Last December during Christmas, my younger brother decided to go back to India, our birth country, to stay with our relatives while we sort out divorce issues. Going on an airplane had never been my cup of tea because I always feared the plane might crash, or we would get abducted. I know it's an irrational fear given how many people go on planes every year, but my overly sensitive skepticism often gets the best out of me. After many conferences, my mother finally persuaded me to go on the plane with my 11-year-old brother.
While we were on the plane, I felt it was harder to breathe. I knew the other passengers were not experiencing the same difficulty, so I told myself it was just my anxiety passing by. Halfway through the flight, the flight attendants and pilot suddenly spoke through the speakers on top of our seats. They demanded that we tighten our seat belts and put on the air masks, given that we were going to crash land. I felt intensely queasy about hearing it, mainly because of my anxiety. The plane landed on an island, at least that's what we would call it. The flight attendant told us that the plane was partially damaged from the unprepared landing.
"All passengers must leave our plane, for now because it is damaged," I heard the pilot say through the speakers, he sounded rather hasty. "I will call the manager from our country to send a plane over to collect us, so don't worry!"
"Miss.... are you alright?" one of the flight attendants came over to ask me, noticing that I crouched on the ground.
"She's always alright. That's my sister," Henry said in a sing-song tone while giving me a wink, "she's afraid of planes and dangers. A bit of a scared-cat she is!"
"And you're just an airhead!! Don't you know what this means? We've no idea where we are right now, not even the pilot knows!" I snapped before getting off the plane.
I heard my brother silently following behind me with heavy breathing that indicated he was excited. We noticed that it was a remnant of an old palace that we were getting into. I could hear the distant sound of eagles as well as the smell of ignition, but I knew it was phantosmia. The other passengers began taking photos with each other on the old remnants. I was surprised that an entire kingdom could be built so secludedly on one island. Just as I was about to continue walking, I heard one of the passengers shriek in the distance followed by another loud scream.
We saw that one of the middle-aged women who were on the plane with us had fallen off the ground. As I walked closer to the edge of the land, I noticed that there were clouds that surrounded the area. That's when it suddenly hit me, this entire island was not on the ground. The island was somehow hanging itself in the middle of the stratosphere. The younger woman that was weeping next to me was her daughter. I wondered how the land was able to hold itself in the middle of the air. The other passengers, the pilot, and the flight attendants began whispering among themselves. They knew that the security plane would not be long before it finds them.
I began to explore the old palace while we were waiting. I told my brother to wait with the other passengers for the sake of his safety. After walking for half an hour inside the ruined palace, I noticed that there were human-sized, bat-like sculptures standing in each corner of every room. I became astounded to find that one of them moved as I was passing by it. The dark sculpture came out from the darkness and into the light. I realized that they were people with batman clothes on. I found it perturbing that they would be playing messed-up games when we're in the middle of a crisis.
"Gosh.... what the heck are you doing dressed like that?" I asked casually. "This isn't some game here, we're really stranded!"
"Hehe!! You think we're visitors did you?" the bat-like human said, which send shivers down my spine. "I'm the locals here, but it's good to see human visitors every now and then!"
The comment sent shivers down my spine. I heard distant shrieks coming from the passengers of the airplane. Two women were being pulled away by bat claws, the ones that were near-human in size. Two people were thrown down the landscape and presumably died during the process. Five of the flight attendants were taken by the bats and flew inside the palace. Reluctantly, due to all the chaos, we decided to follow them into the palace. On the way there, I saw a nude woman twice the size of an average person with snakes surrounding it. It snarled at me silently as I passed by it. It suddenly stroke to me that it was the legendary Meduza.
The ten of us passengers entered the ruined coronation room inside of the palace. The ceiling was six meters above the ground and broken down. There was an iron throne sitting in the middle of the coronation room. My eyes wandered at the ornated decoration around the back of the chair. My brother softly elbowed me to look at the person sitting on the throne. It was a person, but unlike any other person, it had six eyes and a darker skin tone. My eyes instantly broke free from their translucent state when I saw the pilot being held by the creature in its claws.
"Please...... let us go!! We didn't do anything to you guys. I'm sorry for trespassing onto your land!" the pilot choked before closing his eyes unconsciously.
"You humans!! How dare any of you to come onto my kingdom without my permission and act like it belongs to you?!!" the creature snarled at the other ten of us.
"We're sorry..... our plane crashed here!" one of the men in his late 40s said while trembling.
"Yeah, that happened!" the supposed king of the palace said with a smirk. "Our people get hungry, and they need food. I told them not to break down aircraft and eat the people, but they do anyway!"
Two of the bat-like people I saw before came into the coronation room. They used their sharp claws to tear open the flesh of the other three passengers. Their horrific screams are forever echoing in my memory. The woman with the snake wrapped around her nude body also entered the room, but the snake was no longer there. She gave me a sinister smirk before breaking the neck of my brother. I stood there with tears streaming down my cheeks. I felt intensely ambivalent from fear and resentment. I screamed out my brother's name as he fell unconscious onto the ground. The creature was twice the size of me, so I knew I was unable to fight it.
Two minutes later, I saw guns shooting at the entity and the woman. Over twenty military soldiers began shooting at the bat-like people that were hovering in the air. The woman was shot twice but still managed to live despite having bullet holes all over her body. An elderly passenger and I were the last remaining people, so they took us back to our country and gave us amnestics. I later got to know that this kingdom was known as the "demon Lancelot". I'm still uncomfortable about going to the airport and developed PTSD.
Apparently, the kingdom had existed since the medieval era. Back then, they did not comprehend it as an alien dimension. Instead, they thought this was a place in between heaven and hell. This place is impossible to find by science alone because it is invisible to many. Only once in a few decades do planes report being trapped on the place. Most planes fly past without ever witnessing the land. In fact, most scientists don't even believe that such a place exists at all. They use alternative explanations like "airplane fell to the sea" to describe these phenomenons. The troop that came to rescue us were not those from the government. Instead, they were military from the SCP foundation.
