Airplane

Wow, I’ve never done that before.

Yes you have.

Shut up!

Don’t be embarrassed. His real name was Richard.

Shut up! Wait, what?

It’s ok, no shame in it. I know he told you his name was Rob but that’s only because he was married and you both lived in the city. He didn’t want you playing Columbo, showing up at his work.

What the fuck is that.

What?

That.

She started looking around the plane. Was there a camera? Was she being punked?

You’re not being punked?

Hey, what the fuck!

No need to use bad language now. We’re all friends here.

Well then don’t call me a slut.

Well…

Well?

Well if the shoe fits. All I’m sayin’

Oh that’s really great. Thanks. You’re just being such a…Such a dick right now.

Clearly she was going to start to cry. Her lip was beginning to bounce up and down and wetness was glazing her eyes.

Look, I’m sorry if you think I’m being rude. I told you my real name right?

Oh watch out, I may come to your work and tell your boss and your wife.

Oh, I’m not married, and I don’t work. That shit's for suckers. Also, considering the circumstances I’m definitely not worried about you turning into a problem.

Oh really well…thank you, you’re so gracious not to find me needy. You’re so condenscending.

It’s condescending.

That’s what I said.

Ah.

I cannot believe what a total dick you are. Believe me, after we get off this plane you will never see me again ever.

Not true

Oh yeah…?

Yeah. See you will see me. Not at work though, not at my office. No Jenny, who told me her name was Terry, no. You’ll actually see me just one more time after we leave this plane. I won’t spill details cause it’ll ruin the surprise but…Well, ‘nuff said. There’s not much time left anyway. It’s about to happen.

What’s about to happen?

At that moment there was a tremendous metallic thud and the plane seemed to pop up in the air like it had hit a speed bump going too fast. The engine note fell out and was replaced by an extremely high pitched wailing, and the cabin bucking and vibrating like fuck. Random pieces of food began to float aggressively around and everybody began to scream and moan. Jenny, who said her name was Terry, began screaming and crying and managed to bring great intensity to both, even with the g-forces pushing her forehead into the small of her back. The cabin of the plane was tilted ass up and things were flying by the bulkhead where she was sitting. The whine was getting louder and she saw her fellow passengers start to faint from the pressure drop. Her thoughts became clouded and she felt her mind letting go and start sliding out from inside her. Gravity told her the plane was facing straight down and falling like a lawn dart but she was too displaced to take note. She started thinking about warm, sun-reflective water.

But then the whining fizzled and became a backwards sounding squeal. Still loud, but with an attendant up, up and away motion. She felt the physical laws she’d grown so accustomed to begin to re-establish themselves. People were still knocked out around her but she saw heads beginning to nod and realize their ok-ness.

Hey he did it, he fucking pulled out of it. We’re fuckin going up!

She heard a guy say it and she felt it too. They were going back up. She saw a stew’ making for the cockpit all aglow with the sudden pardon. The relief was palpable, like a breeze blowing through the jet, making everybody start counting blessings and thank the lord. A woman said:

Thank you, Jesus.

Jenny Said:

Amen, alright!

She made a move to hug the stranger who, it seemed, was magically back in her good graces. He said:

Don’t believe it…

Wha?

And even as her tongue met the roof of her mouth to pronounce the “T” sound at the end of the word, the plane jerked into a near vertical climb. The engines, stressing and overloaded, sounded to Jenny as if they were in the cabin with her blowing into her face. Every joint and tendon in her entire body seemed to bolt tight as one. She felt massive loads of pressure slam against her spine and crush her lungs. It was loud like nothing she’d ever imagined. Like her brain being brutally assaulted by the raw sound. The plane still blasting ever-upwards, slowing as it reached thinner atmospheric zones. Just as it reached around 47 thousand feet three things happened at once.

The first was that the aircraft fell out of the climb and rolled over to it’s side like a manatee sunning it’s belly. The shocking maneuver basically took the breath out of every mouth on the thing, and the passengers all let a disappointed sounding group “awwwwwww” trickle out. The second thing that happened was the lights in the aircraft all went out, leaving everyone weightless and blind for one or two amazing moments. The third thing was the port-side wing of the aircraft, compromised by torsional forces beyond the imaginings of it’s creators, cracked off the fuselage like a crab leg. This left a gigantic hole In the side of the cabin. As the doomed thing flipped over and started to fall straight down, people and things started being sucked out of the hole. There was no more jet noise, so anybody awake just heard vicious screams that quickly crested and then faded as the poor jerks got sucked out into the frozen heights.

It spiraled down for almost four whole minutes and when it landed there was only one person left alive to feel the coldness of the February Atlantic.

Jenny was still strapped to her seat in the cabin but her bones had been powdered by the fall. She was floating with just her head out of the water as the battery back-up device turned low fluorescent lights on. She saw the cabin stretched out before her and she saw bodies still strapped into seats but not moving. Just heads poking out of the top of the freezing water. She was in pain like she’d never known and started going into shock when she saw it, something swimming out among the others. At first she thought it was a shark…

It’s not a shark.

Lu backstroking up to her, just being a total dick now.

I said it’s…

I heard you…More croak than voice.

They watched the gray thing, it was moving from head to head and…And what? It looked like it was whispering a secret or asking something? She heard a weird humming. Then she saw the blood in the water.

Relax Jenny, this won’t take long. Ahp! Look, here he comes now.

The grey thing was coming. Her dying eyes (so much pain) saw it doing a weird dog-paddle and then it was in front of her, treading water. It looked like 100’s of razor-teeth in a grey sack. That unholy humming noise…

Don’t fight it Jenny.

No. Please. I…

Shhhhh. The stranger put a wet hand to his lips. She felt an awful sucking.

The stranger watched in silence as his quarry fed. When it was over he left the fuselage and started making his way back to NYC, traveling 100 miles a minute, 140 feet deep in the dirty Long-Island Sound.