The Only One

More about The Only One

He was seated in 11A, window side, emergency exit row.
Nothing special about it.
He'd chosen it for the legroom, maybe a quicker exit once they landed.
The flight lifted off from Ahmedabad, just past sunrise.
Everything was routine —
until it wasn’t.
About thirty seconds into the climb, something changed.
The sound of the engines shifted — not louder, just wrong.
The lights flickered. The air felt tight.
Then there was a lurch — a sudden drop in altitude.
And then… a noise.
Not an explosion.
More like the plane ripped in half from the inside out.
It didn’t sound real. It didn’t sound like anything from this world.
What followed wasn’t chaos.
It was silence.
The kind that makes your chest lock up.
The kind you feel more than hear.
He doesn’t remember how he survived the initial impact.
But when he opened his eyes…
he was still in 11A.
Still buckled in.
Everything else had come apart.
Seats in front of him — gone.
The cabin wall — gone.
The person sitting next to him — gone.
The floor beneath his feet was buckled metal, fire creeping up the edges.
The roof had split open above him.
Smoke drifted like slow ghosts through the torn fuselage.
His hands were burned.
His shirt was scorched.
He had no shoes.
He doesn’t remember losing them.
But he remembers unbuckling.
Standing.
Stepping over pieces of the aircraft.
Glass. Steel. Wires. Heat.
He moved forward.
No panic.
No screaming.
Just walking.
Through flames, through wreckage, through death.
Outside, it was worse.
The wreckage was scattered across the ground like broken bones.
Black smoke filled the air.
Sirens in the distance.
He was the only one walking.
The only one standing.
The only one alive.
Rescuers found him covered in ash, blood on his arms, burns down his chest —
but breathing.
They asked him how.
He had no answer.
They asked him again.
Still none.
Two hundred forty others two— dead.
Brothers. Children. Mothers. Pilots.
Gone in under a minute.
And he had walked away.
He doesn’t call it a miracle.
He doesn’t even call it survival.
He says it feels more like being left behind.
Like the only one who remembered the story —
because everyone else was pulled out of it too soon.
He was seated in 11A.
And now,
he carries all the rest of them in his silence.