**The Return Home**
Thomas fastened his seatbelt and absently adjusted the seatback. He flew oftentoo often, if he was honest. Once a month, sometimes more: conferences, meetings, short business trips that left his head spinning worse than cheap whisky. This time, it had been especially routinetwo days of negotiations, signatures, dinner with partnersthen back to London.
Only this time, the destination was different. The plane wasnt bound for Frankfurt or Edinburgh, but for a small southern town where hed been born and had fled twenty years ago. Hed only returned twiceonce for his fathers funeral, then for his mothers. Both times, hed been desperate to leave, back to the hum of city traffic, his projects, the life where there was no time to think.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Last night, hed been in a pub with colleagues, arguing over some presentation. Someone had drunk too much and strummed *House of the Rising Sun* on the guitar. Oddly, that tune had stuck in his head now, humming faintly beneath the drone of the engines. He almost smiled.
“Would you like juice or water?” The stewardess leaned over him, her smile rehearsed.
“Water, please.”
She handed him a plastic cup. He nodded. The water was lukewarm, as if left in the sun. But he drank anyway.
His seatmate flipped through a magazine, muttering to himself.
“Prices are mad, arent they?” The man glanced up.
“They always have been,” Thomas replied. “Selling watches for the price of a flat.”
Both smirked, and for a moment, it felt easyalmost like home.
The plane flew smoothly, barely rocking. Somewhere ahead, a baby cried, then quieted as its mother soothed it. Someone clicked the overhead light on and off, chasing the glow. A girl across the aisle giggled at her phone screen, its blue light making her look younger than she was.
Thomas turned toward the window, expecting village lights below, the thread of a motorway, stars. But outside was only darknessthick, matte, like black film pressed against the glass.
“Dark, isnt it?” His seatmate peered over his shoulder. “Cant see a thing.”
Thomas shrugged. “Well its night.”
But something uneasy stirred in his chest. Night was supposed to breathe. This was emptiness.
He checked his phone. No signal. Of coursehe always forgot. Still, the habit remained: reach for the screen, hope for a message from his son. *Just send a bloody emoji*, he thought, locking it again with a wry smile.
“Yours not working either?”
“Nope. Shouldnt expect it to.”
The man nodded and returned to his magazine, thumbing glossy pages of designer coats as if he could feel the fabric.
The plane dipped slightlyjust turbulence, Thomas told himself. But his cup trembled, ripples spreading too evenly, as if tapped by an invisible finger.
From the next row:
“You sure theyll meet us?” a woman asked.
“Of course. They said theyd wait right by the gate,” another replied.
The word *wait* lodged in his mind. Thomas pressed his forehead to the window. Still nothing. No spark of light, no horizon. Just black cloth stretched tight around the plane.
Suddenly, he thought of his motherthe one buried in the churchyard over a decade ago. He remembered standing at her grave in his black overcoat, the strangeness of staring at dirt while her laughter still echoed in his memory. Now, against the window, he almost heard her voice*Tommy*and flinched like hed been shocked.
“Alright there?” His seatmate eyed him.
Thomas blinked. “Just remembered something.”
“Ah. Well, dont think about the turbulence.”
He tried to read, but the words slipped away. Sentences blurred; his gaze kept drifting back to the window. Just darkness. Normal, surely. What else was there?
The man turned a page and chuckled. “Six thousand quid for a watch. Could buy a Mini for that.”
“Mm,” Thomas said, smiling politely though it wasnt funny.
From across the aisle:
“She said, *Wait for us by lunch*.”
Then another voice, higher: “Mine said the same. *Wait for us by lunch*.”
A coincidence, surely. But the word *wait* sent a chill through him, like a door left open to a draft. He stared back at the window.
His reflection looked pale, tired. No clouds, no lights below. Just darkness so thick it seemed a hand would vanish into it.
“Dark, eh?” His seatmate again. “Cant see a thing.”
“Its night,” Thomas said. “Same as always.”
But inside, the words twisted: *Night is alive. This is dead.*
He set the book aside, drank more warm water, and rolled his eyes. Full flight, yet it felt like sitting in a cellar.
The trolley squeaked down the aisle.
“Tea or coffee?” the stewardess asked the next row.
“Tea, please. Lemon, if youve got it,” a woman answered.
Her friend added, “Same. Tea with lemon.”
Both spoke identically, as if rehearsed. Thomas frownedhad he misheard? But the girl in headphones giggled and mimicked in a singsong voice: *”With lemon, with lemon”*
His seatmate stopped flipping pages, tense but silent.
The plane shuddered. Water trembled in the cup, ripples crisscrossing like drumbeats. Thomas touched the surfaceit stilled, glassy. Odd, but exhaustion played tricks.
***
Captain Harris checked the instruments again. The windscreen showed nothing. Even on moonless nights, there were gaps in clouds, a horizon, starlight. This was a black screen, like the cockpit had been wheeled into a hangar.
“Maybe were in cloud cover,” he said uncertainly.
“At this altitude?” The copilot frowned. “No turbulence? Radars blank.”
“Electromagnetic storm. Solar flares, plasma layers happens.”
“Then wed have interference.”
“We do.” Harris tapped the silent radio.
He knew it sounded weak. This wasnt like any glitch in his twenty years.
The copilot pressed his face to the side window.
“Could it be snowfields below? We just cant see them?”
“Snow glows,” Harris said. “This is black.”
They rechecked the instruments. Course steady. Altitude stable. Fuel normal. Engines perfect. Everything workedexcept the world outside.
“You know,” the copilot murmured, “if it were a storm, Id understand. Or ocean. But this isnt night. Night *breathes*.”
“Breathes,” Harris agreed, staring into the void.
He told himself theyd lost bearings, would find a beacon, land as usual. But the words dissolved. The emptiness outside muffled thought itself.
Finally, he reached for the mic. He couldnt say *alls well*.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said flatly, “we continue our flight. Navigation systems are temporarily unavailable, but the aircraft is functioning normally. The crew has control.”
He released the button.
Static hissed in his headset. Outside, the black wall held them, waiting for the fuel to run out.
***
The PA clicked off. Silence thickened like cellar air. Then something crackednot in the systems, but in the people.
Thomass seatmate snapped his magazine shut, face taut.
“Temporarily unavailable?” he said too loudly. “Does that mean were *lost*?”
No one answered, but heads turned.
The girl in the bunny-print jumper stuffed her phone into her bag and crieddry, quiet sobs. A stranger handed her a tissue; she crumpled it in her fist.
Up front, a man in a tailored suit jabbed the call button.
“Explain no navigation!” he barked at the stewardess. “I demand contact with the ground! My connecting flight” His voice shook. Thomas recognized the fear beneath the bluster.
A young mother sat rigid, stroking her childs hair too fast, as if her touch could shield him.
From the back: thin, nervous laughter.
Thomas watched, a strange calm settling in him. Here they werereal. Some yelled, some wept, some clung to children like lifebuoys. Masks slipped fast. Maybe this was honesty, better than chatter about watches and prices.
His own reflection in the window showed only darkness.
His seatmate breathed rapidly, terror in each gasp. The suited mans voice cracked into a screech. The girl hid her face, shaking her head: *No, no, no*
The baby cried. No one hushed themthe sound was proof the world still existed.
The laughter behind them turned ragged, infectious in the worst way. Not humor, but panic stuck in the throat.
Thomass father had hated long trips. *”Travel strips a man bare,”* hed said once. Only now did Thomas understand. Here, everyone was bare.
