It was strange when it started. I thought I might be sick. I wasn't sure, though. I assumed that I either was, indeed, going to become dreadfully sick, or that with a clip of time, I would be fine and I wouldn't get sick at all--I wouldn't even remember ever feeling like getting sick, because I would be fine.
It's strange how when one is well, she feels so strong and forgets the feeling of being ill and assumes that it must have been a small thing last time she was truly ill; that she could easily handle it again. But then, with the smallest twinge of intestinal unsettlement, she remembers in full and would almost rather die than be ill again. Sometimes it's good to forget.
Bump!
"Hold it together, you're almost there", I told myself. "It's ok."
Sometimes it's good to lie to yourself. You become your own child, and tell yourself to cover your eyes and all the bad things won't be able to hurt you--the monsters won't be able to see you, because you can't see them.
Children are much better than us.
Bump...ba-bump!
Yuck. I needed something now. But, just as I was fully prepared to *****, it was fading...as quickly as it came. Yes, it was gone now, and nothing was going to keep me from feeling positively elated (except, perhaps, the descent, but forget that for now).
It was surely a wonder to sit on a seat, which was mounted in this small cabin, which was surrounded on all sided by absolutely nothing, and supported from below by the same--save some vague equations of space that permitted its reality.
"If this is a reality, I'd rather not dream. My dreaming could get quite out of hand after this."
Goodbye, city! Goodbye mountain faces, with the sharp jawline of a movie star! So long! What is that, now? I can't make it out. Never mind. Dust. Particles of dusty sky sweeping up around us into clouds. Cough. Cough. Like it hasn't been swept in years. Loomy fogs of two or three varying thicknesses. And then the light.
A light so strong it seemed like death, for sure. The look of all that light made me cringe. I thought I might melt like the wicked witch on The Wizard of Oz--the wicked witch I was. Ha-ha. The once dusty, sky was now a majestic and glowy quilt. It looked pearlized--like if you landed on it, you would just slide smoothly up and down the billowy bumps and around the polished curves. We could be over an ocean, for all I knew. Why was I so lazy to not investigate this before the trip? It would have been fantastic to know I was over some great sea, deep with crawlies and creepies with fins and tails and gills and hangies. Swishies and swooshies, faster than land types, that only could run or climb.
Yikes forget that. It would have been better to know that I was not over the ocean. Now, due to my uninformedness, I was merely left to ponder the terror of falling into the sea, in the event of a crash. These cushions on the seat before us, or so the little booklet told, could be used as flotation devices. I wondered how close we would have to be before we could jump out. I imagined exiting the aircraft into all this light, down, down, falling through the pearlized quilt, through the dusty billows, looking down at a vast sea a mile below, holding onto my cushion from the seat that had been in front of me, bracing myself. The sea would look uniform on the surface, but through the surface, one could make out divisions. Separate depths, maybe, or different mixtures of water. Shades of blue, blue-green, and green as the layers beneath the initial surface.
Back to reality. It was getting dark out. Night. Wait--no. No way. It couldn't possibly be night already. I talked to myself again, "are we supposed to travel into another time zone, or something? But it should be still morning and we've only been in flight about an hour..."
Were there storms above the clouds? I don't know. This...darkness...hmm..
But then I saw it. A shooting star. I only saw it for a flash of a millisecond--not only because it was travelling with such hideous speed and momentum, but also because in that instant, I was blinded. permanently. I felt my way toward the cockpit. All the passengers besides me and one other man seemed to be sleeping. I stumbled on, using those reflective upraised strips that mark the hallway to guide my feet. I couldn't see a thing. This blindness prevented me from really accomplishing anything in this circumstance, but I had to get to the captain.
"Captain! Captain! Are you awake? What's going on? Where are we?"
It is now that I notice that the captain had been dead in the cockpit for some time. There was no co-pilot. I double-checked for a pulse. Nope. My assumption is that we had managed to fly into space, with nothing above or below. I felt for the breast of the captain's coat and shook him violently. Then, I began to weep.
I really should not be allowed on an airplane.