In his last moments, a man thinks longingly back on what he could've done to save himself and, more importantly, his daughter.

I first joined in 2021 and have periodically come back every few months or so. My posts usually get at least marginal interaction, so I'd say the site probably isn't dead. Just periodically quiet.

Thanks for the reply! For that sentence, I might just remove it entirely, it seems a bit too "tell" and I'm trying to show more. I hope that makes sense.

Anyways, yeah, the dad dying was honestly just something I came up with at the top of my head to give her a reason to need someone. But you're right, it's not really realistic. Maybe she just becomes really stressed and overwhelmed because she loses her job and her best friend blocks her or something like that.

This is what I love about cys. No glaze, just real criticism. I'll get to revising, this was all in one go so no refining whatsoever.

We all make mistakes, but some of us are also idiots. 

You're right, but I'm a goddamn idiot so I did not.

This sucks. I make more typos than a five year old and they're killing me because I missed them all.

Hey everyone! 

I'm proud to announce I'm awarding this community the "Most Helpful and Honest Feedback Award" out of anywhere else online I've visited. Back in 2021 when I published my first stories here I was a little bitch and anything but 24/7 glaze was a catastrophe to my fragile soul. However, time has passed, and I finally grew tf up and now I'm here asking for your searing but still constructive criticism yet again.

The story I'm sharing today is not a full story, or even a full rough draft. Its more like emotional, literary practice to help exercise my writer side. It is not meant to have a concise plot or a resolution, it's simply a short excerpt in which I'm trying to communicate the emotions of two characters as much as possible. "Why then," you may ask, "should I even waste my time reading it?" Well, that's ultimately up to you, but I would appreciate if you would at least give it a skimming.

Oh, and also, there are some run on sentences meant to reflect the narrator's confused and desperate mental state. If you're going to be pedantic about grammar, please do us all a favor and don't just flatly point out that there are run on sentences. I know there are. That's the point.

Anyways, enough preface. Here's the story:

As Manuel's eyes look up to meet mine, all I can think about is how much I miss him. How much I need him. His hair falls back against his face and splits open like a curtain, revealing dark brown eyes that speak first of surprise, and then panic, and then, finally, desperation. They dart from side to side and then settle on me again—this time for good.

Back when we were together, I could read him like a book. Every glance was like a message; we could have entire conversations just by shooting looks at each other, snickering like misbehaved kids passing notes in class. We were so close, so connected. Now I feel so disconnected from him, almost like I don't know him. Almost as if he were a stranger. I search for a familiar, welcoming, loving look in those pools of chocolate, but find nothing but confusion and pain.

I'm not entirely sure what to say. There are lots of things I could tell him, but I can't assemble any words in my mouth. Emotion grabs my tongue and holds it as its prisoner.

Luckily for me, Manuel speaks first.

"What are you doing here." Asked like a question, but delivered with the cold, hard tone of a statement.

"I'm... Visiting town. I thought... Uh..."

He waits.

"I thought I should come see you." That raises an eyebrow. He doesn't say anything, though, which means I unfortunately have to find my words.

"Look, Manuel, I've been thinking a lot... Like a lot. And like, after we broke up I was really sad but I didn't miss you. But then, just... So many things happened wheb you weren't with me..."

I pause, hoping he'll say something. He remains utterly silent, his lips pursed. I don't want to have to tell him, to have to make him pity me, but the tears welling up behind my eyes push the words out of my mouth before I can think about it.

"My dad, was in a bad accident Manuel," I say, as tears fall down my cheeks. "And it's just been really hard living with myself after that because I think I could've done something, and, and, hearing that news just made me think about all the times you would comfort me, and how you would hug me, and tell me it was alright, and I just got to thinking much I needed you then, and how much I need you now." I say this all inchorerently and in sobs. I'm not sure he can even hear me. But his eyes meet mine in complete understanding, and for just a moment I can feel the connection we once shared. His glance shares the same feeling those hugs did. For a moment I just want to grab hold of him and never let go.

But then his eyes shift. And now I can't read him anymore. Now, all of a sudden, he isn't my Manuel. He's a different Manuel.

"I'm... Really, really sorry for you." He says, almost robotically. "But... This is just so much right now, especially after everything that happened... I just need to think, Kay. Can— can we meet here tomorrow? At like noon? We can talk then."

I want to tell him no, that we need to talk now, that if I try to hold it all in another night by myself I might just explode. But I don't want to scare him away, so I agree, and I get back in my car and I drive back to my hotel and I try to fall asleep.

The next day at noon couldn't come any slower. I wait near the cafe where he works for what feels like an eternity. I watch him through the windows as he dutifully prepares plates of croissants and scones and other foods I don't know the names of. He's always been a hard worker, but I've never seen him so locked in on what he's doing before. Maybe he's matured since I broke up with him, or maybe I'm imagining things. I'd like to think it's the second, that this is the same Manuel I knew.

When 12 finally comes, Manuel throws off his apron and shakes hands with someone I don't recognize. A girl. He claps her back and smiles his big wide smile at her, his black hair falling down the sides of his face and his little goatee curling around his mouth. I suddenly feel an intense jealousy for this girl, and I wish dearly that it was his hand on my shoulder instead. But then he walks out, and someone else walks in, and she kisses the guy who walked in, and I feel an immense sense of relief.

Manuel sees my across the street and jogs over to me. He looks more fit, more lean than before. I can't help but realize how much better he's doing now that I'm gone. I almost feel guilty for wanting him back, but the depth of my need for him is just barely enough to prevent that. When he walks up to me, he almost deflates, and it looks like he's a bit more warmed up to me than he was last night.

His eyes meet mine again, this time communicating a strong bravado and cool demeanor. Something deep in the mix of his irises, however, hints at a deeper insecurity. I look him up and down and try to analyze him as he sits down, but as soon as I start his body language shifts entirely and the insecurity disappears. He's probably prepared himself for this moment. I have not.

"Brutal shift, dude. Absolutely brutal."

"That's rough."

Silence. I hate the silence.

He speaks again. "So, uh, about your dad. What happened?"

Just the mention of my dad pushes me nearly over the edge, but I retain my composure. Somehow, I explain the details without collapsing into tears. I explain about the car coming head on, and how he swerved to try and avoid it but ended up going off the side of the road. About how at first they thought he was going to live but he secretly had an aortic dissection that killed him in his sleep. I say it all on the border of tears but I manage to finish everything before I dissolve into a crying mess.

When it inevitably does happen, though, Manuel's hands grab mine, and I bury my face into his chest. For a moment, he pulls back, but then he leans into it, allowing me to rely on him. I smell the scent of his cologne, and in an instant a wave of comfort washes over me. But as soon as my tears begin to slow down, he begins to sit up, pulling away at the earliest moment he can. I look up at him with desperate eyes, and rather than being welcome with a reassuring gaze I'm confronted with a confused expression. He doesn't seem to know what to do. It feels like he wants to comfort me, but it makes him so deeply uncomfortable he simply can't bear it. And for once, the words don't wait before they leave my lips.

"I need you, Manuel. I need you more than I've every needed anyone before. I'm sorry for everything I said, and everything I did, and everything I put you through. If I could go back in time and erase it all I would but I can't and it kills me. I just need to have you with me, I need you to help me. Please."

So @Mizal @fresh_out_the_oven I've made some revisions to the plot. I wanted to make the disaster more personal to Sarah, and to expand her character. How's this?

Fire.

As Sarah Foster tried to go to sleep, all she could see was the faint orange streetlights bleeding through her eyelids. The light looked like fire as it danced across her face, tree leaves breaking up and fracturing the light into thousands of little patches, each one orange and fiery. She drew her blinds closed and turned over as she tried to get to sleep—after all, she had a flight the next day and wanted to rest up before then to prevent jet lag.

And so she woke up the next morning and got dressed to go to the airport. She closed her door behind her and took one last look at her home. Unbeknownst to her, last night would be the last time she slept at home, the last time she would touch her bed. She didn't know she was taking in the last sight of her house. If she did, Sarah may have said goodbye to her dog—even despite her rush—who sat staring out the window, wondering when his beloved owner would return. All she knew was that she had a conference to attend in Amsterdam, and she had no good reason to skip out.

Sarah's best friend Alexandra dropped her off at the airport. They had been friends for years before then, and they were as close as two friends could be.

"Sarah, you're going to Amsterdam!" Alexandra squealed.

"I hope I am!" Sarah replied, playfully. "I still gotta, you know, fly there. And if we don't get going soon, I'll miss my flight."

"Still. You're going to Amsterdam! You have to tell me everything, girl." Sarah knew she would be texting Alexandra non-stop. She would tell her everything. Or at least what she could.

Alexandra gave Sarah a lion plush for the flight, because lions were the national animal of the Netherlands, and she studied its fur carefully while she waited in line for TSA. She noticed the vibrant orange mane, which had an almost flamelike quality about it. She noticed the thousands of individual threads, each one orange and fiery. She noticed how every time she stepped and moved the mane flowed and shifted. It reminded her of a cozy campfire, a comforting embrace from her friend while she was gone.

Finally, after she got through TSA, she made her way to the gate. A wide picture window gave her a clear view of the apron. She carefully studied the aircraft she was to fly on; it was a snazzy type she had never seen before. She'd flown with True Southern Airways many times, but as far as she recalled none of the planes she flew had a black mask around the cockpit like this one. Maybe this was a new plane? Or maybe she didn't notice it the last few times she flew? She struggled to remember.

As she looked out the window, waiting to board, she saw the letters B and I, just barely cut off by the jet bridge. She later found out those were the first two letters of "Big Red", the aircraft's name. And big it was, the jet was several times larger than her house and could purportedly carry over 300 passengers. She had, of course, flown on bigger planes, but this was still sizable, and building it was no doubt a massive undertaking. Sarah tried to wrap her mind around how much work had to be done just to get this plane in the air, much less to have it fully fitted with seats, bathrooms, and controls. Surely it was difficult, but whoever made this plane managed to get the job done, and it worked perfectly.

"Welcome aboard, Ms. Foster! Would you like me to lead you to your seat?"

Sarah was grateful for the offer but politely declined. She was a frequent flyer and a well-seasoned enjoyer of True Southern. There were a lot of things she had come to love about them, from the friendly crew to the good food to the fact that they referred to her as "Ms. Foster" and not Sarah. It was professional and even a little impersonal that way, which she secretly loved.

Sarah had always enjoy the finer side of life. Good food. Expensive wines. Preferential treatment. As such, she always, no matter what, made sure she was flying in first-class. And with her well-paying job, it wasn't really a problem for her.

As she came to her seat, however, she was surprised to see it was nothing like the old True Southern first class she was used to. No, this seat was different. New. Beautiful. She looked again at the seat number—1D—and her boarding pass, just to make sure this was really her room for the next 11 hours. She looked at the seat itself before she sat down, noticing the comfortable cushions. Dark grey fabric with deep red accents covered the seat and gave it a luxurious finish. She plopped down with an eager grin on her face, giddy to try out this brand-new first-class experience. She settled in as the rest of the passengers were boarded, and a flight attendant brought her a glass of fine champagne.

Before long, the plane began its takeoff roll and roared into the sky, the engines screaming with power as the heavy bird took flight. Sarah looked out the window and saw the Miami skyline sinking below her.

Unbeknownst to her, she'd just seen Miami for the last time.

Hours passed, and Sarah luxuriated in first-class comfort the whole time. There was something so magical about this experience, something unbelievably comforting that made her feel all the more like this space was hers and truly hers.

Even though she had been on many flights before, they were almost never transoceanic trips. She stayed awake for the first few hours of the flight, enjoying the food and the movies, but eventually she felt tired enough to sleep. She extended her seat into a bed and took out her phone, checking in one more time with Alexandra, who was asking her every question imaginable about how the flight was going. When she finally felt tired enough, the exhausted woman laid her phone on the flat bed next to her. Sarah stared at the ceiling for a moment before closing her eyes and letting the gentle hum of the engines carry her into a world of silent dreams.

When Sarah awoke a couple of hours later, she looked out the window immediately. It was still daytime, and everywhere she looked under her there was nothing but the vast and deep blue Atlantic Ocean, dotted with fierce and ragged white clouds. The sun was high over it all, and the waves glittered like diamonds in its light. Sarah immediately reached for her phone to snap a photo of the scene but soon realized she didn't know where her phone was.

She grumbled in annoyance. Very rarely did she misplace her belongings. She leaned over her chair and checked in the gap between her bed and the pod door. Nothing. She could've been sure it fell there—it was the only gap in her entire seat it could've slipped through, as far as she knew.

She wondered if it may have fallen underneath her bed after getting pushed forward. To check, she began lowering the leg rest. The recline was smooth at first, but as she continued to press the button it began struggling to move back. She winced in disappointment. How could these brand-new, luxury seats struggle so much in moving back up? True Southern needed to fix this.

What Sarah didn't know was that her phone actually wasn't under her leg rest. It had sunk between the cushions of the chair, falling into the motors that powered the seat's recline. Caught between two gears, the phone was slowly being crushed more and more with every turn.

None the wiser, Sarah decided to press the button one last time. Her phone was almost definitely under her seat, she thought, and if she couldn't get her chair upright, she wouldn't be able to grab it. Even though she had the in-flight entertainment to keep herself occupied, her friend would get concerned if she stopped texting.

But as the seat strained and struggled to move, she heard a small crunch. Like something shattering. She turned her head down towards her chair. Did this seat really just break? What kind of mechanics were in this chair that made it break so easily?

Then, more concerningly, she heard a hissing sound. It was quiet at first, but it grew louder each second. Her chair started to feel warm. She looked down and saw an orange flame licking the seat pad from below as the horrifying realization suddenly dawned on her.

Fire.

Government regulators try to ensure that everything on an airplane is as inflammable as possible. Materials scientists dedicate their entire careers to creating more and more fireproof fabrics, covers, and padding. But every fabric is flammable — you just need to make it hot enough. The foam in the cushion on Sarah's was fireproof, up until nearly a thousand degrees, but the fire caused by her phone's battery easily exceeded that limit. The heat resistance was no match for the now irresistible heat, and the light, airy foam of the seat couldn't last very long. In a matter of seconds, the fire grew from just a spark to a blaze that consumed her entire lower body.

Sarah screamed for fear and tried to stand up, but the seatbelt around her waist kept her down. She tried to unbuckle it, but it was so hot she couldn't touch it. With no way of getting out, the fire consumed her legs just as totally as they did the seat. She tried to reach for the door to her little suite, but her hand had now been so burnt she could not raise it from the armrest. Thus, her once paradisical room had turned into a prison of flame and smoke, suffocating her with every choking breath.

The flames, though they started at just her chair, were quickly spreading to other parts of her suite. The plush and fluffy blanket True Southern gave to their first-class passengers, though also "fireproof," could not withstand a thousand-degree fire. It too caught fire, and Sarah stared in horror as the fire now crawled down to the floor. She noticed, as well, that the fire had spread inside her chair through the leg rest as well. It burned all of her neat and organized belongings, eventually reaching the plush lion Alexandra had given her. Its orange mane quickly ignited transformed into a crown of fire, the blaze singing each fiber and turning the toy into a mangled, black mess. From the plush and the blanket, the fire eventually reached her suitcase and her belongings, which all burned up just as finally as the lion.

Sarah could do nothing about the impending disaster, and the fire soon crawled up the cabin wall. She saw as the flight attendant who had welcomed her onboard just hours earlier slammed open her seat only to be blinded by the smoke. They brought fire extinguishers with them, but each one failed to put out the growing blaze, and eventually they ran out. She heard the pilots announcing their diversion to Gander. But she didn't last much longer—Sarah succumbed to the flames, and one by one, her senses were replaced by nothing but searing, agonizing pain.

Although Sarah couldn't know it then, the fire in her seat would soon spread to much of the rest of the cabin. With no fire extinguishers remaining to combat it, the hungry inferno devoured the aircraft. A wall of flame cut off the crew from the cockpit. The pilots couldn't see their instruments for the smoke. The structure of the aircraft itself was weakening, and the control cables were burnt through, completely ripping control away from the pilots.

The stricken jet couldn't last much longer. As the fire burned away lives and memories, a shallow dive took down the once serene airliner and sent it flying into the sea. The debris glowed like fire as it danced across the ocean's surface, the violent waves breaking up and fracturing the aircraft into thousands of little patches, each orange and fiery.

Nothing was left of Sarah or the plane or the other 256 people there that day except wreckage and debris that were scattered across the ocean floor like ashes, unwillingly spilled to commemorate lives taken too soon. As the sun set that evening over the North Atlantic Ocean, it covered below it a thousand fragmented memories, a thousand broken dreams, and a thousand pieces of human lives.

And unbeknownst to her, it covered Sarah Foster, too.

Alright, the change has been made! Again, thanks for the tips; I seriously appreciate them. I'll also be working on what you said about the characters and plot and whatnot, and also about what Mizal said. General improvements, really.

Thank you! I appreciate your feedback, and yeah it's possible she may have gotten out of her seat but (1) it would probably take some effort I'm not trying to really write about and (2) like you said that wouldn't be much of a story lol