The Limbic's Game

Chapter 9

Tasha Castro

The flight back to the states wasn’t the best journey that I’ve ever been on. That is one thing that I can say for certain.

The constant revival of the fact that I had just been kidnapped; however unsuccessfully the whole thing may have been.  I can still safely say that it shook me up badly, and now I feel like a twitching nervous wreck.

My eyes darting in all different directions; only settling on a certain spot before shooting to the next, and the next.

The beads of sweat on my forehead made me look like I could be a suspect of some unspeakable criminal investigation who had lost their nerve. Badly. I tried to calm myself down, asking the stewardess if there was any free window seat when she passed through the cabin with coffee.

She came back to me later and said that there was a window seat that hadn’t been sold.

Finally, an escape from the desolate seat that was located in the middle row of the wide airliner. I thought that I would be fine surrounded by countless strangers on all sides: every time I looked up I saw another unfamiliar face that could be up to anything.

What the hell is going on with my head?

These were innocent people just like me and I was subconsciously turning them into fanatical enemies that would stop at nothing to claim me as their own, kill me, and then devour me.

The first thing that popped into my head was an alien trying to eat Mr. and Mrs. Pacman on the ancient arcade game.

That was my dad’s favourite games, even though it was kind of crap, it was REALLY addictive from what I remember when I last played it.

My thoughts were interrupted by the stewardess deliberately clearing her throat to re-capture my attention to come back to our self-inflicted conversation.

I looked up and saw that she had once arm across the top of my seat and was gazing into my face, desperate for an answer so that she could go and make sure that all of the other passengers in this section were ok. By the time she had come back to tell me that there was a seat available, the stainless steel jug full of coffee that she had brought back with her was quickly becoming cold.

‘Ma’am, do you want to move seats?’ she stated impatiently, in a tone that suggested that she had repeated this question many times over the course of her career, no matter how short it was.

‘Yes. Yes I do please.’ I replied shakily, returning from my state of deep thought.

‘Ok then Miss Castro. Let me show you to your new seat.’

I grabbed by rucksack that was jammed under the seat and followed her down the aisle towards the back of the plane.

Still carrying the jug, she expertly swerved around the stray feet and elbows that protruded out and into the aisle, partially blocking our path.

I came to reside four rows from the rears galley of the plane and the bathroom.

A good looking boy with dark brown hair and amber eyes was sat in the middle seat of a row of three with his stuff sprawled across my new seat and the one on the other side of him. He looked at me straight in the eyes. His irises looked like they were made out of hot honey, shimmering with the thin strips of fluorescence that flooded the innards of the plane with artificial light that was almost too clinical and sterile.

It was almost inhospitable.

But his eyes brought the bland, sharp lines of the interior to life.