The plane was noisy.
Not the kind of noise that set your nerves on edge, but the muffled, never-ending hum you get when a lot of people are crammed into one sealed space. The engines, the air conditioning, the on-and-off whimpering of a small child a few rows ahead, and a handful of aunties from the tour group chatting away in dialect, all mixed together like a thick layer of fog.
Allen was slumped against the window, his forehead resting on the faintly cool cabin wall, his eyes half closed.
He wasn't actually asleep. He just didn't want to be pulled into any conversation.
He'd come on a package tour. Seven days and six nights, an island route. He had no particular feelings about islands; he'd simply felt he ought to get out and go somewhere. After quitting his job, he'd lain around at home for almost two months, ordering takeout, scrolling his phone and staring at the ceiling day after day, until he woke up one morning with the feeling that if this went on much longer he might just rot. So he opened a travel app and booked whichever tour looked least objectionable.
Alone. He hadn't asked any friends along.
Not that he didn't have friends. It was just that at his age, everyone was busy. Busy with work, busy with blind dates, busy paying off mortgages. Someone like him, who had quit his job outright, already counted as an oddity. Luckily, nobody in the group knew him, and everyone did their own thing. Allen thought that suited him fine. He didn't want to explain to anyone why he'd quit, and he didn't want to hear anyone say things like "Young people really ought to settle into something stable." He just wanted somewhere nobody knew him, to stay for a few days.
The clouds outside the window were thick, a glowing white like spread-out cotton wool, and the sea was nowhere to be seen. Allen stared into all that white and slowly began to feel drowsy. He shifted in his seat and let his seatbelt out half a notch. The old man beside him was peeling an orange for his wife at a leisurely pace. When he was done, he carefully tore away the white pith strand by strand, then split the orange in two and handed the bigger half to the old woman.
The old woman took it and said, in thickly accented Mandarin, "Have some yourself, go on."
The old man said nothing, just popped the other half into his mouth and squinted at how sour it was. The old woman laughed at him, her eyes creasing into crescents, as if the two of them were performing a very old pantomime.
Allen looked away and fished his phone out of his pocket. The screen lit up. There were a few unread messages in the notification bar, nothing that mattered. He opened his photo album and flicked through it: screenshots from the past few days and a handful of pictures snapped on a whim. The newest one was from the airport. The departure hall's ceiling soared overhead, and sunlight slanted in through the glass curtain wall, bleaching the floor tiles white. His shadow had been stretched long, lying aslant across the floor like another version of himself.
He looked at the photo and hesitated. He thought about posting it to WeChat Moments with a caption. Then he decided to forget it. There was nothing worth posting. Of all the pictures he'd taken, there probably wasn't a single one he actually wanted anyone to see.
The plane began to bump slightly. The captain's announcement came on, crackling with a little static, the voice muffled, saying more or less that there was turbulence ahead and everyone should fasten their seatbelts. The little lights in the cabin blinked on, the ding-dong chime tangling with the rattle of the flight attendants' carts. Allen stuffed his phone back into his pocket and sat up straight. The clouds outside were starting to change color, their white no longer so pure, as if a little gray had been mixed in. He glanced at them and thought nothing of it. Weather over the sea changed fast. He knew that much.
"Young man, what are you off to the island for? Swimming too?" the old woman beside him suddenly asked, beaming at him.
Allen was caught off guard for a moment, then straightened in his seat. "Mm, just wandering around."
The old woman nodded, her eyes making a circuit of his face as if she were sizing up her own grandson. "Out here all on your own? Well, isn't that something. My son's about your age, and he's always saying he's tired. Won't go anywhere."
Allen gave a small smile. "Work is pretty tiring."
"It is. We were tired back in our day too, but at least we could get around. Young people nowadays can't even get enough sleep," the old woman said, poking a segment of orange into the old man's mouth.
The old man sucked in air at the sourness and mumbled, "D-don't feed me any more... this orange is no good."
"You're the one who's no good. It's plenty sweet."
Allen listened to them bicker and found it rather amusing. He wasn't good at talking to strangers, but this kind of conversation, the kind that took no thought at all, wasn't unpleasant. He turned back to the window, wanting to see whether the sea had come into view below. The clouds were terribly thick, and the sky was darker than he'd expected. A deep gray showed through from underneath the clouds, as if a layer of dirty water lay hidden beneath the cotton wool. Allen frowned. He remembered checking the weather before boarding, and it had been clear at the destination.
"These clouds have gone all murky," he said quietly.
The old woman leaned over to look too and said, a little worried, "Looks like rain, I'm afraid... That's how it is over the sea. It comes out of nowhere."
Allen nodded.
He wasn't afraid of flying. He just didn't much like this kind of sudden turbulence. Every time the plane shuddered, his stomach turned over with it. The old man beside him looked completely unbothered, eyes closed as if he were napping. The old woman, though, had grown tense; she tightened her seatbelt again, lips pressed into a thin line. Across the aisle, the tour guide stood up and reassured everyone with a smile. "It's fine, it's fine, don't panic, everyone. It's just a bit of turbulence. We'll be through it in no time."
After she said it, the cabin did go a little quieter. But Allen could feel that the bumping hadn't stopped. If anything, it was coming thicker and faster. The sky outside looked as if someone had given it a twist, the clouds going from off-white to grayish purple. He pressed against the glass for another look and realized it wasn't the sky that was changing. The clouds themselves were darkening, with light seeping out from inside them, as if they had a mass of something dark purple wrapped up within.
"What is going on..." he muttered under his breath.
Somewhere behind him a child started to cry... A flight attendant came out to walk the cabin, her smile a little stiff, repeating "Please fasten your seatbelts" as she went. Allen glanced at the seatbelt around his waist and found it already buckled. He couldn't even remember doing it. Maybe during the bumping just now, his hands had done it on their own.
The plane abruptly dropped...
Not the ordinary sinking of turbulence, but a plunge full of that sickening weightlessness, like an elevator suddenly falling two floors. Cries of alarm swept the cabin. The old woman let out a startled "Ah" as she pitched forward, and the old man caught her by the shoulder and held her down. Allen grabbed the seatback in front of him on reflex, his fingers going numb. Pressed against the window, he saw the clouds outside heaving as if something had stirred them, those dark purple things flashing inside, like the depths of a thunderhead on a summer day, only thicker, denser, and far less natural.
He suddenly thought of the photo he hadn't posted. The glass curtain wall at the airport, the sun-drenched floor tiles, the stretched-out shadow on his phone screen. That had been a little over an hour ago, yet it felt so far away. He regretted it a little... If he'd posted it to WeChat Moments back then, at least somebody would know that right now he was up here, above this sea of clouds.
The shaking went on. The flight attendants had already returned to their seats, and the voice over the speakers came and went in pieces, as if something were biting chunks out of the words. Allen squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead against the window. He didn't want to look outside anymore, but the light still turned his eyelids red.
He opened his eyes and saw something flash, deep inside the clouds.
That light was too strange. It wasn't lightning. Lightning should be white, blinding, gone in an instant. What he saw was dark red, opening slowly, like an eye.
Allen froze... In that one second, every sound in the cabin seemed to be muted. The engines, the crying, the announcements, all of it vanished. The air around him turned heavy, as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over him. He opened his mouth to call to the people beside him, only to find he couldn't even turn his head.
He thought—
Am I dreaming?
That was his last conscious thought aboard the plane...