The plane dropped 2,000 feet before I grabbed the yoke.
The autopilot is still on. The heading shows we’re flying in a perfect 180-mile loop over dense jungle. I’ve checked every door, every closet, every crawlspace in this fuselage. There are 48 passengers, all calm because they don’t know yet. All I told them was to keep their belts fastened due to “mild turbulence.” Airplane- - Apertem os Cintos O Piloto Sumiu -N...
But turbulence doesn’t leave a captain’s wristwatch on the floor of a locked lavatory, still ticking. Turbulence doesn’t fold a uniform jacket neatly over the toilet lid, as if the body inside it simply evaporated. The plane dropped 2,000 feet before I grabbed the yoke
Now the cabin lights are flickering. Portuguese, English, and a third language I don’t recognize are cycling through the PA system. The third one sounds like consonants folding in on themselves. The passengers are screaming. I’ve checked every door, every closet, every crawlspace
I looked out the left window. The stars are gone. All of them. Just a flat, velvet dark, like the sky has been painted over.