Page 20 of Forced Proximity
Yet, through it all, what felt like a protective bubble had surrounded the two seats at the very front of the plane.
Finnian and I had been along for the ride, and despite crashing into the ground, we’d both come out relatively unscathed.
The pilot must’ve slowed us down enough that we hadn’t hit as hard as we could have. Or something.
I didn’t know.
But I felt like we could’ve hit way harder had he done nothing.
We’d both impacted the ground at the base of a tree, and somehow, the twisted metal of the plane had wrapped us around the tree at the base and come to a rocking halt.
Yet again, neither one of us had gotten all that harmed in the process of the metal impacting the tree.
I remembered thinking, oh yay, I’m not dead.
But then the tornado had happened, and I’d closed my eyes and the next thing I knew, I opened them and found my seat hanging above Finnian’s. We’d still been wrapped around the tree, but the force of the wind had picked up my seat and twisted me.
Yet again, the tornado had ripped through the world around us, taking up trees and snapping them like toothpicks.
And we’d lived.
We’d. Fucking. Lived.
The only thing that was amiss about the two of us was that Finnian had a sliver of wood that looked like it penetrated through his entire thigh.
It wasn’t a huge piece. Just about the size of a pencil.
But when he’d moved, I’d seen something sticking out the other side that looked a hell of a lot like the same sliver of wood.
I wasn’t surprised.
The tree that we’d been hung up on had been ripped to shreds, and the only thing left of the huge tree was about six feet of trunk, all the bark stripped completely, with the top splayed open like a blooming onion.
And now, I was staring at the green sky above me, thinking that I was going to experience a second tornado.
I looked off to the side and stared at the landscape, wondering if there was anything that we could get to for cover, and found nothing.
I looked the other way to find more of the same.
Pieces of metal were everywhere, all of the pieces so small that they didn’t resemble an airplane at all. More like tinfoil confetti.
“Did you happen to see where we were before we landed?” I asked hopefully.
“You mean when we crashed?” He sat up and looked down at his thigh.
I sat up as well and examined the underside.
“Good,” I said, seeing his pants on that side weren’t sporting a sliver of wood. “It didn’t go all the way through.”
I reached for the sliver of wood and touched it.
He hissed out a breath and shot me a death glare.
“I don’t know how it’s good,” he admitted when he stuck his fingers into the hole and ripped it wide open. “This fucking hurts.”
“Where it’s going in, there are no arteries,” I pointed out. “And it’s not all the way through, so at least you have a direction you can pull it out. Here’s hoping that it’s not all the way…”
I ripped the sliver of wood out of his thigh and was thankful to only see about four inches or so had come out bloody.
