards his wife. As he got closer he noticed that she was still seated. Their row of seats had been tossed as a whole from the plane as it crashed. He simply must've fallen loose while his family stayed put.

  He called her name again and again as he ran closer. But, no matter how many times he yelled her name, she never responded, she never even moved. This chilled him to the bone and nearly stopp
ed him dead in his tracks. She must just be unconscious. He thought frantically. She can't be dead. She can't possibly be dead.

  The man's run only stopped once he was right beside his wife. Without a moment of loss, he turned her head towards him, hoping to see her awakening from her unconsciousness. What he saw instead tattooed itself on the back of his eyelids, never to be unseen. Her eyes, drooping and stale, had no focus, no life. He tried shaking her lightly out of whatever trance she might have been it, and that's when he saw it. It was hidden by her red blouse at first, but a large piece of fuselage had driven itself right through her seat, as well as her abdomen. Blood stained much of her red silk shirt.

  As he looked down in horror at his wife's fatal wound, he also saw she still had their daughter in her arms. The young body was untouched by the jagged metal protrusion that'd torn his wife's life away. He knew now to expect the worst, but hope still remained that something would come out of this. Tears streaming down his face, on the verge of complete breakdown, he touched his daughter. And that was all it took, the small body slumped out of her mother's arms and into the next seat. He watched her head as she