Written by: Bdicocco

Airspace over ORLANDO, FLORIDA, USA

July 27, 3:10 AM

At 13,000 feet in the air, the night is strangely calm. Outside the windows of my father's Mooney M20, the black sky is freckled with stars and wisps of clouds; the glittering lights of Disneyworld wink at us from down below. Peter O. Knight Airport at the edge of Tampa is fast approaching.

Returning home from my brief stay in New Hampshire should be a blessing. I hate New Hampshire; whenever I'm forced to visit my father during his visitation week in the summer, it feels as if I've been plucked out of civilization entirely. I guess a decaying shack in the middle of the woods with questionable access to fresh water is the perfect place for a reclusive former pilot—not necessarily for his 17-year-old daughter.

However, this time, the glowing webs of light dotting the Florida landscape only fill me with dread. Because this isn't a homecoming anymore.

Sensing my movement, my father takes his eyes momentarily off the plane controls to glance at me. "Leslie," he says, his voice crackling through the headset. "You awake, kiddo?"

"Don't call me kiddo," I mutter, turning away from him to stare out the window.

My dad is silent for a moment before asking, "Did you sleep? We're going to be landing soon, and this week is going to be—"

"I'm fine," I say, refusing to dampen the edge to my voice. What did he want me to say? Sure, Dad! I slept like a champ! I didn't even think about how Grandma found Mom dead.

Did you know that anesthesiologists have one of the highest rates of opiate misuse amongst physicians? That's not what got Mom though. She settled for propofol—the stuff that killed Michael Jackson. Apparently set up an IV all by herself and let that milk of amnesia run in. Grandma checked in after not hearing from her for three days; found her dead in her bed with flies crawling out of her nostrils.

The official ruling from the coroner will come in about a month. Right now, it's a toss-up between an accident and suicide. I have a hard time believing it was the former; my mom was meticulous and she had been battling demons for a while. Demons I had helped her keep at bay.

But I wasn't there this time; I was in fucking New Hampshire.

I gaze out the window, my eyes locked on the crisscrossing network of streetlights and buildings below. But suddenly, they vanish. It's as if all the lights have turned off in unison, replaced by a black void.

"What the...?" I mutter, face pressed to the glass. Did I just witness a power outage? But I'm drawn away from that thanks to the sound of my father frantically fiddling with his navigation equipment.

"Something's below us," he says. "It just appeared, no warning—"

The next thing I know, the Mooney M20 is flung upwards, buffeted by a gust of wind. I scream as the entire craft shakes; my weight is pressed downwards into my chair. We spin, and I lose all bearings on the earth; the only thing I feel is fear: a lightning-sharp, breath-taking fear—

My dad yelps, rights the craft—the world is in the correct orientation. And looking out the front windshield, I see something that gives me a burst of hope: lights! Distant lights, but lights nonetheless. The blackness beneath us isn't boundless; there's an edge. Just a few hundred feet to go and we can clear it.

My dad leans back, pulling on the yoke with all of his strength to keep the M20 airborne. But the object beneath us is too close. "Hold on!" he yells, and my hands scramble for purchase as we slam down.

The craft crashes. My head slams back against the headrest and all the lights inside the M20 flicker off. I hear the horrifying shriek of metal as we slide; sparks fly outside my window, lighting up the cockpit. There is screaming, and it takes me a second to realize that the sound is coming from my own mouth.

Yet despite this, once the M20 comes to a standstill, I realize I'm still alive. And miraculously in one piece.

I look to my father. I can only see him because the nose of the craft has caught on fire and the orange glare illuminates his face in the darkness. His hands still clench the yoke; his eyes gaze out through the broken windshield.

"Dad, come on, get out," I say. I unbuckle myself and climb out through the shattered side window. After a moment of stunned shock, my father seems to snap back to reality and does the same.

My father and I stumble about a hundred yards, only pausing once the craft is far enough away that we're not in danger of going up in smoke with it. I watch it cackle and sputter, its red paint cracking, gasoline occasionally sending jets of fire high into the sky.

We stand there for a few minutes in silence, unable to fully process what has just happened. Then, my dad slides to the ground, his face buried in his hands.

I ignore his lamenting. "Where are we?" I demand. "Where did we land? Are we on top of a building?"

"We're at 12,000 feet above sea level," he groans. "This isn't a building."

"Then what is this?"

"I don't know."

While my dad moans, I crouch to the ground, trying to examine the surface underfoot. It's cool, smooth, and hard: some sort of metal. But as I run my hand along it, it seems to go on forever without a single seam or a screw.

But there's an edge, I think to myself, remembering the lights I could see while airborne.

I spin around, scanning the horizon. At first, I only see the fiery wreckage of our plane. But then, as I turn to the south, I see it—far away, a glimmer of city lights.

I run. My dad lets out a weak "Leslie," but I hardly hear him. I run towards those lights, and after only a minute, stumble to a stop, the breath leaving my body.

My mind can't seem to grasp what I'm seeing. The Edge feels infinitely high, yet terrifyingly finite—I'm one step away from an abyss. The adrenaline that had been fueling my body since the crash suddenly runs dry. I crumple to the ground, and the world goes black.

* * *

On top of the CRAFT, over ORLANDO, FL 

July 27, 6:44 AM

I'm woken by the first rays of light peeking up over the horizon—or rather, the new horizon. One made of metal instead of mountains and seascapes.

My head pounds viciously. I turn to my side and immediately throw up.

Altitude sickness, I realize, vaguely remembering that I had felt like this on our family vacation to Machu Picchu when I was 12. Back then, my mom had given me some pills to make it better, but it still had taken some time to kick in.

"Did you know," my mom had told me then, smoothing my hair as she spoke, "that on Mount Everest, when people die, they just leave them there? It's too dangerous to move them, so their bodies stay on the mountain forever, serving as landmarks for the next people who make the climb."

Mom used to tell me a lot of fun facts just like that one, although "fun" isn't really the right word to describe them. I had always thought it was a side effect of her being a doctor; maybe it had been something more.

I prop myself upright, trying to get a better look at my surroundings now that the daylight has set in. The fire from the M20 has gone out, but smoke is still spiraling into the sky from the wreckage. Except for The Edge, the metal thing we're stuck on seems to go on forever, endlessly reaching north, east, and west. I also see my father, lying sprawled on the metal, about 50 feet away. It disgusts me that he hasn't moved, hasn't made any effort to find a solution to our problem—but that's par for the course. I limp over to him, fighting back the nausea and hoping I'll acclimate soon.

"What do we do?" I ask him. "How do we get off this thing?"

He's staring at the sky, unable to look me in the eye. "We can't," he says. "The plane is gone."

"Who cares about the plane? There has to be another way."

"There isn't. The phone lines are jammed."

My phone! In the chaos of the crash, I had forgotten about it. I dig around in the pocket of my sweatshirt and find my iPhone amongst the fabric. Amazingly, I have two bars of service and a little bit of battery left, but I soon realize my father isn't lying. When I try to call someone—911, my grandmother, my friends—nothing goes through.

"Fuck," I mutter.

"Language," my dad says from the ground.

I glare at him in disbelief. For a second, I don't say anything. But suddenly, it's as if a dam has broken inside of me, and words flood out in a torrential rush. "Why the fuck do you care about my language now? We're stuck up on something 12,000 feet in the sky. We're probably going to die soon. And all you care about is me using a fucking curse word?"

He doesn't say anything, just stares off into the distance. My dad was never one to raise his voice, but his silence fuels my anger.

"This is your fault," I say. "I only visit you in New Hampshire because the court makes me. I should have been here, in Tampa, instead of stuck with you in your disgusting shack in the middle of nowhere." My breath hitches in my throat, and suddenly I'm sobbing. "If I wasn't with you in New Hampshire, I wouldn't have been on your stupid plane. I would have been in Tampa, with Mom, and she wouldn't be dead. It's your fault she's dead! It's your fault we're dead!"

My dad still won't look at me; I'm screaming at his turned cheek. He's left me to deal with the wreckage he's caused.

I turn away and leave. I go back to The Edge. And from behind a wall of tears, I watch the rest of the sunrise.

* * *

On top of the CRAFT, over ORLANDO, FL

July 27, 11:53 AM

I'm glad I'm wearing a sweatshirt. Despite the bright sunlight, it's cold. According to my dying phone, it's over 80 degrees on ground level; up here, it feels like it's in the 50s.

I suppress a shiver and focus on my breathing, praying that my headache lets up soon. At least the nausea has abated. With it, my hunger has finally returned. Unfortunately, there are no food trucks parked on this giant metal disc in the sky.

It's odd to sit around and think about death. I've done it before—typically in the middle of the night when I'd lie awake in bed, wrestling with insomnia. But never has death been so imminent. Never before have these thoughts felt so timely.

It will probably take a few days, I reckon. Hopefully I'll just drift off to sleep. Maybe it's a good thing I'll never have to go to Mom's funeral. I can keep imagining her just as she was: alive, and free of flies. Also, I haven't finished my eulogy, so at least I don't have to worry about that anymore.

I hear a croak from behind me. At first I think it's a frog, although that's silly—how could a frog end up here? Unless we've truly entered the apocalypse and it starts raining frogs. But then I realize it's just my dad. The croak repeats, and this time, I recognize that he's calling my name.

I'm in no mood to talk with him. When you realize you only have a few days left to live, you really want to spend your time around people that actually give a shit about you. My dad is not one of those people. And yet I drag myself to my feet and hobble over to him.

"What?" I ask, towering over him like a statue.

"Come down here Leslie. Listen to me for a minute."

I really don't want to, but I sit down next to him.

He licks his lips. They are dried and cracked. His face is pale. He looks unwell. But that quickly leaves my mind when the first thing out of his mouth is, "I never wanted kids."

His words are like a stab wound through my chest. I want to slap him. Instead, I just start back to my feet.

"Hold on," he says. "Stay here. For one minute. Please."

"You're a piece of shit, do you know that?"

"Please," he says, and now I notice a tear dribbling down the side of his face. "Sorry... I'm not making much sense. But just listen please."

I clench my teeth, but let him speak.

"When we first got married," he says, "your mom and I were really busy. She was always at the hospital. I was flying my routes. When she got pregnant with you, it wasn't planned."

"A mistake," I say bitterly.

"No," he insists. "Not once we met you. I... I loved you from the second you were born. She loved you too. So much. Suddenly, she wanted more. She wanted a real family. She cut back her hours. But I couldn't."

I pick at a scab on my arm, unable to look at him. "She made enough money for the both of you, Dad. You could have cut back your hours if you really wanted to."

"You're right. I didn't want to. Flying made me happy. Happier than I was with her."

"Happier than you were with me," I corrected.

"No," he says, and suddenly his voice is firm. "Not true. Even when Evelyn and I were falling apart, I still wanted you. I wanted split custody, 50/50. But she wouldn't grant that." He pauses. "Can you reach into my pocket? Pull out my wallet?"

I look down, and that's when I finally see it. The denim of his jeans is darker than usual. There's a black stain on his right thigh. And at its center, a piece of metal, sticking up like a flagpole.

"Dad!" I scream, staring at the foreign body lodged in his thigh. "How long has that been there?"

"Leslie, please grab my wallet."

I don't listen. I rip off my sweatshirt, adrenaline beating back the cold. I try to make a tourniquet around his leg, but I don't know what I'm doing. My dad cries out, telling me to stop, and begging me to just grab his wallet.

Finally, he does it himself. Blood-stained fingers pull out a worn piece of leather as I fumble with my sweatshirt. He thrusts it into my hands, breaking my concentration. I'm about to yell at him about how I don't care about money when I see the pictures inside: little wallet-sized photos of us from a few years back. Fishing in the creek. Riding ATVs. Flying his M20 over the New Hampshire pines.

I feel my eyes welling with tears.

"You used to like visiting me," Dad says.

"I hate New Hampshire," I whisper.

"Not always. We used to have fun. But slowly, you stopped wanting to spend so much time up there. It's because of your mother, I know. You were worried about her. About leaving her alone." He sighs. "I wish I had been a better father. I could have done more."

"Don't say that, Dad. We have time."

Even as I say it, another one of Mom's fun facts filters through my head: "Did you know you can lose liters of blood into your thigh?"

"Probably have less than an hour, I reckon," Dad says matter-of-factly. "Been lightheaded for hours."

"Dad," I say, and suddenly, all of the anger and resentment falls away. I grip his hand, trying to hold on to the last bit of humanity in this barren metal wasteland. "Please don't go. Please."

"Leslie, I—"

Suddenly, we hear a whir. It takes me a second to recognize the sound, and then...

"Helicopters," I say, scrambling to my feet. Up ahead, in the distance beyond The Edge, I see helicopters.

I start waving my arms. "We're going to be rescued, Dad!" With a strength I didn't realize I had, I drag him to his feet. I'm shocked he can even stand, but he does, and with all my energy I start to shout.

"Help! HELP! We're down here!"

I wave my free arm. I'm so grateful that the M20 is still smoking, sending its signal into the sky. Giving them a marker to fly towards.

Three helicopters draw closer–so close, in fact, that I can make out the figure of one of the people inside. He looks to be in his early twenties, and he's peering out of an open side window, dressed in the dusty tans of an armed forces uniform.

His eyes lock with mine, and immediately he turns to someone inside the craft, his mouth moving. I hope he's noticed my father's injury and has a medic on board who can do a proper tourniquet.

The whirring of the crafts gets louder. Wind whips up around us. I close my eyes from the sting of the wake, giving them time to land, knowing that once they do, we'll have to move quickly in order to get my father to a hospital...

But when the wind lessens and I open my eyes, I notice that the helicopters haven't landed; instead, they've just passed by. For a moment, I wait, hoping that they're planning a slightly delayed descent. Instead, they continue onwards, maintaining their altitude and heading towards the center of the craft.

No, I think to myself, scouring the sky to find that soldier once more. He saw me. He saw us! He's harder to see now, his form getting smaller and smaller in my field of vision, but he's still there, and just as before, he is looking straight at me. I hold his gaze, silently begging him to turn the helicopters around. Instead, he shakes his head sadly and turns away before vanishing into the blue sky.

With the helicopters' disappearance, the last shred of hope that I hadn't even known I had been holding on to disintegrates in the wind. With sudden finality, I know how this all will end.

My father seems to know too. Now that my adrenaline has run out, I realize how much he is leaning on me. "Leslie," he says, and his voice is quiet. "Can you take me... to where you were sitting before? I want to... get a look at the view."

My breath catches in my throat. "Sure, Dad. Whatever you want."

I help him to hobble to The Edge. When we get there, I still can't look down. I feel nauseous and can't tell whether it's from the height or the altitude sickness.

"Let go of me," he says firmly.

I hesitate, but then I let him stand on his own. He's surprisingly solid—

for the moment.

"Dad," I say nervously, "you should sit down. Save your strength."

My dad ignores me. "I love you, kiddo. Be strong." He puts out his arms, like airplane wings. And then he murmurs, so softly I almost can't hear it, "I've always wondered what it'd be like to fly."

And then he falls forward.

With everything that has happened, I can't even let out a cry. The numbness has settled in. But then my mouth moves, almost of its own accord, and a whisper escapes into the air.

"You piece of shit."

* * *

On top of the CRAFT, over ORLANDO, FL

July 27, 8:05 PM

The sky turns orange and pink. My sweatshirt, stained with my father's blood, can't beat back the chill. My mind is hazy, replaying memories that might not be true: me running through a creek, a warm smile above my crib, a bathtub overflowing with blood.

When my phone is at 1%, I try, yet again, to call someone. It's a reflex at this point, driven by an unconscious desire for human contact. Surprisingly, it goes through.

"Leslie?" It's my grandmother. "Leslie, thank God! Where are you? I went to the airport and they said you and your father never landed, and then this thing appeared in the sky—"

"For the funeral, on Saturday, can you play the song Mr. Blue Sky for Mom? And for Dad, can you do Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters? You can pick whatever you want for me, I don't mind."

"Leslie, what are you talking about? Where are you—"

Her voice cuts off as my phone finally dies. With no use for it, I toss it off The Edge.

I stare at the sky a little longer, then roll to my side. Sunlight streams across my vision. The metal ground kisses my cheek.

A brand-new bike. A hoard of flies. A picture album. Shattered glass. A birthday cake. Dead bodies covered in snow...

As these thoughts drift through my mind, a dark patch appears on the metal, only five feet away from where I'm lying. For a moment, I think it's just another hallucination, another trick of the light. But the more I stare at it, the more real it seems.

I'm too tired to walk. I crawl over, dragging my limbs. And that's when I realize it's a hole.

I stare at it for a while. It's about five-by-five feet in area. I can't see the bottom. But I do see what looks like a set of stairs leading down into the darkness.

I hover my hand over it, still not entirely convinced it's real. And that's when I feel something flood my body: peace. Euphoria, even. Suddenly, I don't feel so alone.

I hesitate, snatching my hand back to my chest as if I've been bitten. Somehow, I've become attached to this surface: attached to my new metal home, my final resting place. I've been making peace with that. And yet, this doorway from nowhere beckons me, promising something new.

I scoot my legs around and place my feet on the first step. When I try to stand, I wobble, my body not quite feeling like my own, and the glare of the sunset blinds me. In that flash of light, I see my mom, and then my dad. Their faces are only present for a moment before they're washed away in that same rush of euphoria.

I regain my balance. I move one foot in front of the other, at first slowly, then picking up speed.

I run into the blackness, flooded with the oddest feeling that everything is going to be okay.

<<<<< END >>>>>

Find more stories by Bdicocco on Wattpad.

Bianca Di Cocco is a New York based author who enjoys writing fantasy stories with a touch of romance and a good twist. Her novel Dangerous Thoughts recently won a Watty Award in the fantasy category. When not writing, she enjoys singing mid-2000s pop punk songs at karaoke night.