Into the Air

"It's going to be a bumpy ride out..." Announces the disembodied voice of some god or another. This is my first flight on this particular model aircraft, also many years have passed since the vector taken has been westward out of the desert. The stranger next to me prays, allegedly a Catholic, and proceeds to close the sunshade. Effectively blindfolding us from the sight of our plummet down to a jealous earth that wants its prisoners back.

Slip-stall isn't the right word, but its the first that comes to mind.

I've heard a story of a plane that fell from the heavens at roughly 10,000 feet per minute but only in the final seconds did anyone realize that they were already dead.

Sucker-punched by death is such a shitty and melodramatic way to go, in my mind.

My parental units are stationed across the aisle and ask if I need to turn on the halo above me to see the words that bleed out of my pen, then return to sleep. The Catholic stranger asks if I could grab her blanket from the overhead bin as the voice of the god from earlier commands us to sit the fuck down. I disobey him, like so many other times I've disobeyed some god or another, fetching the security she needs.

Time bombs, we are all time bombs. The couple to my left, my aging parents, albeit neutral currently, could poison the innocents encased in this missile. Time bombs next to each other, me and this stranger.

Tick-tock
Tick-tock

Luckily, I should have been a doctor, or so my long-since ghost of a great grand uncle would say, in agreement with my handwriting. She cannot read of my wiring of a falling plane, or of stupid people who could not feel their failure to survive as souls evacuated bodies at 10,000 feet a minute. Funny to think, as a pilot, does every trip count as a business trip now?

She takes our blindfold off, I playfully wonder how long it would take till we'd get a last shower through the puffy cotton on our descent to that terrestrial prison to which we all return. Violently, in a jealous grab for those trying to air with angels we slam, zero survivers. She scares at turbulence, I get excited.

Arousal is maybe the right word, its the first to come to mind.

Once we calm, she sleeps again for the remainder of our flight. I stare out towards infinity.

Daydreaming through final approach, mirroring the god behind the controls in practice. I turn to the allegedly Catholic stranger to my right, cloaked in her blanket, saying, "Mom, time to wake up..."