Pebbles: A Collection of Short Stories

The Final Trip

I hate to fly; it's a well-established aspect of my personality. Despite flying multiple times a year, I've never grown accustomed to it. The anxiety is ever-present whenever the topic of travel comes up. It's muted but bubbles in my joints throughout even a hypothetical trip. Once a plane ticket is purchased, the anxiety grows like a dandelion shooting up in the cracks of a driveway. As the roots establish, the pesky weed begins to push up the tar around it, disrupting the smooth placid surface.

It all turns truly nefarious once I'm at the terminal. My fingers unconsciously twitch as I watch plane after plane come and go. I witness people safely walking from the ramp, and I envy them.

But today, I envy no one. I'm fixated on one face. In my nervousness, my eyes twitch anywhere for relief, but respite isn't what I found. The moment my eyes settled on him, they clung, unable to look away. He saw me with his inhuman beady red eyes. His abnormally taut white skin creased painfully as his sneer filled his face. It was sinister and animalistic. He turned swiftly and fell effortlessly into his seat. Only then were my eyes released to look around, desperate to find another person unsettled by the presence of this being. But no one's eyes clung to him; no one met my alert gaze to share a knowing nod. I was alone, consumed by my anxiety.

I tried to push the thoughts away. His eyes couldn't have been red; it was a figment of my imagination. As the plane began to taxi, I couldn't break my stare from the back of his bald scalp. His tall frame made it easy to monitor him. But why? My mind warred with panic and foolishness until finally, I ripped my eyes away once more and gazed out the window.

As frightening as flying is, the clouds are soothing. The warmth of the white floating by in soft puffs against the blue sky is peaceful. For the briefest of moments, a smile tempted me to tip my lips, but then my mind succumbs to what must be insanity.

He was there, his eyes gleaming the burning red of hell. He saw me but depended on my unease to mute my voice. My eyes flickered to his empty seat. I shifted in my seat, craning my neck with a painful stretch, but to no avail. He was gone; he was nowhere within the plane. I already knew this. My eyes returned to the window, where his sneer had turned to a full laugh. It made his cheeks ripple from the wind.

My fingers dug into the armrest just as his clawlike nails ripped into the wing of the plane. I knew what was coming. I had always been afraid of the ordinary. Gravity taking control and pulling the tiny tin can to the ground in a fury of fire. I had never dreamed of the extraordinary that was occurring outside my window.

As this monster's claws pulled bits of metal from the wing, I thought of the extraordinary and how ordinary it felt. The anxiety of my impending future felt the same as the stress of gravity winning. Winning was winning, and losing was losing. It doesn't matter how you lose; the end is the same when the worst occurs forty thousand feet in the air.

He was moving faster now. The tiny bits were giving way to sizable chunks. It fed his ferocity. His face snapped back so far I wondered if the wind would crack it from his slender neck. Would nature win the battle occurring before my eyes? But I didn't pretend there was hope. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, his face lunged forward. His thin pale lips pulled back to reveal knife-like teeth. They sunk into the wings dwindling metal, gnarling as one until he pulled away to spit out the steel like chewing gun.

He was enjoying his work, taking no care for urgency. He simply inflicted gash after gash until he stopped. But we were still floating. The inevitable plummet had not begun. The communal panic of the passengers had not rolled through the seats like a tidal wave. He met my eyes one last time, one last sneer. And then, as though he was picking up a sack of groceries, he yanked away the engine. The instrument's mechanics spilled from it like snakes desperately trying to return to the safety of their underground lair.

It was then the plane begins to tilt. It was then the tsunami of terror engulfed the passengers. One last look from this wicked entity, one last sneer, and he lept from the wing as I descend on my final trip.