By Michelle Papini
I take a deep breath before traveling down the corridor which leads me to the tin shoebox of germs from which I am sure to catch swine flu. I read the inspirational posters that line the retractable corridor, which don’t help my situational anxiety. I get to the door of the cesspool and I can see the hot concrete through the crack between the door and retractable corridor, and it reminds me of when I was young and would play hot lava with my brothers.
You took all the cushions of the couch dispersing them throughout the room and then you pretended that the rest of the carpet was lava and you had to keep on the cushions, and if you fell you died in the boiling lava. I jump the “lava” and I board the plane.
I sit in my coach seat, which I first wipe the pretzel crumbs off with my handkerchief my mom bought me when I turned thirteen. She died three months ago and I keep this green hand-embroidered kerchief with the wild daisies stitched in to it in my pocket at all times. I sit down in my seat and I look around to see who is accompanying me on this surely doomed flight.
There is a mother and her child in the seat behind me whom she keeps reassuring that this will be fun, yet her kid keeps screaming bloody-murder. I’m with the kid, lady! This flight is not going to be “fun”!
I buckle my seatbelt, and pull it extra tight so that there will surely be bruises on my pelvic bone when exiting this death trap. I notice that the red EXIT sign above the side exit door is flashing. As if it is giving me a second chance to leave before we are forced to slide down the yellow slide plunging into the icy water of the Atlantic.
I break my glare away from the stewardess who greeted me with a “Thank you for flying US Air!” I wanted to reply with a polite “Fuck You!” This will surely be the end of my life, or hell, and you greet me with a Thank you?
I look back to EXIT sign and it is still flashing. Still warning me that this plane is going down soon!
We take off and I finally dig my fingernails back out of the arm rest that I was sharing with Dr. William Bradley, the dentist. Why must people always make small talk with you on a plane? Can’t they see that this is the last few hours of our lives! I definitely don’t want to be talking about how many kids you have. I hope you kissed them all goodbye when you walked out the door this morning, William the Dentist!
The EXIT sign is still flashing. I just let the dentist talk at me while I am mesmerized by the incessant Morse code of the red blinking light. I think that it is his way of dealing with the fact that this plane is doomed.
Just as I could have predicted as soon the stewardesses begin bringing the bar on wheels down the aisle, the plane begins to shake! The light comes on to tell the Idiots who removed their seatbelts to put them back on. The “hostesses” put the drink cart back away and buckle themselves in.
The plane seems to be going into convulsions. Shaking and thrashing its angry head about. All this time while the plane is just realizing it is epileptic the “doctor” next to me is still jawing my ear off! I would tell him to “Shut the hell up,” but my tongue was frozen.
My mind on the other hand was the opposite of frozen it was running a marathon!
My thoughts were running around like kids playing tag on the playground of school.
I miss my mom so much I should’ve told her how much I loved her instead of criticizing her for smoking her whole life after all I smoked when I was in college it’s not a big deal James the first guy I ever loved and lost my virginity to was a smoker he turned out to be a dick and he cheated on me with Hannah Mae who the fuck names their kid Hannah Mae anyway I have never been so afraid in my entire life and my brothers have always said that I was afraid of everything which isn’t true I am just afraid of most things not everything not everything can kill you a lot of things can and I don’t see anything wrong with fearing the things that can kill you.
I start to feel the warm salt water start dampening my cheeks. I didn’t know I was crying uncontrollably. The dentist had stopped talking to me now. He didn’t seem upset or anything he just let me be!
The plane suddenly finished its seizure and came to strange unruffled composure. As if nothing had happened, it began flying itself back to New Jersey. I roughly pushed the tears out of my eyes with my kerchief and looked up to see the EXIT sign had stopped blinking. The captain’s voice came over the cabin startling me and broke my concentration on the now non-blinking sign. “Sorry about the little turbulence. Nothing to worry about, just a little patch of rough air. We’ll be landing in Newark in approximately 10 minutes.”
Michelle Papini is in her sophomore year here at the State College of Florida. She will be recieving her AA at the end of the semester and transferring to Florida Gulf Coast University in the fall to receive her BA in Journalism/Creative Writing. She was the fiction editor of the fall 2009 issue and hope to continue pursuing magazine production.