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Seat 14C

I have found a writing competition that is open to anyone [http://seat14c.com/]

I thought that I would share my first couple of paragraphs with everyone, so here goes:

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I was dozing when we went through the turbulence, I've been through a lot worse before. I hardly notice it any more. it's just part of air travel. I did wake up though, so I asked for a cup of tea and went back to reading my book.

This was the last leg of my round the world trip. I had started in London, traveled around europe, then on to asia and australia. Now I'm off to travel across America for a few weeks, then back home and back to my final year of college.

it was night as we approached our destination. I was surprised that I couldn't see many lights on the ground. It was a little after that that the captain announced that he had been told to descend quickly and warned us make sure we were seated and had our seat belts on. While the flight attendants were  walking the aisles making sure that people were belted up, the plane seemed to start diving towards the ground. I looked out the window and saw a fighter jet along side us. it seemed to be tracking our descent.

The captain came over the tannoy again "please don't worry about the planes following us down. they are just there to help us with our descent". So at least this descent was intentional. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking we might be crashing, we were descending so fast.

I was surprised how close the jets were to us. any closer and I'd have to give up my seat to the pilot. Normally it takes a while to actually get on the ground once we start approaching an airport, but today we must have been given priority as we just continued to descend and I saw some lights ahead of us. I could just make out the airport and landing strip, but everything seemed a bit dimmer than I remembered.

It seemed like we were only a few hundred feet from the runway when the escort jets finally pulled away. It was as though they were making sure we actually landed and didn't fly off. The landing was a bit rough, we hit the tarmac quite hard and the captain applied the brakes much harder than I've felt before. I was pushed forward into my seat belt. it seemed to all be a bit rushed and as we taxied to the gate there were lots of military vehicles on the ground. when the steps were in place and the door opened, an armed military figure entered the plane and ordered everyone to leave quickly. we all grabbed our bags and got off the plane.

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This is the first rough draft and hasn't been edited at all yet. before I submit this (by August 24th) I will edit it quite a few times.

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