Page 19 of King from the Sky

How did she feel? Did she love him? Emily felt a twinge in her heart at the thought. She had no idea if that felt like love or if that just felt like connection and she wasn’t at all sure that they were all that different from each other. Emily wanted to believe in true love and that it had finally happened to her, but the scientist part of her brain that she blamed for her never ending pursuit of rational thought was taking over and pointing out some glaringly obvious points that it was not likely.

She wanted to burst into tears and tell Alex how she felt. She wanted to tell him that she was falling in love with him and she wanted to tell him that she did not want him to go anywhere after his mission was over, but she knew that it was dangerous for him here. Even when he completed the mission the mob and the government would still be chasing him and trying to take his world away. They were threatened by who he was and by what he was going to do. It directly conflicted with the way of life of most of them. But that was only because of the lack of understanding and the fact that they were terrified that it might somehow force them to relinquish some of the power that they had.

Alex did not say much during the first part of the plane ride. He just sat beside her, holding her hand softly in his and letting her rest her tired head on his strong shoulder while he read. It was still amazing to her how he could do so many normal Earthly things without thinking about them and how he was able to appear completely normal and not raise suspicion to anyone about anything. If she had found herself on his planet she would not have survived two minutes before everyone knew that she was different and that she had no idea how to get along and survive there.

But his planet had been studying Earth for many years and he had probably been watching and observing them for quite some time. He knew that one day he would come to this planet and that he would continue his grandfather’s legacy. That must have been a heavy burden to hold onto in your soul as a young child. But she did not feel surprised at all that Alex had accepted it. He was just that strong willed. He knew that something had to be done and no one else in his family had been willing to make the journey to do it. Alex had not really blatantly said that, but Emily was able to pick up on the subtext of it pretty well during their conversations.

As she thought about the mission that was in front of them and what part—if any—she was really going to be able to play in it she found her eyes getting heavy. She had not rested as much as she wanted to, but she thought the sleep that she did get was pretty sound. She had been operating under the assumption that her eyes were tired, but her body was not. That only tended to happen when one had repeatedly interrupted sleep.

But it was a good way to be interrupted. She and Alex had made love no less than three times over the evening, each one taking turns waking the other up for some fooling around. Emily had never known that was a thing that could happen. She had never known that two people could spend the night making love off and on without any other hidden agendas or without anyone being fake about anything.

Emily tried not to dwell on the past, but when she looked back on the relationships that she had previously and compared them to the new relationship she was beginning with Alex—if that was what you wanted to call it—they were totally pathetic and she wished she had never wasted time on any of them. That was the dumbest mistake she had ever made, but she figured that it was a learning experience and now she could move on with her life and move through the world having grown from the experience.

The plane began to explode from the front. Emily instantly smelled an odd mixture of blood and jet fuel with added smoke on top coming towards her in the form of a humongous fireball that was consuming everything in its path and traveling at an incredible speed.

It was going to eviscerate them. They were doomed. Her life was over.

Alex grabbed Emily’s arm and pulled her close to him as he broke the seat belt and jumped with her out of the way of the fireball, just narrowly missing being burned to a crisp.

The humongous hole in the plane was creating a huge vacuum of air that was sucking people out of their seats, sending them flying into the great, vast nothingness of the bright blue sky. The flames were all around them now as they continued to fly out of the hull of the plane and the wreckage of what was almost behind them.

Alex reached out and grabbed onto the bottom of a seat and held on for dear life as his other hand held onto Emily’s hand. She thought she could feel his sweaty grip loosening, but she assured herself that was impossible. Alex was too strong and he would never let anything happen to her. They had a future in front of them. They had a life that awaited them. They just had to get through all of this and they could start over. They could live their lives the way they wanted on their own terms without having to worry about being in constant danger.

Emily’s grip was definitely slipping now, as her greasy and sweaty palm provided lubricant on Alex’s skin, allowing the gravity and the vacuum suction of the trashed plane to pull her downward towards the howling abyss. Emily grabbed and squeezed as tightly as she could, trying to reach for Alex with her other arm, but the suction of her body was too much. She felt like she was being twisted like a pretzel and she was being torn away from Alex and torn away from the life that loomed in front of her.

Emily realized at that moment that she was not afraid; she was beyond that. She was well into the state of mind that panic tries to set free, but hope keeps locked away. Everything around her was happening in slow motion and she was thinking about the fact that a part of her mind had already accepted that she was going to die. She knew that she should be panic stricken and doing everything she could to fight to survive, but she just could not move her body enough to do it. The strength inside of her had left and she was just ready to give up. She was tired of fighting the world and she was tired of fighting herself. She wished she could have just one more chance to reconstruct her life and do it all over. She would have unburdened herself and let go of all the pain and sorrow that she had dealt with in her life. She would have stopped worrying about other people and what they thought she should do or be. She would have allowed herself to love so that the same love would have found her sooner.

But she might not have met Alex. And that would have made everything else meaningless. That was the biggest thing she regretted—not being able to start her life with him. She had been given a taste of it all and now it was being taken from her.

“Hang on!” Alex yelled. He was beginning to growl and transform.

She could see the panic in his eyes as his hands began to twist into claws, thicken and grow fur. The fingers began to get shorter and broader as the nails sharpened and lengthened.

Emily’s own grip was fading rapidly beneath the changes to the surface area of the skin she had been holding onto. She could tell that Alex was trying as hard as he could to stop the change and keep himself human, but it was failing. He was transforming into the beast. It was almost like the beast inside of him knew that this was not supposed to work. It was pushing her away when Alex needed her most.

Emily whispered “good bye” a split second before her hand slipped from Alex’s grasp and she began to plunge downward towards the ball of flame that was burning the air beneath her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the heat began to burn her skin—

“Wake up!”

Emily took a huge gasp and sat upright in her chair. Her arms were flailing in front of her striking the head rest and knocking her tray down in front of her. Alex grabbed her arms and held them at her sides, forcing her to look into his sweet face.

Alex. He was alive! He was so beautiful and he was really there. Emily glanced around at the rest of the plane nervously, but saw nothing except passengers trying to stave off boredom with ear phones, books, and magazines.

It had all been a dream. Everything was fine. She was perfectly ok. Nothing was happening.

“Jesus…” Emily said to herself as she relaxed back against the seat.

“Bad dream?” Alex said with a smile.

“It was terrible,” Emily replied. She grabbed her bottle of water—which she did not remember ordering or receiving—and chugged half of it. She was covered in sweat and her throat felt drier than she could ever remember it being. The water felt sweet and soothing against her hot, dry throat. She let the cool wetness slide down her gullet slowly as if she were trying to absorb it through her flesh instead of taking it down to her stomach.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex asked.

Emily shook her head. “No. It doesn’t matter what it was about. It was just a dream.”

Alex cocked an eyebrow at her as if he did not believe her, but she ignored it. She just wanted to relax and try to recover from the nightmare. It had seemed so real. She could smell everything. She could see everything and feel it. It was probably because she was sitting in the actual location where the nightmare took place. Her subconscious was pulling in all of the sights and smells around her. She had never experienced a dream that vivid before. It was intense and perhaps the most frightening thing that she had ever seen.

“Well, it had to have been some dream to get you so worked up,” Alex said.