by Elijah Lurie

Edgar Villalobos stood in his clean pilot’s uniform, new roller suitcase gripped neatly in his hand, and looked out over the farm. His parents had tried lettuce. A heat wave had killed the crop, and now the plants lay dry and wilting. He could never understand why they’d gone into farming. A warm breeze blew over the field, smelling of dust and rot. The wind was light. It would be a smooth flight, he hoped. He could hear his Uber approaching.

Today was his first flight. He’d flown passenger planes, and spent endless hours in the simulator, but today he would fly a Boeing 737-800 airbus filled with 160 passengers, sitting three by three, hurdling through the sky.

Why be a farmer when you can be a pilot? A pilot is in control. His family, especially his younger sister, wanted him to stay in Bakersfield, but his twenty-fourth birthday was fast approaching, and if he stayed any longer, he would become a farmer, on a dying farm. So instead, Edgar became a pilot. The Uber arrived and he got in.

At the airport, he found his way to the pilot’s lounge. It was a bleak room with white walls, shuttered windows, and black faux leather chairs arranged in a dentist’s receptionist office format. In there, sat one other man. Edgar sat across from him and two seats to the left.

“Edgar?” The man said. His shirt was pressed and his skin was pale white. His hair was receding, although he seemed to still be somewhat young. His cheeks were rosy and obedient. “Yes. And that makes you my first officer. Remind me your name?”

“Frances.”

“Nice to meet you, Frances. I’m looking forward to our flight,” Edgar said.

“Winds look steady. Should be a neat flight.”

For the next three minutes, the men didn’t talk to each other. Frances looked polite and unintelligent. Edgar fidgeted and scratched his knee. It had occurred to him that the passengers on the flight were dependent on him, and it made him nervous. Winds were predicted to be steady, though, Frances had said. What if they hit a flock of birds? He wished there was a bird forecast.

“This will be my first time flying a 737,” Edgar said, and regretted saying that, because who would want to hear that from their pilot? He received an awkward grin from Frances. Then they went back to silence.

Eventually, the time came to board. Edgar checked his watch and stood, extended the handle of his suitcase, and said to the ground beside Francis, “Welp.”

Frances stood too, and they walked together to the gate. The airport air was stale and clean. He felt guilty leaving his sister behind, in the heat. But he had to escape. Decide his own future. When the plane leaves the ground, he thought, my future begins.

They boarded the plane and entered the cockpit. When the door shut, he felt just like he was in the simulator again. He knew there was a plane behind them, filled with human beings, but then again, maybe there wasn’t. The dials beside his arm and above and around him, the yoke, the sensors and displays, beeping and flashing and buzzing. For a moment after he sat down, he felt overwhelmed and out of place, as he had when he’d first sat in the simulator. He’d enjoyed learning what every switch and dial controlled. Now, he took a breath and remembered. He knew what to do, and could handle any trial that nature decided to hand him. The wind looked steady, still. Humidity 22%. Clear to fly. He flicked a switch, and the engine came alive. “Ready to taxi?” Edgar said.

“Ready,” Frances said. His voice was placid and content. Edgar, on the other hand, felt tense. He kept having to remind himself that this wasn’t the simulator, that behind him was an entire airplane with over a hundred people inside, all unaware that this was his first flight.

He taxied out onto the runway. Then, a voice in his ear. Cleared for takeoff. The voice sounded muffled, like Edgar had wax in his ears.

He engaged the turbines, and felt the plane slowly gain speed. The engine roared like an overheating supercomputer. Faster. Rubber burning and wings shuddering. He reached critical speed, and pulled back on the yoke.

But instead of lifting up into the air, the plane dipped downward. There was no crash. It wasn’t concrete or dirt that he encountered, but pure blackness. It was as if the plane had dipped underwater, and from his place in the cockpit all he could see was hazy darkness, like the static on a dead radio channel. Frances didn’t seem to notice. The plane continued to dive down into the ground.

The blackness got darker and cooler and everything was muffled, and the plane flew deeper. Edgar’s hands remained on the yoke, pulling up, as if it were a problem of him not pulling hard enough, but the plane continued to dive. He looked over to Frances, but Frances was gone. And the plane was growing hazy now, dissolving into the haziness of the space around it. Edgar gripped the yoke tighter, hands sweating on the hard plastic.

It struck him that he might be hallucinating. At this moment, was poor Francis commanding the plane as they ascended over Bakersfield, while Edgar’s barely conscious body writhed beside him? The thought brought with it a surge of anxiety, and Edgar strained his eyes to see reality. He opened and closed them and there was no difference. He pinched the skin on his wrist. He almost shouted out, but restrained himself in case he really was there, with Frances

not knowing of his current state. The more afraid he became, the steeper he descended, and the more opaque the blackness became.

The airplane dissolved completely away, and Edgar was left holding the yoke and descending, though it was hard to tell which way was up and which was down. He could no longer hear the engine, or anything. The only sensation left was the feeling of his hands on the yoke pulling up desperately, but even that sensation was going to pins and needles now, and he felt the yoke slipping through his hands.

Am I dying? Edgar thought. Though he was only 24 years old, he wondered if he’d had a stroke. He opened his mouth to utter the word ‘help,’ but no sound emerged. Now everything and everyone had disappeared, and Edgar floated downwards through the blackness, which wasn’t blackness anymore but would be better described as nothingness, because he felt neither cool nor hot, pain nor comfort, and even the emotions in his brain seemed to have disappeared. And then, he felt his hands start to turn to sand and float away into the nothingness. It was a cosmic sand, because it didn’t feel or look like anything, but it was sand nonetheless. And then his feet and legs and arms turned to sand too. The particles floated away, and at first he felt the parts of himself leaving, but then they were no longer parts of himself and they were no longer leaving, and they were simply gone.

He was deep now. His senses had gone, and all that remained was his breathing. He felt the in and out, but it wasn’t air, just emptiness flowing in and out of emptiness. And then it was all sand, and it all floated away, and Edgar was no more.