The roar was deafening, crescendoing exponentially with each step she took. As her feet swept atop the sandy beach, tears slowly dripped down and softly landed upon the tiny white beads. The seagulls overhead cried gleefully, but could not be heard over the earsplitting screech. Natalie stumbled past a large wheel of part of the landing gears, foreign and out of place amidst nature’s broken peace.

Screams filled the air, swarming through the smoky breeze like locusts. Her head pounded with agony, unable to cope with the shock. Someone rushed past her, away from the scene, but she didn’t, couldn’t care anymore. The voices in her head impeded all thought processes. All Natalie could think about was the scene of utter devastation and destruction unfolding right before her emerald eyes.

“Help! Help me! Please someone help! Oh God!” A man’s yelling snapped Natalie back into reality. Shifting her eyes from the burning wreckage of the remainder of the fuselage, she spotted a man clawing at the sand in front of him, his legs trapped underneath a heap of twisted and burning metal.

Natalie rushed over and grabbed the metal beam, trying with all her might to heave off the rubble. But it remained still, crushing the man, adamant and solid like a rock. Looking around desperately, Natalie finally spotted another man running across the chaotic beach, “Hey! Hey you, help me with this!”

Her voice tore impossibly through the deafening screams, and the man skidded to a halt, sending a spray of sand into the air, then sprinted for her. Together, the two of them lifted the metal frame off of the trapped man’s legs, and he was able to claw his way away. But as Natalie set the broken fragment back down to rest, her eyes caught the stream of red that was smeared across the sand. The man’s legs were caked in blood, and his face was paling shockingly fast.

“Hey, I need you, to tie your tie around his legs, stop the bleeding,” Natalie stammered to the man that had helped her release the bleeding man. As the man fumbled with the knot, another scream made her rip her eyes away. A woman was lying underneath a large metal plate, part of the hull. Her back was pressed against the sand, and Natalie knew her ribs would not support the imposing weight much longer.

“Get this man away from here! Head for the trees,” Natalie demanded, and sprinted off towards the woman.

“Wait, I don’t even know your name!” the man shouted back.

Natalie whipped around, her emerald eyes glimmering with tears and determination, “Natalie!”

The woman’s screams had reached such a high frequency that Natalie thought her eardrums would sear open. “Oh god, please help! I can’t… breathe!”

Natalie gave a heave, straining her muscles, and to her surprise, the metal plate was actually starting to lift off of her. Suddenly, her grip slipped, and she felt a sudden, searing pain slash across her palm. And then, she let out her own scream to accompany those of the others, completing the symphony of pandemonium. Fresh blood slid from her palms down her wrist to her forearms.

Wincing in agony, she glanced back down at the trapped woman, only to find her standing up, backing away from Natalie with a horrified expression on her face. Natalie’s own countenance contorted into confusion as she spotted the broken hull a few meters away, in a tangled heap in the hot sand. The woman shook her head in denial, and retreated into the still disordered mob, leaving Natalie quite shocked and baffled.

But time was not of the essence, and it was not hers. More shrieks called out to her, pleading for help, for someone, anyone to pull them away from the fiery shrapnel, or to drag them out from under suffocating fragments of wreckage. A sudden, shrieking roar slammed into Natalie’s ears.

The engines were still relatively intact, the turbines still rotating with a fearsome, dying fervor. And then, she saw him, running across the beach towards another. But at that moment, Natalie knew what was about to happen, and was powerless to stop it.

Her scream was only heard by the ocean breeze. The rest was drowned out by the tremendous explosion that ensued as the man was sucked into the air intakes, splitting through the turbines, short circuiting the exhausts, and sending the entire engine apart in a cataclysmic fireball that roiled into the cloudless sky. Fragments of burning steel and titanium alloy rained down from the heavens as the very wrath of the Gods. A pitch black smoke engulfed the scene, blocking out the sun’s rays, cutting them off from their very source of life.

The ringing in her ears was insatiable. Natalie stumbled across the beach, feeling the intense heat singe at her long blonde hair. Her head was swimming in queasiness, and Natalie soon found herself lying on her back, staring up into the midday atmosphere. The air was so clear, so beautiful and blue. It seemed almost impossible for something like this to be happening. How could it be possible that on a serene, tranquil day like this, that something so hellish and agonizing was occurring?

For a moment, Natalie forgot the screaming. She forgot the roaring and shrieking, the fire and broken wreckage. Her emerald eyes stared hopefully up into the azure heavens, wishing this were all a dream, that she would wake up from this nightmare, and be herself once more.

The clouds whisked by lackadaisically, dancing over the tailfin and into the ship’s wake. Through the fiberglass window, a pair of emeralds met an ocean of sapphire. Natalie stared out the porthole of the Skyliner as it soared effortlessly through the noon sky.

“Hate flying?” the elderly woman in the seat next to Natalie asked somewhat cheerfully.

“Oh,” Natalie smiled and looked down, “I always had this thing…”

“Don’t worry dear,” she replied with a warm smile and patted Natalie’s shaking hand, “It’s perfectly normal to be nervous about these Skyliners.

The Skyliner suddenly lurched forwards a bit as it hit a pocket of turbulence. Natalie tightened her grip on her seat, feeling an unshakeable, sinking feeling in her stomach. As the shaking increased in magnitude, the woman sighed again, “Ah don’t worry about it. Turbulence is completely normal.”

Without warning, there was a muffled explosion, and Natalie felt the plane plummet. The deck tilted dangerously, sending passengers not in their seats banging onto the ceiling before landing with a smack on the floor. Luggage flew out of the overhead compartments as a terrible shriek filled the cabin.

Another massive bang and the shriek of metal sheering behind Natalie told her the tail section was gone. A hurricane-like wind lashed at her, trying to pull her into the open air to her death. The roaring of the failing engines threatened to blow out her eardrums. All hell broke loose, yet she could not bring herself to look back.

And they were falling back to the earth, spiraling out of control. With all sense of time and space lost to oblivion, Natalie closed her eyes and felt the world come screeching to a halt.