Animals of all shapes and sizes gathered in the trees, curious, and also terrified, at the scene that had just unfolded before their eyes. Smoked lingered high in the sky, temporarily blocking out sunlight. A young lemur jumped from tree to tree in the thick canopy, his black and white tail occasionally poking through the leaves, his curiosity drove him to leave the pack behind in order to get a closer look at the wreckage. There, near the shore of the island, lay what looked like half of a plane. Massive in size, the torn plane had sunk deep into the sand. The other half was nowhere in sight, although further inland smoke could be seen rising from the trees. It was likely that the smoke led to the missing half of the plane.

Suddenly, breaking the quiet, there was a loud screech, “Ahhh! HELP! I can’t move!” The screams of terror belonged to a woman, her leg had been crushed by a food cart. Somewhere underneath all of the wreckage, there were survivors fighting to escape the flaming debris. And, as if on cue, more shouts of panic soon filled the air. The gathered animals, seeming to respond to the spreading panic, quickly rushed back inland in an attempt to escape the madness that had come to their isolated island. The young lemur made a risky jump to catch up to his pack, and, in the process, broke a weak tree branch.

The branch fell through the canopy, slapping other branches on the way down, and, eventually, it hit something that did not belong to the vast forest. Dangling in the tree was a large man, an unconscious man. Still strapped into his seat, he had been spared any major damage. Albeit, he was not out of danger yet. The airplane seat had landed awkwardly in the tree, and was slowly leaning over the edge. One wrong move would send the seat, along with himself, speeding down to the ground. It was this man, Christopher, that the falling branch hit. Luckily he was nice and drunk, so when the branch smacked his head, he hardly felt a thing. Although, it was just enough to pull him from his slumber.

“Huh, the fucks goin' on?” his voice was sluggish and low as he talked, not quite realizing what was going on. He brought his rough hands to his eyes, and attempted to rub away his exhaustion. It was then that he realized what had happened, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Instincts kicked in and his body immediately went still. “Okay, Chris. N-nothing to worry about,” he tried desperately to reassure himself. “You’re just stuck in a giant fucking tree.” There was an empty seat next to him, he could only assume that the passenger that was in the plane next to him had perished in the crash. Not wanting to end up like his fellow man, he quickly decided to escape his current situation.

“Alright, where am I?” In military training his drill sergeant has always told him to be wary of his surroundings; know where you are, know where you need to be, and know where you don’t need to be. Those had always been the golden rules. “Okay,” he took a deep breath, “I’m in the tree, I don’t need to be in the tree, and I don’t want to be in the fucking tree. I need to be on the ground. Ground, good. Tree, bad.” Taking care not to move anything but his head, so that he did not tip the seat over the edge, he looked beneath him. “There!” He shouted to no one in particular. Only a few feet beneath him was another branch. It was long, wide in circumference, and, most importantly, it looked sturdy enough to support his weight.

“Alright, all I need to do is unbuckle the seat belt and I should fall straight to it. Simple enough, right, Chris?” It was a simple plan, sure, but simple could go very wrong very fast. There was a chance that the seat would fall down with him, and probably crush him in the process. His large hands wrapped around the seat belt, and his thumb eventually came to rest on the button that led to freedom. “Fuck it!” Without any more hesitation he pushed his thumb into the button. With a click and a snap, Christopher was sent flying down. The burly man did not stop until he hit the target branch. Had his arms not been conditioned from military training, his grip might not have held. While it was not as eloquent as an acrobatics landing might have been, he managed to hold onto the branch. Sadly, though, his shirt did snag and tear on the way down. “Damn it,” he muttered. His favorite brown shirt had been ruined. Knowing that he had bigger problems to worry about, he pulled himself up and onto the tree branch. At the moment it held underneath weight. After a moment of sitting, he broke the silence with a deep sign.

The forest floor was about fifty feet down, and that made him begin to wonder, “Are all of the trees so fucking huge on this island?” Christopher decided to take a moment to rest, and look around. He let his eyes wander all over the island; it all seemed so foreign to him. Never in his life had seen, or even heard of, trees that were as large as these. “Where the hell are we?” His question went unanswered. It was then that he noticed the screams of the other survivors. Until now, it had not even occurred to him that there might be others.

The sun once again blessed the Earth with its soothing rays of sunlight, smiling down at the people with such joy and a beautiful blue sky. In fact, the weather itself was rather astonishing and would most likely be a very popular choice of topic of conversation, if the circumstances had been different. But the beautiful weather was neither interesting nor captivating to the passengers, who had found themselves stranded on a godforsaken island. Instead the chaos was spreading to every individual, leaving the passengers with nothing but confusion and anxiety. Thick clouds of smoke arose from the plane wreck, causing the passengers to instinctively take a few steps backwards.

As the plane had hit the ground, it had caused a young woman, trapped in her seat between the unfolding plastic table and the seatbelt, to pass out in the middle of the mayhem. It was not until another warning creak from the back of the plan was heard, that she regained her consciousness. She blinked, momentarily blinded and slowly lifted her head from the seat placed in front of her. Feeling quite disorientated, she found herself trapped, unable to move. Unaware of what exactly was going on around her, she made an attempt to push the plastic table back into its place. And then she remembered the handcuffs, gnawing into her wrists and leaving her with a crucial disadvantage. Overwhelmed by the frustration, she repeatedly slammed her knee into the table, until it finally released its grip and allowed her to breathe. She immediately started coughing, gasping for air and in exhaustion, she leaned her forehead against the seat in front of her.

“I need to get out,” she mumbled to herself before opening her eyes. With shaking hands she made an effort to unbuckle her seatbelt. Although the handcuffs made it significantly increased the difficulty, the desired clicking noise finally appeared and she quickly got up from her seat, only to find the police officers body in the seat next to hers. Without further hesitation, she searched his pocket in the pursuit of a key, which could unlock the handcuffs and free her. Hailey found what she was looking for in the breast pocket: a small key covered in silver. She struggled a bit with getting the key to fit in the almost invisible keyhole. It was not all that easy with tied hands. Nevertheless she eventually managed to unlock the handcuffs, after which she carefully made her way past the dead police officer in the seat next to her. However, when she reached the aisle, she tripped over some luggage and pretty much almost slammed her face on one of the armrests. She barely saved herself from a disaster by covering her face with her arms.

Another cough left Hailey dry lips, before she slowly picked herself up from the aisle floor. She felt a stinging pain right around her ribs, which rapidly made her cover the area with her right hand. With the left, she grabbed one of the armrests in order to pull herself all the way up. The air around her was thick, asphyxiating. Filled with ash and dust, threatening with suffocation every second one continued to inhale. To breathe. Struggling, she managed to pull herself forward. Seat by seat. She did her best not to breathe, but not even the strongest self-control would be able to hold back the uncontrollable coughing, that kept on haunting her, causing a solid pain in her chest.

As she got closer to the way out, she caught a glimpse of sunlight. The wreckage was in a horrible condition, several seats in the back was slowly, but surely burning out. Multiple windows were smashed. Clothes, jewelry, toys were just carelessly spread all over the floor, hanging from the seats. Some seats still had people in them. They probably died as the plane had hit the ground. It was like a plane of death. Earlier filled with life and laughter, now filled with nothing but burning corpses and misery. It leads you to wonder, if people even knew about the tragic accident. Did anyone know that the plane had crashed? That people were missing?

She had almost reached her exit, when something grabbed her leg. She gasped and jumped back, which nearly made her lose her foothold. Her glance was caught by a person, a woman, trapped underneath a detached seat and an unmanageable pile of luggage. “Help me,” she begged with a gravelly voice. Her eyes filled with panic, the tears streaming down her face. Swiftly Hailey managed to wriggle her ankle out of the woman’s grip, pulling herself away. The heart was pounding in her chest, as she kept moving towards the exit, not leaving the dying woman many thoughts. After a few seconds had passed, she found herself lying in the sand, just outside the exit of the plane wreck. The screams were much louder out in the open. Aside from the burning fire, there had been terrible quiet inside of the plane.

At a slow pace she was able to get back on her feet and increase the distance between herself and the wreck. Still confused about the whole event, her eyes got used to the blinding light from the sun. Feeling rather exhausted she laid down in an attempt to catch her breath. She could hear some of the other survivors fighting for their own, even others lives, while others were trying to put the pieces together and figure out what to do next.

With his legs and arms wrapped around the trunk of the tree, Christopher began to slowly slide his way down the tree. In any other situation he might have looked a bit silly, but at the moment he could see no other way out of his current dilemma; it was either slide or jump, and jumping his current height did not look safe at all. “Fucking bullshit,” he muttered as he slid down, “Goddamn shirt ripped, plane crashed, stuck in a goddamn tree--what the?” He stopped as he heard a loud creaking noise, followed by a snap. Petrified, he dared not to look up, fearing that he might see what he had truly been worried about. He tightened his grip on the trunk, trying to desperately to make his body as flat as possible. Something was about to fall down, and he knew he did not want to be in the way of that.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Whatever had made the snapping noise had stopped, and Christopher's arms and legs were beginning to tire from holding his position. So, in order to get things moving again, he loosened his grip on the bark, “Okay, I should be good to go now,” his voice riddled with doubt. He took one last glance upwards, and what he saw gave him very much relief. Up in the tree, perched on a tree branch, was his airplane seat. It was swaying back and forth, back and forth, “Wait, shit!” Christopher panicked, if the seat was swaying, then it was probably going to fall. By accident he loosened his grip on, and began sliding at an increasingly rapid pace. Any attempt to stop with his hand would cause severe burns, so he dug his shoes into the tree bark to cause friction.

It slowed him down by quite a bit, but the speed was still much faster than he would have like it to be. He could feel his blue jeans beginning to be torn apart by the bark, his hands, likewise, were beginning to get damaged from the intense friction. He could feel the blisters already beginning to swell in his hands. “Motherfucker!” He gritted his teeth through the pain. The slide down felt much longer than it actually lasted, after about six seconds his body slammed into the forest floor, feet first. It felt like a shockwave through his body when he landed, he could only think of a few occasions where he had felt this much pain. “Fuckin-” he tried to speak, but his voice was replaced by painful grunts, as he made his attempt to stand up. Nothing felt broken, however, it could easily be that the pain was masked by his adrenaline.

“I gotta get to the beach. See if anyone needs hel-” The snapping noise interrupted him once more, only this time it did not stop. He looked up and saw what was coming, his seat. “FUCK!” Christopher started running, if you could call it running. Just as he began running, he felt an intense pain in his right leg. It was as if someone had stabbed him with a knife, and twisted it violently. “Shit, fuck, shit!” His hobble-run managed to get him out of the woods, and not smashed by a plane seat, but he was not able to hold up his weight for long. When he finally made it to the beach, he fell face first into the sand. He decided to lay their for a moment and catch his breath. Everyone else could wait.