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The foothills of the Rocky Mountains rippled far below the outstretched wing of the DC-9. Abe said to himself, I’m sure it was nothing, just a little thermal updraft from the mountains. Seattle will be here any minute. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. While he rubbed the picture on his t-shirt for luck (a picture of The Morose Alpaca, his favorite Josei anime series (“I don’t care,” he would say to anyone who teased him, “it’s a great anime!”)), he looked around to see if anyone showed an authoritative fear, the kind of taut face that might be on a wizened adventurer. So far, everyone was cool, cool as salamander. Salamander? Why not cucumber?
The plane bumped again, then banked hard right. No. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Sano squealed beside him. Others on the plane demonstrated exasperation and some individual fear. Collective fear was yet to embrace the cabin.
From so far in the rear, Abe squinted toward the cockpit door, looking for signs of comfort. While he braced against the rising g-forces and stared, he overheard the most curious snippet of conversation: “With turbulence like this, we might just be test subjects for the very conference we’re headed to!” Abe snapped his head over to see the voice as it spoke. It came from a wizened adventurer, and his face was taut. Abe thought to panic.
Before he could work up the racing heart and the shortness of breath, there, past his ear, just between the wing and the fuselage, came a streak of fire. Was it a flash? Or was it in motion? Was it going up from the ground or down from the heavens?
Abe gripped the arm rests, accidentally bumping Sano’s arm off it, but she took no real notice. He saw terror in her eyes, and then it happened: the explosion. The plane shuddered and turned no longer: it dropped. Now the plane was afraid. Now Abe knew what collective fear was, and he screamed wordlessly while his mind raced ahead to his doom: This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.
And then, while the terror dragged on in that eternity that is the experience of death, for mere seconds, he felt himself get a hold of himself. He stopped screaming. What is wrong with you? You always say, every time the plane takes off, that if it goes down, you will go down a stoic, silent and sure of your doom. Now act like a stoic. Maybe Sano will mistake you for a man, here, at the end. Together. Abe liked that thought, and he relaxed.
His mind began to count. Let’s see, that was about five seconds since the explosion and the pitch straight down. So that’s six-one-thousand, seven-one-thousand, eight-one-thousand…
The plane, however, was not pitched straight down. It was, indeed, on a collision course with the mountains below, but the pilot ahead was wrestling the plane so that it might pitch up. Abe fixed his eyes forward, waiting for the plane to break apart, wondering if he would experience it before he died, or if it would be instantaneous blackness. From the cockpit burst a man with a pistol, stretched from his body with an absolutely rigid arm, shooting with precision despite the condition of the flight path.
Abe marveled. “Goodbye, Sano,” he said, patting her on the hand. Her skin was alive and cool, not clammy with death, not yet. This was the first time he’d ever touched her deliberately. There was the one time, earlier in the trip, when her fingers had momentarily touched his as she handed him his sack of stale airline pretzels.
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“Hm?” she said, pausing from her hysterics.
Craning his neck, he turned around and said to his mates, “Ume, in the case of a catastrophic loss of altitude, you should return your seat to its upright position.”
Umezawa ceased his own hysterics, and he laughed, saying, “Shut up, you stupid idiot, and turn around! You’re going to get us all killed.”
As for Jason, he was catatonic, eyes open, wide open, but unseeing, every muscle in his body rigid, like a statue of Musashi Miyamoto.
And then, a curious thing happened. There was another explosion to the rear. The force of the explosion threw the yaw of the plane into hysterics, pitching the tail section so that it thought to come around to the nose of the plane. The pilot, however, was a skillful one, and he continued wrestling the plane. Collective desperation flowed from the cockpit, mingled with dying hope.
Even so, with the pitching and yawing, the man with the pistol continued firing with precision, and Abe began to realize he was executing the first-class passengers.
And even so, the airplane began to break up, first from aft, then forward. A gas plume, presumably spent jet fuel, crept over the group, and they all four of them, Abe, Sano, Umezawa, and Jason, all of them inhaled deeply, and they passed out.
They did not get to see the breaking of the plane, how it tore from aft to forward, and how the cockpit crumbled from forward to aft, and how the ground tore the fuselage like a scalpel might split open a dead pregnant bitch to rescue her puppies yet unborn. Only, this was no animal-loving bundle of love shining the bright light of life into a sick womb; no, this was glad death, bright and cold, flinging human life, seat and all, into the ever after, first the bodies, then body parts, and the ever-increasing g-forces separated limb from life, and then life from life. It was the shriek of tearing aluminum and the shriek of a delighted nether being.
Neither did they get to see the man with the pistol trying to right himself against the same forces, as he bounced in the air, hurt, but unbowed. Where did he go?
[https://embodimentandexclusion.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/crash.jpg]
Abe woke up afterward, and he found Sano’s skin still unmarred, and all her parts attached, and all her clothing spared. He craned his neck and turned around, saying, “Ume, wake up! The plane has come to a complete stop. You may now unfasten your seatbelt and begin to exit the plane.” Umezawa woke up, and he woke up giggling.
“You’re an idiot,” he said. He nudged Jason. “We’re okay, Jason. Wake up.” Jason woke up with a start, and he scanned the scene with wonder. Horror crept into his eyes.
“Dear God,” he said. “Well, that was certainly something horrible. Is Sano okay?”
But Abe dared not touch the milky flesh of his seatmate.
Jason sighed, reaching forward to touch Sano. “Come on, Sano. Wake up. We’re okay.”
Sano flicked her eyes open. “Hm?” she said.
“Come on,” Jason said. “We have to get off this wreck.”
Abe looked around to find little fires beginning to dance around, licking the various bits and pieces of human remains. “Yeah, let’s go.”
The four of them rose, looking themselves over, checking for injuries and hurts, but they found none. They looked at the cabin, or what remained of it. “Wow. This is weird. Maybe we are in another world. You would know, right, Abe?”
“We’re in Idaho,” said an unfamiliar voice. Not quite unfamiliar, for it was the voice of the wizened adventurer, with his low baritone, a voice of experience and learning, of hard experience. “But you are right in that this is weird. We should all be pieces along with these,” and he gestured to all the bodies. He rubbed his tan hand over his face. He nudged his seatmate. “Lars? Lars! You’re unhurt. We’ve got to vamoose. Get up.” Lars bolted awake.
“Here we go,” he said.
The wizened adventurer then gave a command. “Kids, let’s move. Get away from this plane.”
Umezawa said, “In the case of an emergency landing, make your way to the nearest exit. Bear in mind that the nearest exit may be behind you.”
“Shut up, Ume,” Abe said. “That’s my joke.”
“No, you shut up.”
The wizened adventurer sighed. “You’re right again, kids. The nearest exit is behind you.” He pointed.
The back of the plane was shorn off entirely, and the saw that they were suspended on a cliff face, hanging thousands of feet above the valley floor. Fires danced nearer.
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