In the Eye of the Beholder and Other Short Stories

Airborne Nightmare

Ten minutes later he wasn't feeling any sleepier, so he resigned to his fate and reached for the Daily Mirror dutifully placed in front of him. He glanced fleetingly at the date — Thursday, February 16th, 1961 — as if to confirm that he really was having to do this and read the top news.

Bad move.

The front-page headline read "Eight Hours to Live" and was a story about the United States ice-skating team, and how their plane crashed and exploded, killing all seventy-two passengers and crew. James's stomach tightened, but somehow the rest of his muscles loosened, almost as if they were giving up. They were just kids, none of them more than twenty years old. Their entire lives ahead of them. But it had been snatched up by the brethren of the very thing he now entrusted his life to.

When his body finally reverted to normal, James got up to go to the bathroom, thinking a cold splash of water would help him. He picked out the small kit he had prepared from his bag in the overhead compartment and made his way down the aisle.

He stood by the sink and gripped the edges with both hands, staring directly at his reflection. His eyes, while otherwise brown, seemed a disorienting shade of red. He could see veins popping out of his forehead, crossing over and under each other, pulsating dangerously hard, feeling like they were about to rip themselves out of his body.

James doused his face with water and looked up again. His face seemed back to normal. He took slow, deep breaths as he stood in the small, closet-like cabin in a contraption held together by nuts and bolts at a lethally scary height.

He dug deep into the kit until he reached the bottom and his hand coiled around the .950 he had kept in there for the last five years. He sat on the toilet and stared at its pure black body gleaming in the drowsy yellow light of the cubicle. It would be so easy to just pull down on the little piece of metal and end this misery. But he shook his head clear of these thoughts and put it back.

He had performed this routine every time he'd flown, never once going beyond just looking at the gun. Sometimes he wondered why he didn't just leave it at home if he was never going to use it. But then, for reasons he didn't really know himself, he always kept it back in.

He had actually made it all the way to the taxi without it once, and as he sat in the car, James breathed a sigh of relief, thinking his fear had finally been washed away. But the moment he could no longer see his house in the rear view mirror, he told the driver to turn back around and had dashed in to grab it.

The moment James returned to his seat, the seat belt sign lit up, and the captain's voice came crackling through the PA system,

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We seem to be experiencing some mild turbulence. Nothing to be afraid of, but I'm going to have to ask you all to return to your seats and strap in, nevertheless. Cabin crew, please take your positions."

"Nothing to be afraid of..." James muttered under his breath. He'd decide that for himself, thank you very much. And he decided there was something to be afraid of and tightened the seat belt until it was pressing into his stomach, set his seat upright and pulled up the window shade. His head lolled to the side as he stared unseeingly out of the window, his mind wandering all over the place.

(The ibuprofen seemed to be finally working)

James did nothing to stop it — he needed to at least mentally get out of here.

A jolt of lightning snapped him back to the present. He jerked his head towards the window and froze almost instantly. There was a man hanging onto the wing, clinging for his life. He swayed up and down and side to side, slamming into the wing over and over again. He feverishly clawed his way forward, as if he saw the tiny window as a form of solace. The man's mouth opened and closed repeatedly but James couldn't make out any of the words he was saying. Frantically, James spammed the button to get an air hostess over.

"Man...wing...lightning...window." He had trouble forming full sentences, only being able to produce fragments accompanied by frenzied arm movements. When he looked over again though, there was no one there.

(He was there just a second ago, though!)

The air hostess looked at him with a mixture of concern and confusion and asked if James wanted anything.

"A gin and tonic. Four parts tonic." If drugs didn't cut it, alcohol would have to.

Lightning flashed outside again, and the figure had re-appeared.

(Shit!)

Only this time it wasn't the same person. He took a closer look at the figure in peril and paled when he realised who he was.

"Anna..." No, it couldn't be. Not his Anna. He inched closer to the window, hoping, praying it wasn't her. Oh, but it was. But it wasn't. It was just a figment of his imagination. He wouldn't call for help again. He watched helplessly as she was tossed around like the man before her and watched with desperation as she too tried to make her way forward. But the winds were not as merciful as last time. They did not allow her to make her way to the window as her predecessor had. James would have even broken it himself and tugged her in. But no. The winds picked her up, bashed her against the body of the plane and sent her downwards, barrelling towards the ground and certain death (if she wasn't already gone).

James called for the air hostess again but didn't even try to offer an explanation this time. He just sat there, curled up in his seat. The air hostess — Claudia, her name was — draped a blanket over him and brought him a warm cup of tea saying, "It'll help with the nerves".

Needless to say, it didn't, but James fell asleep soon after that, his body completely exhausted from the stress it had been handling.

Just under an hour later, Claudia gently woke James up from his pool of sweat and told him they were preparing for landing. He had made it, but felt like some part of him had died up there anyway.