10 Jul Full Moon Flights

Last year BloodyDisgusting gave it 4 out of 5 screams.

Fangoria Magazine touted it as “the most original haunted house concept on the market.”

But you shouldn’t believe the reviews.  No, really; don’t.

Full Moon Flights is not what it seems.

According to the brochure, they are a modern haunted house for fans of fear, a departure from the ordinary and a journey into the unknown where nightmares are inescapable.

“We don’t allow guests to book flights; instead, we let those who have the courage and curiosity to come find us,” the blurb read.

Everything about it screamed a publicity stunt to me.  A private jetliner filled with costumed actors and jump scares designed to give people an adrenaline rush all night long.

The latest event was this Halloween near me, and since I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the evening, I decided to take a drive out to the provided coordinates where the plane was said to land.

Departure time was scheduled for precisely 12:01 am, so I got there early, intent on documenting each and every aspect of the experience.

Besides myself, there were about six other cars parked at an old airstrip.  A fitting place for the spooky flight to land, I thought as I looked about the dilapidated buildings.  No one had used this place in a very long time, if ever.

I grabbed my cell and a small backpack filled with emergency supplies and gear, everything that I thought I would need for the night, but then from the looks of some of the other patron’s gear, it seemed I was the one underprepared.

“First time?” a woman wearing a Freddy Krueger shirt asked as she offered me a small capsule.

“Yeah…what’s this for?” I asked.

“Helps keep your head in the game…for a little while anyway,” she said as she stared up at the sky.  “Guess they want to be fashionably late, like usual.”

“How many times have you been a passenger?” I asked.

I remembered reading that some claimed the event had staff hidden among the guests to try and boost interest, so everything she told me I took with a grain of salt at first.

“Five times, maybe six?  It’s a helluva ride, I tell you what,” she answered as she extended her hand and added, “I’m Isabella.  Nice to meet you.”

“Max…same here.  When are they supposed to arrive?” I asked, noticing the other passengers were getting antsy.

I couldn’t see any signs of a plane in the sky, and I wondered what sort of showy entrance the proprietors have in mind to dazzle us.

“Don’t know.  These things are unpredictable.” She lit a smoke, and I wandered toward the other passengers.

“She try to sell you one of those pills too, eh?” a man with an Australian accent asked as I looked down at my palm where the red and white tablet was at.

“Is it some kind of hallucinogenic?” I whispered.

“Don’t know mate, but I personally wouldn’t risk it.  This night is probably going to be crazy enough as is,” he told me.

“You came all the way from around the world, just for this?” I asked.  He didn’t respond, but his eyes showed a story of pain and heartache.  He was searching for something but wouldn’t dare disclose what.

The others were not as fascinating.  Two twins from Manchester were here for a birthday present to each other, and a couple of young reporters finished up our group.  Considering the price of tickets for the event, I knew that to get their money worth, they all expected an extreme fright.

Twenty minutes passed, and the flight still hadn’t arrived, so the taller twin, Tania, started to make a fuss.

“This is so unprofessional!” she said as she walked toward the wide hangar bay.  I gathered she was hoping to find someone to complain to, and it was the first time that I noticed we were the only ones here.  I had read online the flights were always packed to the gills, so why were there only 6 of us?

“What do you suppose is going on?” Isabella asked.  She wasn’t as chatty either; in fact, the whole group seemed on edge as we followed Tania to the other side of the airfield.  Even the wind had stopped blowing.  Something about the night just suddenly seemed more sinister.

As we turned to go back toward where we had parked, a sharp burst of air pierced the darkness, and all of us felt it nearly knock us down.  Tom the Aussie lost his hat and actually tumbled over as I looked up and saw the large passenger plane seemingly appear out of nowhere.

It was about the size of a Delta airline jetliner, with at least the capacity for 150 passengers or more and painted entirely black to match the dark sky.  A rumble of thunder crackled across the backdrop of the plane as I noted that there were only a few windows and only one entrance, further showing that they intended for you to have an immersive experience once aboard.

I knew it hadn’t been there moments ago, and now all of a sudden, it had landed.  The ramp to the first-class seating area was already lowered as though they had been the ones waiting for us rather than the other way around.

Isabella gave me a nudge and said nervously, “I told ya they know how to make an entrance.”

I nodded and grabbed my things, heading toward the plane as I spotted one of the stewardesses gathering luggage from the other passengers.  Tom was the first in line, eager to be aboard.

“Welcome back, Mister Bradley.  Always a pleasure to have you flying with us,” the pale blonde employee said.  Her face looked so perfect I half thought she was a robot of some kind.  So pristine and exact.

Tom became red in the face, apparently not anticipating that they would give away his apparent frequent flyer status and then dashed up the steps to find a seat before any of us had a chance to open a conversation about it.

“Do you have your tickets?” the stewardess asked, focusing on the twins next.

Rylee, the shorter one, took them out of her pocket, and both of them eagerly entered without much fanfare.

I was next.

“Welcome back, Mister Declan.  I see you came prepared this time,” the stewardess said as I took out my ticket.  I gave her a look of confusion.

“This is my first time,” I told her.

The stewardess didn’t blink as she ripped the ticket and told me, “Of course it is…yes.  I must have confused you with someone else…”

I didn’t bother asking any other questions as I figured it was probably part of the show and boarded the plane as well.

At the front, before the first-class cabin area, two more blonde stewardesses that looked almost identical to the one I had seen outside greeted me outside of the pilot’s chambers and offered me a warm drink, which resembled some kind of raspberry tonic.

“Before takeoff, we recommend all passengers drink this mixture.  It will prevent any sort of nausea or displacement,” the first woman told me.

I knew it was likely they wouldn’t let me board unless I downed the concoction, so I downed it hurriedly and then pushed open the curtains to look at the interior of the cabin.

Much to my surprise, it looked like an ordinary jetliner would with rows of compartments above the seats for luggage and about 5 seats on either side of the aisle, most of which were empty.

I checked my stub to see where I was supposed to seat.

Economy row C, seat 3.

The Aussie was the only one of us in first class and I almost envied his deep pockets, wondering if his experience would be entirely different from our own.

Back in economy, I immediately felt a bit more cramped and claustrophobic, especially due to the dim lighting.  Was that for aesthetics, I wondered as I moved to my seat and noted I was near a window.  A window that appeared to be sealed shut.

A moment later, an Asian businessman appeared from the curtain and nodded, sitting down next to me.

“Did you get here late?” I asked, not recalling him in the crowd outside.

He responded in his native tongue and took the seat beside me, nervously fidgeting with his wedding ring as more passengers boarded.

“Bloody hell, where are all these people coming from?” I asked, noticing a whole family pass us to go to third-class.

I reached over to my window to try and see if maybe a large group had shown up at the last minute, but then Isabella reached from the row behind me and kept me from opening it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she warned.

I snatched my hand away, tired of her games and pulled the shutter on the window up anyway.

But the airfield didn’t look familiar anymore.  Instead, it seemed as though we were landed somewhere in a busy city district, like Hong Kong or Seoul.  Nowhere near the same rustic countryside of Midwest America.

“What the hell…?” I whispered as Isabella shut it back.

“We’re about to take off, and trust me, you want these closed,” she warned again.  This time I decided to listen.

Another stewardess appeared near the front of the cabin and grabbed a small speaker connected to the compartment beside her to give us a few guidelines.  I couldn’t help but notice that now the plane was seemingly packed full of people.

“Good evening.  On behalf of all of us here at Full Moon Flights, we want to thank you again for joining us on this amazing journey.  The captain has turned on the fasten seatbelts sign at this time as we go over a few instructions in the event of an emergency,” she said in a singsong voice.  Honestly, she seemed a bit too chipper, given the information she next presented.

“As you might have noticed during your arrival, there are no emergency exits or equipment aboard the flight.  We have optimized the cabin to be entirely for the experience into the unknown.  That being said, should we encounter any unanticipated turbulence, we ask all passengers to remain seated.  The safest bet for us to reach our destination will be your full cooperation in these circumstances.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, especially how dangerous it sounded.  I heard one man behind me cuss profusely as the stewardess next explained there was no emergency oxygen on the airliner either.

“Rest assured that what you will be dealing with tonight will take your breath away, but if you can face it…you will get to your destination as intended,” she said as she finished her announcement and then disappeared to the front of the plane.  Something about the way she spoke made me very uneasy.  Her choice of words felt intentionally vague.

A clamor of gossip stirred as we all wondered what the hell we had signed up for.

“This must be just to get us nervous,” a younger girl said a few rows up.

“I heard they intentionally make it this intense before the show starts,” another man said.

It made me a little calmer to hear these rumors swirl about, but I still had no idea what to expect.  Behind me, Isabella squeezed my shoulder and muttered, “Buckle up, Max.”

I obeyed her and listened as a new voice came over the intercom.  This one was gruff and sounded distorted.  Almost inhuman.

“This is your captain speaking.  We are T-minus 3 minutes to take off.”

I’m not sure why but the succinct way he spoke, coupled with the way my stomach was twisting into a knot, made me very uneasy.  There was no turning back.  No escape, I realized.

Then the plane began to move.

Instinctively I gripped the seat cushion as I felt the engines begin to roar and the plane shake and pick up speed.

The Asian businessman next to me did the same, closing his eyes and seemingly chanting.  Was he praying?

I could hear the wheels skid against the runway, and the noise grow louder as I was pushed into the seat a bit by the thrust of the engines.  Then we began to ascend.

The roar got louder as I looked about at some of the other passengers to see their reaction.  Some were grabbing bags to puke in, clearly new flyers, while others were excitedly counting the seconds as we kept going higher.  I wasn’t sure which category I fit in, but I was ready for the flight to stop its rush into the heavens.

The plane shook again as we reached what I assumed was the highest altitude, and the light above my seat told me I could move about the cabin freely.

Immediately I turned to Isabella to get some clear understanding of what to expect, only to find she had already unbuckled and left to the third-class cabin.  I sighed in frustration, trying to get the attention of a stewardess.  But the women were now standing toward the front, like statues unblinking, looking on toward us.  It was bizarre but exactly what I expected for this sort of thing.

I took a few breaths and calmed down, reminding myself that I should be trying to enjoy the experience as I saw the curtain behind the stewardesses open and a woman wearing a geisha dress and kabuki mask enter, dancing amid the aisle toward my row.

Immediately the Asian man next to me tensed up.  I saw his face had a look of panic.  Was this someone he knew?  Had the flight personnel secretly allowed them to board?  Was he in danger?  The woman got closer and then bowed respectfully toward me, clearly wanting to sit beside the businessman.  I’m not sure why, but I felt obliged to let her in and moved out toward the aisle.

The businessman started to shout something in alarm and tried to unbuckle, but then the woman straddled his lap.  It almost looked like she wanted to make out with him as I watched her gently touch his face.  He started to shout louder, and I watched as the woman leaned in for a kiss.

Someone squeezed my shoulder again, and I turned to see Isabella standing there.  “Come with me,” she ordered.  I half-wanted to see what would happen to the man I was sitting beside but still obeyed.  Clearly, she knew more about this flight than me.

As we entered third-class, I found myself taking a moment to adjust to the darkness in the room.  There weren’t any windows back here.  The only dim lighting was coming from the screens on the back of each of the seats.  Miniature flat-screen televisions that all of the passengers were glued to like zombies.

“What is this?” I whispered, worried that our voices would break some of them from a trance.

“I believe they are doing something to them, brainwashing…or something.  I’m not sure; I was hoping you could help me get into the luggage compartment overhead,” she said as we made it to the middle of the aisle.

I noticed that the expressions on the people’s faces seemed contorted with terror or dread, as though whatever they were watching was driving them mad.

“Sure…but before I do that, you need to be honest with me.  Why are you really here?” I asked.

Isabella bit her lip and glanced toward the door.

“We don’t have time for that.  The stewardesses will be here any moment.  So, can you help break this open or not?”

I huffed and looked at the lock, realizing that I actually did have something that could open it up.

“Yeah…sure.  Let me go back to my luggage.”

Isabella told me to hurry as I returned to economy class, and I saw the stewardesses were now removing…something from the seat near me.

It looked like the shriveled up remains of the businessman.  It looked like a corpse.

“Mister DeClan, your in-flight movie is about to start,” the first stewardess said, as I noticed that now there was a mini-tv in front of my seat as well.  Had that always been there?

“What happened to the man sitting beside me?” I asked.  I now noticed there seemed to be red dark stains on the seat.  Blood.

“It’s best if you keep your journey to yourself and not worry about others,” the stewardess said with a pleasant smile.  She stood there, waiting for me to comply with her instructions.

Hesitantly I sat down and put on the headphones.  Everything about this was beginning to grow increasingly stranger and stranger, not what I signed up for at all.

As I activated the screen in front of me, a burst of white noise pierced my ears, and I nearly knocked the headphones off.  Then crashing waves filled the screen, and I froze.

What I was seeing didn’t seem possible.  It was showing me memories of my time as a child near the beach.  Memories I’ve never shared with anyone.

I watched in amazement as I saw my own mother in the waves.  This was the moment that she had taken her own life, I thought.  A secret that I had wanted to take to my grave.

How could this flight know?

The noise got louder as I heard whispers amid the waves.  Something was speaking to me, telling me its own secrets.  Chills ran down my spine as every moment played out exactly as I remembered it.  My mother was just walking into the water, unconcerned with my cries as the waves crashed over her body.  The whispers got louder.  It sounded *just* like her.

“Join…me…” it croaked.

Then, shots rang out amid the cabin.

I jolted back to reality and saw Tom entering economy class waving a pistol about.  The stewardess was his victim, her lifeless body sprawled on the aisle in front of me.  Except there was no blood…she just looked like a mannequin now.

“What the hell, man?” I shouted, standing up as he neared my seat.

“Don’t let ‘em harvest ya, Max.  You are too good for that.  We can make it through this together.  But you have to help me, you hear?” he said.

Other passengers were screaming as he waved the gun around, warning them to stay back.

“What the hell is wrong with you?  They are bloody frightened of you,” I shouted.

“That’s exactly what they want you to think.  Now take me to that stupid chick you talked to earlier, the frequent flyer,” he ordered.

I raised my hands up defensively, and we walked together toward third-class.

“Look, whatever you think this is, it’s not.  These are just actors,” I told him as we entered the dark room.  Even when I said that I didn’t fully believe it.  Something deep in the pit of my stomach told me that none of this was normal.

I planned to use the sudden shift in light to take advantage of him, but I never made it that far.

Instead, the entire plane started to shake due to turbulence, and he lost the gun.  It slid across the floor as he fell on me, and I shouted to Isabella to find it.

She obeyed, and I turned to punch Tom straight in the jaw as the lights in the cabin began to flicker.

Then all of the passengers around us started to convulse and go into shock, seemingly being given a stroke due to the sudden loss of power.

Amid the chaos, somehow Isabella found the weapon and aimed it toward me.  Tom had already produced a knife, and I shouted for her to shoot him.

Instead, she aimed at the luggage compartment over our heads.  A single bullet caused the lock to blast off, and several small bags fell, causing Tom’s knife to become lodged in my shoulder.

“Shit!!” I said as I looked across at some of the passengers, begging them to help.  Instead, they were beginning to attack each other.  One man was mauling out his son’s eyes and eating them.  A woman was digging straight into her face, trying to rip skin off.  And two children were smashing each other in the stomach constantly with sharp forks.

Any hope I had that this was all an act died at that moment.

Isabella scrambled to search amid the bags as Tom got his bearings.  Then she found what she was looking for.  It looked like a small briefcase.

“Don’t!” Tom shouted.

I frowned, trying to figure out what the hell was happening as she put in the correct key code and the latches unbolted.  Inside there were six vials filled with a glowing yellow serum.  She grabbed one and rushed toward the Aussie.

I crawled out of the way into one of the seats as she lunged and pierced his neck, forcing the needle in all the way.  I saw Tom’s eyes dilate and then go completely black.  Then he fell to the floor unconscious.  I pulled out his knife and put it in my pocket, just in case things got crazier from here.

It was a smart call.

Before I got a chance to even ask Isabella what the hell she was doing, she was through the curtain to economy class.  I slowly stood up, trying to catch my breath, when one of the mutilated passengers grabbed ahold of me, forcing me to stare into their hollow, sunken face.  There wasn’t even a face there anymore, just a maw with endless teeth.  Somehow, they had transformed into nightmarish beings.

I pushed it away and tumbled over Tom to get back to economy class, pausing in between the two cabins to go into the restroom.

The small room felt so much more claustrophobic than usual as I locked the door and looked at my reflection in the mirror.  Splashing water on my face, I tried to get ahold of myself and chanted, “It’s all in your head, Max…it’s all in your head…”

I gripped the sink for a minute and felt my breathing return to normal, hoping that maybe I was able to come back to normalcy.

Then I noticed something shimmer in the mirror.  I looked at it for a short moment, frowning in concern.

Then my reflection smiled wickedly toward me.  A second later, a strong icy hand emerged from the mirror and gripped my neck.

I was gasping for breath as I felt my reflection strangle me, and I reached into my pocket where Tom’s knife was still hidden away.

I sliced it across the doppelgänger’s arm, causing strange black slime to bleed out from him as he loosened his grip.  I escaped to the main cabin.

I was still trying to make heads or tails of what was happening when I caught sight of the twins.  After all that had just happened, I could hardly remember their names.  Rylee?  Tania?

All I knew for sure was they were both covered in blood, hobbling toward me with heads.  Knives in their hands, having carved off each other’s skulls, blocking my way to first class.  I could hear Isabella shouting something to a stewardess as I looked back toward third-class.  The jetliner was shaking violently again, and I heard the captain announce something overhead.

“Attention esteemed guests, we are entering a rough patch and advise you to buckle up,” he said in a voice that sounded too excited for the coming maelstrom.

Suddenly I was thrust to the ceiling.  The twins fell upward as well, their bloody bodies toppling like ragdolls as I found myself unable to avoid sliding into them.

The airliner shook and I slowly moved toward the aisle where this all began, trying desperately to regain my footing.

Then I heard a loud growl from the third-class cabin.

I shouldn’t have looked.  Tom’s head peered out of the curtain, but what followed it was not human.

It had a long neck, like a giraffe without skin, and legs that were as wide as the entire cabin, stretching out toward passengers and stepping on them like ants.  The legs had mouths like a Venus Flytrap, shrieking as the strange creature twisted its body like a contortionist.  It clung to the ceiling, Tom’s pure black eyes looking straight at me as his chest opened up and hundreds of miniature spidery creatures skittered toward me.

“Holy shit!” Isabella shouted as she entered the room.  Tom leaped toward her, shrieking as his mandibles ripped into her chest.  The plane started to level again, and I moved down to my seat, desperately trying to find some way off.

All I could think to do was break the window.  I still had Tom’s knife, and my rattled brain told me to give it a try.  Reaching toward the window, I raised it up even as I heard Isabella scream for me to stop.

I was expecting to see just the darkness of the night.  Instead, it was blinding light, hitting me right in the face as I covered my eyes and tried to hit the window.

I heard the glass crack, and I kept going as hard as I could.

Suddenly the screams in the cabin were replaced with the roar of a void.  Whatever was beyond the window, I had managed to reach it.  And now we were all about to be sucked out.  I gripped my seat as hard as I could as alarms began to blare.

Tom’s gargantuan body was the first to go.  It was like watching a camel be shoved through a needle hole.  His face contorted, and I heard the breaking of bones.  He tried to grab hold of me, his tongue lapping out and sliding against my face as I heard him mindlessly groan.

His front claw grabbed at my hand, and I lost my grip, my legs hitting the shattered glass as I felt the roar of the plane against my body.  It felt like I was a puppet, being dragged by a massive child.  I was gripping the window, looking toward the heavens.

I can’t describe the impossible things I saw in that sky.  This was not our Earth.  Not our reality.  It was a kaleidoscope of universes crashing into one another, exploding in rainbows of colors that I couldn’t comprehend.  From the endless ethereal streaks of light and dark, massive tentacles wrapped around the plane like vines, suffocating it.

I could see something just beyond the horizon.  A maw.  The jaws of eternal damnation themselves.  Ready to swallow me whole.

Isabella reached out of the window to grab my hand and struggled to pull me in.  I was lost in the gaze of the eyes of the demonic entity that awaited us.

As soon as I was inside, I saw that she had another serum prepared, this time for me.

“You really should have taken that pill, bud,” she warned as she stabbed in my arm before I could get a chance to react.

The world spun.

I saw her face begin to melt away.  In its place first were the twins, growing two necks and forming a single monster to grin devilishly at me.

Then they faded and showed the geisha woman, except this time her kabuki mask was made of flesh — the remains of her husband.

Her long, claw-like fingernails dragged at my chest as she removed the mask.  And I saw my own mother.  Her lifeless eyes locked with my own as I fell into an ocean of sleep.

I can’t remember what happened next.  It felt like I was having an out-of-body experience.  I was above the plane now, watching as the tentacles of the monster crushed it and swallowed it whole.  The shrieks of passengers.  Not just hundreds, but millions from all across reality, being fed into this hungry monster’s jaws.

Then I was back in my seat.

The unfasten your seatbelt sign flashed on and I gripped my cushion, looking toward the Asian businessman who was now seemingly alive.

How was I alive?  I looked down at my arm, rubbing the place where Isabella had injected me.  It still felt sore.

This hadn’t been a dream, I realized as I looked around the cabin.  The overhead intercom came on again.

“Attention passengers, we are about to arrive at our destination…please remain seated to enjoy the full experience.”

I felt a squeeze on my shoulder, and then Isabella whispered into my ear.  “Everything you just experienced was real.  It just hasn’t happened *here* yet.  You need to find Tom and get off this flight.  Now.”

I was about to turn to her when she squeezed my sore spot harder and snapped at me.  “Don’t look back, don’t hesitate.  Just run.” Then she passed me a gun.  Was it the same one that Tom had used before?  I wasn’t sure.

My heart starts pumping fast as I unbuckled and moved toward first-class.  The stewardesses were there blocking my way.  For some reason, I knew they would try to stop me.  So, I swung the hammer of the weapon straight toward the left one.  The two of them slammed into each other, and it sounded like two dummies collapsing against one another in a store.

I pushed past them to enter the first-class seating area.  Most of the passengers here were rich upper class, just like any other normal flight, but as I moved down the aisle, I couldn’t help but notice the color was drained from their faces.  They were trapped in their seats, unable to move.  I reached toward one man to try and wake him, and his skin became as brittle as ash.

“They are husks,” a voice said in front of me.

I turned and looked to see a man standing there wearing a pilot uniform.  But nothing about him made me feel that he was human.  He might have once been, but now all that remained was this memory.

“What are you doing to them?” I asked, my voice trembling as I searched the cabin for Tom.  Isabella’s warning was ringing in my head, but I still needed to *know* more.

“Only what they signed up for…what you’ve already experienced.  You’ve cheated, Max, seen the end of the journey and managed to make it back.  But it doesn’t matter.  The fear we can harvest from your soul is endless.  You will never truly leave this flight,” he said, taking a step toward me.

I clenched my fists and cocked the weapon toward him, letting loose a few rounds into his body.  It didn’t deter the specter.  I’m not even sure why I tried after all I had seen.

But it did grab Tom’s attention.  He stood up and moved toward me.

“What are you doing, man?  Do you want to get us both killed?” he shouted.

I looked toward the gun, my hands shaking as I saw a scar was beginning to form on my arm.  How had it gotten there?

“I think we might already be dead,” I said, passing him the weapon.  The ghost pilot was gone, temporarily, but Tom warned it wouldn’t matter.

“God, my head hurts.  That drug really did a number on me,” he said, rubbing the spot where Isabella had injected him.

“How is any of this possible?” I said, my mouth dry as he led me back through economy class.

This time I saw my doppelgänger again, sitting there staring out the window and watching as the jetliner began to shake again.  Tom was rattling off an explanation or an interpretation of events to me as we moved on.

“From what I understand, the plane moves beyond the realm of space and time that we know.  Past the horizon into a new endless dimension.  One where pure chaos is born.  The people, if they are that, who run this contraption…they are feeding a creature, trying to birth it into reality…this reality that we know of.  It’s growing stronger, Max.  Every new flight is harvesting more memories of reality and fear into it,” he said.

We were almost to the back of the plane now.  No one had stopped us.  His explanation made some sense to me as we stood there, and he started to look among the things before commenting, “You probably have a dozen other questions about this mess, like how I know all this and why Isabella – if that is her real name – is helping us. I don’t know.  I came onboard for my wife.  She boarded a flight 3 years ago.  And I’m gonna find her.”

He paused and passed me the weapon along with a parachute.  “But that isn’t how your journey ends, Max.  You’ve got a chance to get out.  Warn the world if you can.  Just don’t worry about me.”

“If your wife is trapped here, you’ll need to give her the serum that we both took…”

He nodded, nodding me adieu as he left to search the plane.

The luggage compartment was oddly silent as the jetliner shook again, and I put on the backpack.  I slowly walked toward the back of the plane, near to where the landing gear was stored.  It would be the safest place to jump, I realized.

I crouched down and gently kicked at the shutters beneath the gear, wondering how strong they were.

Then I heard a faint whisper.  Someone was there with me.

Instinctively I jolted up and cocked the weapon.  “Show yourself.”

From amid the luggage, I saw a shadow move and slither toward me.  Eventually, it formed a shape.

The ghost pilot?

No, it was a doppelgänger of my own mother, I realized.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned her.  Her eyes looked so watery and full of pain.

“Max…it’s me.  I’m real.  This is real, all of it,” she whispered to me.

“It can’t be.  You’re dead,” I shouted back.  “I saw you die!”

“That was just one way my journey ended.  It doesn’t have to be that way anymore,” she said with a gentle smile.

“The Journey has shown me so much.  We can have a life together.  Endless amounts of lives…”

I heard another rustle amid the luggage.  It was Isabella coming to check on me.

“Max, don’t listen to her.  You have to leave.”

“You can’t leave, Max.  No one can.  Board the flight, and you are part of the ship…” another voice cackled amid the rafters.

My mother raised a welcoming hand toward me.  “This can be the life we never got together,” she pleaded with me.

I knew it was a trap.  But it felt so inviting.  To be able to escape into an endless cacophony of realities where I could experience the love of a mom I never knew.

But none of it would be real, I realized.

I steadied my aim and fired straight at her head.

The shadow screamed and blurred into a thousand slithering eels as Isabella shouted for me to go.

I turned and slammed my foot against the landing gear, again and again.  The black slime oozed toward me, the screeching eels rapidly closing in for a chokehold.

Then, finally, the metal gave way, and I saw clouds beneath my feet.

“Come with me!” I shouted to Isabella.  After all she had done to help me, it felt like helping her was the right thing to do.

“It’s too late for me.  I’m part of the ship already, but I’ll be here to help people get off every damn time,” she responded.

I reached for her, ignoring her insistence that she was doomed.  But instead, the shadows ensnared her, and I watched as black slime poured into her eyes and mouth, the shadow beginning to eat away at her body.  I knew I had to leave.

Crawling down to the landing gear, the rush of air beneath the plane was overwhelming.  I heard the screams from the flight roar and didn’t hesitate this time.

I jumped.

Spiraling into the air, I heard the roar of white noise and looked up to see an empty sky, like the plane had never been there at all.  The force of my fall began to increase, and I pulled at my parachute cord, feeling it tug and jolt me up in the air.  Then everything began to slow.  I was drifting amid the atmosphere.

Gradually I made my way to the surface, tumbling about on the soft ground as I got my bearings.  I was back at the airfield.

Standing up, I checked my watch and realized that not a minute had passed since I boarded.

I shook off the parachute and stumbled toward the road, watching as some cars approached.

I covered my eyes as one car parked in front of me, and a man dressed as a British explorer stepped out.

“What in the devil have you just been through, my good man?” he asked, clearly startled by my appearance.  I saw a couple behind him holding tickets, apparently awaiting an upcoming flight.

I opened my mouth to tell, to warn him, then I saw a familiar face in the crowd.  Isabella.

I moved toward her, grabbed hold of her arm and muttered, “Are you real?  Is this…real?”

“Hey!  Hands off!  What’s gotten into you, bud?” she said, shaking me off like she didn’t know me.

I still felt like my head was spinning.

“You’re here for the Full Moon Flight?” I asked, trying to understand, and carefully choosing my words.

“Yeah…first time.  I heard they are a scream.  You been on one yourself?” Isabella asked.

I didn’t see a hint of deception in her eyes.

Slowly I nodded, reaching into my pocket, and passing her the pill she had given me right before I boarded.  Only she hadn’t done that yet.

“You’ll need this for the trip,” I told her.  She gave me a look of puzzlement, and I walked off without another word.  I knew there was nothing I could say or even explain how I understood her role now for this.

A moment later, I felt a rush of wind, and the dark jetliner appeared right behind the hangar bay like it had before.  A journey into the unknown, an experience like no other; that’s what the reviews say.

But that isn’t what mine is going to say.

This is my review for Full Moon Flights.

Don’t believe the hype.

This event is a killer.

And you don’t want to become a frequent flyer like me.