Life of Stewart Issue 17 | Page 23

We all climbed abord the four seated plane and buckled ourselves in. I was seated behind the pasengers seat, where my mom sat. My sister was seated next to me, behind Andy, who was piloting.

Everything was going as planned, we were taxi-ing down the runway to anticipate the take-off, when everything started to go wrong. Now, I had never flown before, so in theory, I didn't know what was "normal" but I knew that what was happening was terribl wrong.

The plane went straight up into the air and then riquocced off of the runway. I hearda brief squeeling of the tires, bu tere was no stopping this plane, in which the engine had failed. The plane quickly bounced off of the runway, wet straight up about 100 feet, and veered sharply into the cornfield. The plane immediately burst into flames and exploded.

I remember thinking to myself that this was just a bad dream, and that I was going to wake-up, only it was all terribly real. There was blood splattered across the winshield, Andy was screaming profanities and asking "What the hell happened?! I didn't f*** up! Get the f*** out of the plane!" I remeber hearing nothing from my mother, she had passed immediately on impact. My sister was sitting right next to me and she was fully aware of her surroundings, screaming, a blood curdling scream. I will never forget her screaming for as long as I will live. The worst part, is that once my body went into survival mode, I thought of no one but myself. My survival instinct was to get my body out of the plane. I had to crawl over my writhing sister, who couldn't free herself from her seat belt. A window beside her had blown out, and that was my way out, t go towards the shining light. Right then and there, I knew that I was going to be the only one who would make it out alive.

Once I had gotten of the opening I stepped onto the wing of the plane, and jumped to the cool, muddy, ground. It was such a tremendous relief on my feet, as they were literally burning. Once I hit the ground, I began running. I didn't know where I was running to, but I knew that I had to get away from the inferno of the plane. All of the sudden someone threw their jacket on me, my uncle, Greg. I completely disreguarded him and kept running, not eve realizing that he threw his jacket on me, because I was still on fire.

I ran and ran, until I heard my dad screaming my name. I ran right into his arms, and then, I blacked out.