LOTF: Before and After

Phase 2: Chapter 1

Just as Ralph felt his ears could no longer take the screaming, the crying, the insanely loud alarm, and the sound of the plane dropping against the wind, it all suddenly and simultaneously stopped.

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Ralph Langley could swim, but he felt like he was drowning. His arm was throbbing with pain as the weight of the water pulled him down. He managed to bring himself to swim upward towards air. When he surfaced, his ears were ringing. He couldn't remember how he got from his seat in the plane to here. Ralph treaded water to the tune of the muffled screams and pleas for help around him, suppressed by the static ringing in his ears. He suddenly felt something rubbing against his leg. When he looked down, he saw a trail of blood that led down to Captain Benson's body as the man floated beneath the surface. Ralph dove back down into the water, grabbed him by his hair and dragged him up.

After they broke the surface of the water, Ralph could hear almost clearly again.

"The raft!" one of the boys shouted as somebody dove into the water beside Ralph to retrieve it. The lifeboat's string must've been sliced off his arm during the crash. Jack suddenly surfaced with the lifeboat bag in hand.

Moments later, the thing inflated and bounced on top of the water. The boys swarmed it, grabbing onto the strings that hung around it's side for dear life. Jack climbed into the lifeboat first, and began pulling the littler boys up and in. Some of the others climbed up themselves. Jack peered over the side of the boat and saw Ralph hanging onto Captain Benson.

"Throw me his arm!" Jack shouted down at Ralph.

Ralph grabbed one of his arms by his shoulder blade and stretched it up to Jack. When Jack had a grip on it, he began to pull the man's seemingly dead weight while Ralph pushed from the water. Once Captain Benson was on board, Jack stuck his arm out to Ralph who grasped on with his good arm and squeezed Jack's tightly. Jack pulled Ralph to safety while the other assisted by using the rest of his body to help hoist himself up and over.

Now that he was on board the lifeboat, Ralph could begin the process of figuring out how to breathe properly again. The raft was currently surrounded by several floating bodies, some face down, some not. In the distance, Ralph saw what little of the plane still remained above the surface of the water as it continued to fill and sink. It looked like something out of a tragic movie scene, Ralph thought, because things like this were only supposed to happen on a television screen. But it wasn't a screen, it was real. Ralph was wet, cold, achy, bruised, tired, shaky, thirsty, and sick with fear because it was real, it was real, it was real.

It can't be. But it is. But it can't be. But it is. I need to wake up now. I need to be in bed, I need to be asleep because this isn't real, and neither am I. This isn't real, I won't let it be, it's only a nightmare, a really really bad nightmare, Ralph pleaded with his shell-shocked brain as he stared in disbelief at the few dead bodies in the water, the sinking plane in the background. It wasn't real, it couldn't be, it must be a nightmare.

It really was a nightmare, in all honesty, but it was the kind of nightmare Ralph had never had before; the kind that doesn't end when you wake up.

"Shit, he's bleeding" one of the boys suddenly broke the heavy silence, earning the whole group's attention. Ralph looked to where he was looking; down at Captain Benson's lifeless body. The captain's forehead was covered in watery blood, with more leaking from his mouth and nose. It was hard to tell if the head wound was still bleeding. There was too much blood to determine where exactly it was coming from.

"Where's the first aid kit?" Ralph found himself asking, his logical mind restarting itself for the first time since the crash. "All lifeboats have 'em" he added, his voice raspy and hoarse. He didn't sound like himself, he thought, but he didn't feel like himself anymore either. Perhaps, he wasn't.