Chris Song’s note: In “A Night Flight”, the passengers endure days of eerie silence and mounting despair, with many succumbing to death and some choosing to leap into the night. The story draws a haunting parallel to the Flight MH370 incident, highlighting the magical realist imagination of an endless aimless flight, and the tragic final moments of those on board. This story is included in the author’s latest collection of short stories The Exercises in Apocalypses 末日練習 published by the Unitas Press 聯合文學出版社 in Taiwan.   

In the first few dozen hours, Su Pei pondered the idea of writing a poem—he mulled over whether he should write one at all. A poem to mourn the fate of these three hundred souls. If he were to start, a lamentation would be appropriate. The cabin remained eerily silent, with about two hundred people lying across seats or in the aisles, their faces pale like stone carvings. Were it not for the vomit on some of their clothes, their still forms might suggest he was in a wax museum, or perhaps a childhood nightmare.

A nightmare, yes, but one stretched too long. The plane careened up and down, plunging thousands of feet, only to level out suddenly. Hours passed—at least it felt like it had been that long, with the windows showing nothing but an unbroken night sky. Stars flickered, sometimes abundant, at other times dwindling to just a few sharp pinpricks. Some stars felt cold, while others exuded warmth.

When the plane finally steadied, there was no distinction between the living and the dead. Both were frozen in a single moment of terror. For a long while, there was only silence until a flight attendant’s hesitant voice broke through: “The plane… the plane has temporarily escaped danger. Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened… and wait for rescue.”

Two flight attendants had survived, dragging the bodies of their colleagues to the back of the cabin, shrouding them with blankets. They could do nothing about the passengers, though, and so they sat, immobile, beside the corpses, until some passengers began to stir from their shock.

“Hey, what’s going on? Is the plane still working?”

The plane was still flying so it must have been still working. Su Pei reassured himself, as did the others who had survived. The flight attendants stammered, unable to give a straight answer. They radioed the cockpit but got no reply. “Maybe the electronics are damaged?” They tried the cockpit door but found it locked from the inside. Passengers from first and business class came to help, banging and calling out, but there was no response.

“Please don’t panic,” said one flight attendant, “Perhaps the pilots are unconscious, but the plane is still flying, so the autopilot system must be working. Let’s hope they wake up soon.” Her hesitant voice belied the certainty they all desperately needed.

“Is there a doctor on board?”

A neurologist, travelling alone, came forward to examine all the unresponsive passengers, each one lifeless from hypoxia or blunt trauma. A social worker also made himself known, to offer psychological comfort as best he might to those teetering on the edge of a breakdown, though he was himself visibly in need of solace.

No one asked if there was a poet on board. Of course, what use would a poet be? Su Pei had never claimed to be one anyway, though he had been writing poems for many years. He took out pen and paper and wrote a few lines, scratched them out, and rewrote them. Whether this was poetry or his last words, no one would know.

Final words had to be written all round. About twenty hours had passed when the flight attendants handed out food for the third time, along with paper and pens. They politely suggested that, just in case, passengers should write down what they’d like to say to their families.

A few threw pens back at the cabin crew in frustration, but most broke down sobbing. Su Pei didn’t cry; he wasn’t the sort to be weighed down by grief and melancholy. He was a rationalist.

But under these circumstances, even a rationalist might go mad. It had been roughly twenty hours since anyone had emerged from the cockpit. Those who knew a little about planes surmised that the aircraft’s fuel would be nearly spent, given the scheduled flight was only four hours. The flight attendants did not confirm or deny this, trying instead to blink away tears. The optimists on board suggested listening to the steady hum of the engines. Others told their fellow passengers to try their phones. “We’ve already tried, and there’s no signal on our phones or the aircraft’s comms either.” The flight attendants did not respond, but no one had any luck with their phone.

It was Su Pei who noticed—or maybe he was just the only one brave enough to speak up. “Has anyone noticed that it’s still night outside?” Silence instantly filled the cabin.

The watches had stopped, perhaps due to the impact, but everyone’s stomachs were telling them they’d been hungry, over and over again, at least three times. Why was the plane still flying? Why hadn’t it outrun the night? “Maybe the plane’s following the Earth’s rotation and can’t catch up with the sunrise,” an optimist joked, but no one laughed.

Writing the last words had a strange calming effect. They might weep bitterly while writing, but once finished, they felt resigned and ready to leave this world. The fourth meal, the fifth, and the sixth came and went. The plane kept flying, the night stretched on. The silence cracked: some passengers bickered with their companions; others made idle chat with strangers seated near them. The dead were respectfully covered with newspapers, towels, or napkins. Su Pei wrote a poem and quietly hid it in his shoe, then took out another sheet of paper and continued to write.

There were forty-three survivors, fewer than expected. The meals meant for three hundred were almost gone after six servings. There were emergency rations in the cabin. The flight attendants said they could last a week or more. Some laughed, unsure whether it was the absurdity of flying for another week or the relief of having that much food that made them giddy.

Maybe a week passed, maybe not. Soon, the rations dwindled too, but the drinking water remained plentiful. The flight attendants said they weren’t sure about the plane’s water supply but urged passengers to conserve the water, hoping it would last until they landed or until help arrived. Help? Who even knows where we are? Do you think this is a ship?! The fat man next to Su Pei flushed red with fury. Curiously, Su Pei could hear the words he didn’t voice.

Because it was so quiet, Su Pei noticed the engines had stopped. It felt like he could hear the moonlight creeping up the wings like a dense, wet fog, the moonlight gnawing away at the wings like tiny insects until everything was silver. He shook his head, and the wings reappeared, intact. The engines were silent, yet they were still flying.

Over two hundred dead bodies lay as peacefully as travellers looking for their seats or like solemn Buddha statues perched in a graveyard, but even in death, they were an inconvenience. “I have a suggestion…” The last pack of emergency rations had been consumed when the tall athlete sitting by the emergency exit suddenly stood up, startling everyone. “Let’s open the hatch and throw these bodies out. I’m worried they will spread disease.”

“Yes, throw them out, let them rest in the stars, cradled by the clouds, before we’re forced to eat them when the food runs out,” was the voice Su Pei heard instead.

Two of the first-class passengers were the first to agree. They’d already drifted into Economy, accompanied by four business-class travellers. The first-class passengers had been the most proactive in voicing opinions and assisting the flight attendants. The business-class quartet tended to look down on them, sneering at their attempts to take the initiative. “What makes them think they’ll be noble heroes, even in death?” Su Pei overheard in their minds. He was surprised at their disdain.

Gradually, thirty-odd passengers from Economy also raised their hands in agreement. The flight attendants murmured, “Pick someone to try to open the emergency exit. The rest of you stay in your seats and buckle up tightly. I can’t guarantee there won’t be a wind that’ll suck everything out the door.” The athlete volunteered, flanked by two burly men who held onto either side of his belt. He brushed them off impatiently.

No problem! The hatch opened slowly and fell away like a feather, drifting into the void. The cabin remained eerily calm, not even ruffling the toupee of one of the first-class passenger. With the help of a dozen men who volunteered, the athlete began tossing the bodies out—not quite tossing but releasing them like doves. He extended his arms, the moonlight tracing his silhouette, as graceful and solemn as an ancient Olympian discus thrower. Through the frost-speckled windows, Su Pei saw the bodies glide into the night like Greek reliefs, or swimmers floating in the Aegean. Their death poses perfectly matched the curves of the ancient clouds. For a moment, he imagined they were swimming, their faces stern, as if leaving Athens, oblivious to the living survivors. It was but a fleeting illusion; the vast indigo night engulfed them like the Sea of Oblivion. They were cradled, as if they were children cradled by their mother. Su Pei wrote this on his last sheet of paper.

In the space of about half and hour, over two hundred angels floated away from this aerial inferno. While the group worried about how to cover up the open hatch, one more angel joined them.

“Goodbye! I’m leaving with them!” With a smile, the athlete leaped into the starry night with the grace of a diver. For an instant, Su Pei saw the starlight scatter into a thousand threads, entwining the athlete like scars, like polished lines on bronze. In less than a second, he became a pale statue like those who went before him. A mother’s embrace will never reject her children.

Two painters embraced each other and flew out. Next went the neurologist. A singing boy leaped next. And finally, the optimistic one, still clutching his phone, sent one last message before he too vanished. At last, the two flight attendants pressed their bodies against the hatch to seal it shut.

There was no need for further action. None of the remaining passengers would take their own lives. Instead, they silently turned their gaze away from their neighbours, whose bodies were still warm, toward the endless spiral of still clouds outside the window, like frost blooming on glass in patterns resembling mandalas.

They were exhausted, and gradually slipped into a drowsy sleep. The last surviving couple released their embrace, the old man let go of his daughter’s hand, and strangers said goodnight to one another. But Su Pei’s pen would not stop. He filled every scrap of paper, writing on his white trousers and white shirt when he ran out. No one cared what he wrote, maybe not even he did. Later, much later, scholars discovered that these hastily scribbled lines which rhymed and referenced Homer and Mandelstam.

My eyes are weary of discerning the light of the morning star from that of the evening star.

Twelve nights, turbines idling, tears like diamonds,
Corroding the dharma body—I had no idea so many were still alive on earth. Flames.

Su Pei couldn’t see the earth; he only looked down at the pen tracing his chest. It was a fountain pen he’d used for twenty years to write his poems.

Razor-sharp. He wrote his last full stop with a forceful stab, an old habit of his, but this time he used a hundred times more pressure than usual. The pen cut through the white shirt, pierced the silk-like skin beneath, and burrowed into his thirty-five-year-old flesh.

A crisp crack shattered the silence as the aircraft’s hundred windows all fractured at once. The roiling night, mingled with chaotic starlight, surged inside the fuselage like a wave. No, it was seawater. In his final moment, Su Pei tasted the strangely warm saltiness of the ocean. His eyes took in the bodies around him, now transparent and glowing like jellyfish, drifting with silent fish. He saw the sea surface miles above, and the sun had just begun to rise.

The sun rose, as it had done every morning in Su Pei’s thirty-five years, wordlessly and indifferent to its own beauty.

How to cite: Song, Chris and Liu Waitong. “The Night Sky.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 28 Jun. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/06/28/night-flight.

Liu Waitong is a poet, writer, and photographer. He has been awarded several literary prizes in Hong Kong and Taiwan, including the China Times Literary Award, the United Daily News Award, and the Hong Kong Arts Development Award for Best Artist in Literature. Since his debut in 1995, Liu has published fifteen collections of poetry, including Cherry and Vajra 櫻桃與金剛, The Cup of Spring 春盞, and Wandering Hong Kong with Spirits 和幽靈一起的香港漫遊, reviewed in Cha. His collections of photographs include In Search of Tsangyang Gyatso 尋找倉央嘉措, Lonely China 孤獨的中國, Paris: Photos de scène sans titre 巴黎無題劇照, and The Darkening Planet 微暗行星.

Chris Song (translator) is a poet, editor, and translator from Hong Kong, and is an assistant professor in English and Chinese translation at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He won the “Extraordinary Mention” of the 2013 Nosside International Poetry Prize in Italy and the Award for Young Artist (Literary Arts) of the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards. In 2019, he won the 5th Haizi Poetry Award. He is a founding councilor of the Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation, executive director of the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong, and editor-in-chief of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. He also serves as an advisor to various literary organisations. [Hong Kong Fiction in Translation.]

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