**WATTYS 2022 WINNER** Seventeen-year-old Evelyn Werth is on an endless flight from hell. She's the only person onboard Aloha Airways Flight 1333 who's caught in a 28-minute time loop.
During each cycle, four things happen:
1. The Internet goes out...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Loop 399
One second I'm drowning under Mason Kahn's weight, struggling to catch a breath, and the next second I'm back in my seat, in 17C, as the plane steadily coasts along.
"Sorry folks, we've lost Internet connection," the pilot's muffled voice buzzes through the air. It's Jake McMahon, I realize, now pairing a name to the voice that has jumpstarted nearly 400 of these loops. A real-life person who somehow, in some way, loses control of the plane. "It will hopefully be back up soon. And please remain in your seats, we're approaching a patch of turbulence."
And then, out of the corner of my eye, it's like I can see him sitting in the empty seat beside me. My dad.
But not really. It's not my real dad, or any memory version of him.
It is just... Ash Dad.
It's as if all the remains from the plastic bag stowed in the narrow gap under my feet gathered in thin air, reconnecting piece by piece, back into his basic form. Just the shell of him, nothing but a very fragile framework, composed solely of grey ash.
Ash Dad doesn't talk and he can't see. He's just there, as an ash-generated version of him. The basic outline of his facial features, dusty arms and legs, his tall frame and wide shoulders. Ash Dad even captures the way my real dad used to sit – his knees flayed to the sides, his long torso pressing high against the back of the seat.
I see Ash Dad in my periphery sometimes during the various loops, just sitting there as if he's one of the passengers. An aberration, of sorts. I asked Dr. Sheryl about it once, in a roundabout way. She said that it's my subconscious's way of pushing me to deal with the things I haven't dealt with yet. My mind is bringing it to the forefront, forcing me to confront what's holding me back.
Normally when I see Ash Dad, I blow lightly his way and he starts to disintegrate until he disappears into nothing again. And if I take my finger and poke him, he collapses like a house made out of dust cards.
But today I let him be. I let Ash Dad just exist in the corner of my eye.
And then something different happens. Ash Dad just slowly disappears on his own.
When I first stepped on the mobile staircase in the Hawaiian airport, I didn't want to climb the steps and board the plane. I didn't want to arrive back home in Los Angeles, with nothing but the ashes of my father slung on my back. And I definitely didn't want all the things that came after that. The hard conversations with my mother. The funeral where we commemorate my father's life in a beautiful ceremony filled with relatives I haven't seen in a decade.
