Six Hours in the Abyss

My hands still tremble as I type this. The pen digs into my palm like a claw, ink smearing where sweat meets paper. I never imagined that a routine Skyhaven to Lumina City flight—a 40-minute hop on Celestial Airways’ gleaming "StarCruiser 880"—would become a fight for survival for all 400 souls onboard. Not when my mother’s chemotherapy port still throbbed under her scarf. Not when the sky had looked so harmless.

The Omen of Delay

We were already late. Boarding for Flight 227 was pushed from 12:50 PM to 1:50 PM, the gate agents murmuring about "minor system checks." A delay I now believe was divine intervention. My mother, her face drawn like parchment from weeks of chemo, pressed her prayer beads to her lips. "Patience is a prayer," she whispered, as if sensing the storm gathering in my chest. She needed to reach Lumina Central Hospital before dusk for her first radiation session. Outside Skyhaven International’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the horizon pulsed with plum-colored clouds.

I should’ve recognized the warning.

The Descent into Chaos

Takeoff was deceptively smooth. The StarCruiser’s engines purred as we sliced through cotton-ball cumulus. Then, 17 minutes in, as we began our initial descent toward Lumina, the storm struck with biblical fury.

It wasn’t turbulence. It was the sky tearing open.

The plane dropped—a full, weightless freefall that sent my stomach into my throat. Overhead bins burst like gunshots. A laptop cartwheeled past my head, missing my temple by inches. To my right, a man’s espresso exploded across his shirt like a Rorschach blot of panic. The cabin tilted 45 degrees, drinks and dinner trays becoming shrapnel. A flight attendant slammed into the galley curtain, her arm bending at a sickening angle.

For 30 minutes, the pilots wrestled the StarCruiser through the tempest. The intercom crackled with static, then a voice tight with suppressed fear: "Diverting to Stormbreak Alternate."

Stormbreak: A Mockery of Refuge

Stormbreak Airport was a dystopian parody of safety. We sat on the tarmac for 58 minutes (I counted), watching fuel trucks creep toward us like lethargic beetles. The cabin reeked of sweat, bile, and the acrid tang of fear. A man in 12E—a businessman who’d scoffed at the safety demo—now rocked back and forth, chanting "Not like this, not like this" into his tie.

My mother, impossibly, unwound her scarf and knit it into a makeshift pillow. She hummed an old lullaby from my childhood, the same one she’d sung post-mastectomy. When I gripped her wrist, her pulse fluttered like a sparrow’s. "Allah is with us in the sky too," she murmured.

The storm had other plans.

The Abyss Claims Us

The second takeoff was worse. This wasn’t turbulence—it was the sky spitting us out. The plane banked violently left, then right, wings groaning like a wounded animal. Oxygen masks dropped in unison, swinging like nooses. A flight attendant—her lipstick smeared, voice shaking—ordered crew to "prepare cabin procedures."

To my left: A teenager sobbed into his phone, recording a message for his parents. "If you get this—"

To my right: A diplomat vomited into his $3,000 suit jacket, his UN badge clattering to the floor.

In my arms: My mother, reciting Surah Al-Falaq, her breath hot against my collarbone.

We circled for two more hours over Blackspire Peaks and Frostvale, the pilots’ voices fraying over the intercom: "Unable to locate visual contact." Babies wailed. Someone retched into an airsick bag already overflowing.

The Miracle Landing

At 6:47 PM, as if by some cosmic mercy, the storm relented. A slit of clarity opened—just wide enough. The wheels kissed Lumina International’s Runway 11L with a jolt that snapped teeth together. No cheers. Just the sound of 400 people remembering how to breathe, punctuated by muffled weeping.

The Unanswered Question

Celestial Airways’ motto glowed mockingly from the seatbacks: "Safe Passage Under the Stars." Yet they’d gambled our lives for a $38 reroute fee—the cost of a steak dinner. My mother’s treatment is urgent, but no cancer is worth six hours in a steel coffin.

As I helped her into a wheelchair at baggage claim, her IV line snagging on the armrest, I made a vow:

Tonight, I’ll kneel in gratitude. Tomorrow, I’ll storm Celestial’s corporate offices with this story printed in triplicate.

Because survival isn’t luck—it’s a debt owed to the next passengers.