A random tale.

How long had it been since their plane had an engine failure and was forced to land in the Gobi desert? Dave had no idea, he stopped counting when it was over a week, and gotten too depressing for him to continue doing so. Of their plane of 28 passengers, less than 10 had survived the botched landing. Only Dave, his wife Celeste, an old couple that had long retired and a newly orphaned 9 year old boy named Jimmy were lucky enough to escape from the fumes. It was already a miracle that the kid managed to have the sense to follow them through the fumes when he discovered that his mother was unconscious. Initially, the boy wanted to seek help from them to save his mother, but seconds after they got out of the plane, a series of explosions rocked the plane, and they had to forcefully drag the kid away from the burning wreckage. They managed to find a huge rock that had a hole in it for shelter, which was lucky for them, or else they would not survive perhaps, 3 days.

The next day, Dave had to make his way back to the wreckage in order to salvage some food and water for them to survive as long as possible. He went there alone, as he was the least hurt, and maybe had only a couple of fractured ribs compared to the rest of them. The smell of human flesh burning assaulted his nostrils, and everywhere was the remains of what had been the passengers of Flight 907. He noticed with discomfort at the amount of carrion birds around that area, having a feast of their life. After finding a haversack to carry all the food he found, he saw the burned out remains of a little girl, holding on to a small cartoony hello kitty bag. A prickle of tears was forming at the side of his eyes, as he remembered this was the same girl, that is no more than 6 years old, with her hair tied in pigtails that was running around the aircraft, offering everyone a stick of pink colour pocky from her bag.. Grimly, he set upon his task of taking her bag from her shriveled charcoal hands that was small, but forever locked in a embrace with her favourite bag. He took the remaining pocky packets, and started to curse his task and himself, and after reliving other corpse of usable stuff, he started to dig with a makeshift shovel of the airplane wing. He dug for hours, not stopping for a drink till he was certain that the hole was big enough to cover up all the bodies from the carrion birds.

Celeste wasn’t doing so badly. Except for the fact that her leg got broken and she was hurting too much to move, and the old couple were hurt the most badly. Peter and Mary were heading on their 2nd honeymoon when they took this ill-fated flight, and when they escaped the burning wreckage of the plane, Peter felt a piercing pain in just below his ribs. He wasn’t too badly stunned by the 9cm long glass halfway piercing through his belly，as he was more concerned with his wife of the past 50 years, whose head was bleeding badly, and losing consciousness as fast as she is losing blood from various open wounds. Peter wasn’t optimistic about her survival as he knew back from his days an army medic in the 2nd world war that his wife was a goner if she wasn’t send to the hospital in a day or two.

He was right; she died the day after the crash, and not before opening her eyes for one last time. They had a final hug, a moment of their last kiss, and as he held her hands, he feels her finger going limp, and his tears flowing down his cheek. He was almost holding her for an hour, when Dave returned. Both of them buried his wife, with her wedding ring still on her hands. The medical supplies Dave brought back with him wasn’t much, but he had what was vital to Peter. He had sleeping pills.
That night, when everyone was sleeping, Peter swallowed 30 sleeping pills. As he feels the drowsiness overcoming him, he saw his dear wife Mary, no longer looking old, but looking young and pretty again, her arms wide open with light enveloping her whole body, walking towards him to embrace him.

He held her tightly and left with her. He will never let her go away alone again. The next day, Celeste was the first to wake up, and saw the body of Peter hugging the mound of sand they covered his wife with, and knew that he is already gone. Her tortured sobbing woke the rest of them up, and together they mourned the old man that they just knew a couple of days ago, but as a result of their unusual circumstances, they bonded with him just like old friends would.







End of Part 1