Original Prompt: You fell out of a plane. You survived, but you landed in the middle of a cult’s summoning circle. Now you’ve got this super-crazy group of followers with ties in practically everything who keep calling you god.
The turbulence was sudden, harsh. The scud clouds to the starboard side looked like they were dropping from above at meters a second. Like a tornado was about to form above the rainforest. A fleeting thought of the impossibility, the destruction that could cause. Then my own destruction took my focus back.
“Mayday, mayday. This is November three Charlie Juliet Alpha. We have encountered …”
How the hell was I supposed to make sense of what I was seeing? It was a clear sky just a few minutes before. Routine, just a commute. Red lightning struck through the clouds, the center of the descending funnel shone pink for an instant. The bolt struck almost straight down through the towering trees.
Static on the radio. I’d trained for unplanned descents, but the panic took hold.
“Help! Mayday! I’m … I’m experiencing some kind of weather even-“
The starboard wing rattled hard. The whole plane felt like it jerked to the right. I looked out the window just in time to see a branch clip the wing. There was debris being lifted from the canopy. The door ripped open, the sudden rush of wind robbed the air from my lungs. Having turned to look the headset hurled itself off my ears, the cable whipping my arm as all of it exited the plane.
I jerked the flight controls, there was a snap, it was now slack in my hands. The pedals no longer responded. The instrument panel was alight with warnings.
I don’t want to die.
With that final thought a branch pierced the flapping door, jutting out from the side of my seat. It had shredded through the lower seat belt, I could feel it displace the cushion of the chair beneath me. In another instant the protruding branch was struck, tearing the door from the hinges. The bough, with my door still run through, crashed backwards and parted my wing from the fuselage.
My harness, now only three connections strong, let me loose to the havoc outside. The right shoulder strap scrapping my face as I was pulled, practically separating my ear from my head. Before the pain could even catch up I was behind my plane. What looked like a denuded tree smashed through the cabin where I had just been sitting. The weight stressed the remaining wing, it flung free and fluttered like something much lighter.
More red lightning, but this time further out from the center of the clouds. I was cartwheeling slower and slower. In the distance I could see the blue sky I was promised. The clouds wrapped around me, darkness above, pink occasionally, and then a void that comes with sleep.
The whole world shook with the crack of thunder.
I was laid out, limbs sprawled. The ground was soft, leathery almost. Leaves. Huge leaves.
I opened my eyes slowly, the pain in my arm and pretty much the whole right side of my face suddenly throbbed. I clenched my eyes shut again. Whatever happened I’ll deal with in a moment. I reached, or rather tried to reach, for my head. My arm stopped about half way there when hands quickly grabbed my wrist. Gently? Like you would grab the hand of a child trying to touch something in a museum.
The chanting burst through the cacophony of wind and thunder.
My eyes sprung open. I reached with my other arm to grab the hands holding me down. My vision filled with familiar faces. It was a tribe I’d seen before, the burgundy paint in jagged stripes all over their exposed skin. I was surrounded by a broad circle of chanters, anticipation and fear hidden beneath the pigment.
One tribeswoman gingerly grabbed my reaching arm from over my head. Guiding it back into place away from my body, away from my secured arm, away from freedom. There was no contempt in her expression, just neutral and calm, despite the pandemonium around. I looked at my legs as more hands began to grope for my kicking feet. What looked like the leader was below me, arms raised straight up, eyes to the sky, chanting while the others stopped.
Her head shook for a moment, an exasperated held note quaking through her larynx. The gasp, then a stare. Her jaw tucked in, eyes locked on my torso. I looked down further to my torn clothes and painted chest, a reticle shaped design centered around my sternum.
A purple glow began to emanate from the art. All the hair on my body stood at attention, electricity flooding every sense. I knew the strike was coming, pure instinct.
It sounded like the sky cracked open, a sharp pause in the gale above, then just the sound of the lumber falling through the trees. The air hit first, like all the pressure of the weather above was being blown away, blown down, channeled. The hands holding my limbs were no longer required, I was pinned by the force of a localized, personalized maelstrom. The funnel above me filled with pink light, then the white of the bolt landed, square in my chest.
Now the whole world was red.
No more wind. No more clouds. The clamor of detritus falling through the trees, breaking more limbs as it fell. I couldn’t bear to open my eyes anymore. I was afraid. I was afraid because I could no longer feel pain. I knew my arm was lacerated. I knew my face was damaged. Or at least I think there’s injuries, but for a glorious moment I couldn’t feel anything. All the humidity, so omnipresent in the forest usually, was gone. Nothing. I could only assume I was in shock.
The moment hung. I tried to force myself to taken inventory.
The chanting started again. Hold on, I thought. The chanting stopped.
I opened my eyes. The hole in the flora above me was significant. Almost like a tidy conic shape had been extruded from the thick layers of boles, limbs, and assorted foliage. There was that blue sky I was promised, pooled above me.
I couldn’t feel the leaves on my back. Instead it felt like I was suspended in water, gently drifting on the current of cool air. Another moment of peace.
The crash of something large landing nearby. Screams. I looked at the tribe, gathered around me, the nearest still staring.
A trunk swung into view through the torn trees, exposed roots towering above the crowd. The upside down tree was falling in slow motion. The people were in slow motion. My people. I raised my wounded arm, as much in yearning to stop the fall as to warn of the danger. But then it stopped. It stopped the moment I reached out. I felt something new.
The air, usually thick with sound and moisture, felt dense for an entirely different reason.
The people around me slowed further. The woman in ceremonial garb at my feet was spinning toward the falling debris. I could see the leaves of her headwear rippling slowly as she turned to see the danger. I could see her jowls waving too. Her pores. Her molecules. Her skull. Her brain and the lightning within.
Everything came to a complete stop. I looked around, all the faces no longer fixated on me, gazing at the, well, I assume the noise. I couldn’t hear anything now.
I tried to sit up. I didn’t just feel like I was floating, I was literally floating on air. It felt like moving through thick water, but while I explored the feeling of floating, something instinctual came to mind. I could sense a new awareness of my body, like when you wake from dozing off and you sense your balance come back in a rush. I could move through the air.
I drifted toward the falling trunk, suspended in motion. The tribe below, frozen, those closest wearing faces filled with abject horror at their impending doom. I knew what it felt like to don that expression. I reached for the roots, I could see all the veins and dirt, all the terrified insects and their soft organs. There was something so familiar about it all. When I touched the closest outstretched root it felt like cotton candy. Light, malleable, giving way without resistance.
I felt the entire trunk and everything on it and in it, just from touching one part of the whole.
Every atom of the trunk was in my command.
Butterflies. Birds. Beetles.
Fly.
The trunk disintegrated in a flash red lightning. Time jolted back to full speed. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of airborne creatures burst out of the shape of the trunk. An explosion of crimson and wings.
I felt the other falling wreckage, I could sense it all. I could change it all. The forest filled with a crackling current as a million new beings entered the chaos of life. Crashes and thuds replaced with chirps and whistles.
I shed my remaining clothes, bronze skin glistening in the sunlight. I brought my hands in front of me, the cut on my forearm long since healed, the purple glow now localized to my palms.
The chanting began again, with an earnestness absent before. I looked down on my people. A million tongues filled my mind, I heard their voices and understood.
“I have returned to claim my land.” Foreign words spilled from me. The chorus grew louder. I launched into the air, the canopy sealing itself shut as I flew. Broken branches lifted by vines, teetering trunks erect again, the roof of life restored.
I set my eyes on the plumes of smoke in the distance. Not the wreckage of my plane, no, this was more intentional. My land, my people, they were under attack. But I am here now, they have no need to hold onto that fear.
Further Explanation: I chose to be a little loose with “cult” and “ties in practically everything”, hence moving towards a more indigenous representation as outsiders would see the tribe as a cult. The “ties in practically everything” was taken literally, as with the “keep calling you god” part. Mostly the story just … fell into place as I was writing. Ba dum tsh. Anyway, not as true as I usually try to be to the prompt, but I don’t really care because I like what I wrote.
Inspiration Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/q795rv/wp_you_fell_out_of_a_plane_you_survived_but_you/
Mike Lightheart 