THE DARK TORRENT

Alban saw Olivia in a dream, yelling and calling his name from within a dark torrent with thick, dark vapors. Her voice was smoggy, and the torrent covered her until he could only see her slender, fragile hands, waving through it, then it engulfed her completely.

He was jolted from sleep, seeing Ali, seated beside him, with an earpiece on. He shook his head and rubbed his face, looking to his side, to see if Olivia was there, but he saw her reading a book, with legs crossed. "Where are we now?" He asked Ali.

"No idea really," Ali said. "Buh we ha flown for reasonable hours."

"Hours?" He rubbed his face again.

"Had another nightmare?" Ali asked him.

"I don't know what is really wrong with me Ali," Alban cried. "Each time I close my eyes, nightmares take over, immediately. At times I would be so scared to fall asleep, but the drowsy feeling is so over powering."

"Ah asked because ah too, can't explain my recent dreams as well. Ah dream of fairy tale characters these days." He laughed weakly. Alban laughed as well.

"Now I guess I have a partner. But I could bet that mine is worse than yours, at times I find it hard to breathe in there, it's like something is pinning me down." He looked at Ali, but realized he had been talking to himself all through.

Ali never seemed to hear Alban's last words. It seemed as though something else drew his attention. Ali was staring into the distance, squinting at an unusual, murky image of a cloud, looming far before them. It grew larger and vivid as the plane flew further.

"Wha tha thing?" Ali asked, pointing at it. Alban looked as well. He shrugged, indicating he doesn't know as well.

"Look like a cloud, buh doesn't look like one." He faced Alban. "Wha do ya think?"

"I don't think we need bother much about it, it could be a dense cloud, just like the ones we do see when it's about raining." Alban shrugged again. Ali forced himself to take Alban's comforting words. He faced front and relaxed back on the seat.

The cloud grew more gloomy and sinister while the plane approached, and when it began to get hideously vivid, everyone in the plane got paraesthetic. "What's that?.. what's that?" Was the question that filled the plane like buzzes. They all stared at each other, with their bladders filling up with urine.

The plane proceeded and pierced through the thick, dark cloud, and the interior of the plane got pitch black. No one could see anything. It seemed like outer space, void of heavenly bodies.

The clamors inside the plane grew, until the pilot pacified them. "Please, no one should panic. We see these things every day. Relax, just relax." He laughed.

He further caressed their minds by telling them that he had flown past such thing when he was going to Florida from Austria, that it was just a cloud, same as others. He was proven to be right, afterwards, when they saw light at the end of the dark tunnel after few minutes of meshy panics. What a sight of relief!

The plane finally flew past the cloud and emerged into a bright space where they were, once again, welcomed by the brilliant, blue hue of the sky and the silver streaks in the white clouds, irradiated by sunshine.

"Woah." Ali creased his brows and looked around. "Who else saw that?"

"Used to think the stories I heard about the Bermuda Triangle was false," Olivia said, with her heart still thumping.

"And how do you know we are over the Bermuda Triangle?" Camillas asked her. She looked back at her book and folded her legs, not willing to enter arguments with him.

"Everything says it," Ali answered. "We are flying the Hurricane Alley."

"It's false of course...that's why we made it past," Camillas said.

"Buh ya needed to see how intimidating tha stuff was." Ali snorted.

"The Hurricane Alley isn't real guys," Camillas said. "Just..."

"Na what's tha again?" Ali pointed to another thick cloud far from them. "Ya guys see tha?" He looked around.

"We passed the previous one dude...chill," Camillas calmed him.

They flew for over twenty minutes before coming in close contact with the cloud, looking at it in the face. The sombre countenance of this particular one instilled a double mind in everyone, except Camillas, who fought to assure himself that they would still find another promising light at the end, and the Hurricane Alley does not exist! He drummed in his mind.

Ali, who tried so much to mitigate his fears later succumbed to it, because what he saw before them never looked like a cloud, this particular one was quite ugly, it looked like death, hanging in the sky. He turned to Alban and found him sleeping again. He began to wish, at that moment, he also had such tendency to sleep.

The plane proceeded and entered the cloud. Everywhere turned black as the ace of spades. Once again, they were induced by blindness, nothing could be seen, and the fuzzy mumbles that waved within the plane caused the pilot to calm them again. The pilot convinced them so positively that they calmed temporarily, expecting to see another light at the other side, but several minutes past and they still found themselves flying within the gloomy halo. Suddenly, they saw distant flashes of light, sounding like a metal drum, played amidst the rumble of thunder. Everyone panicked, including the pilot this time, and they realized they were really in for it. Camillas began to grow restless. He felt his palms getting wet. The flashes kept coming, fueling up the clamors and outcries of the passengers.

"I don wanna die, I don wanna die," Ali said in terror, peeing on his seat, while making the sign of the cross, with his eyes swelling up.

Olivia on the other hand, rubbed her palms together, crying, preparing herself for the predicted worst. The flashes came again, and the third struck the wing of the plane and broke it, everyone started yelling. The plane began to swerve drunkenly, and a torrent came by, rocking the plane violently. The passengers were flung end to end. Some tried to hold fast to something, but it seemed as though an invisible hand was hurling them from pillar to post. Some of them lost consciousness in the process. Alban awoke and found himself inside the dark, violent fuselage, which rammed his body from seat to seat. The plane danced for minutes within the torrent, until a force beneath began to suck the plane into a very dark, spinning tunnel.