These Stories

Taking Off

With heavy eyelids, Tammy fought to stay awake during the assembly in the school hall. Caroline, a great friend of hers, with her joke-some manner, snapped her fingers before her eyes but sleep was too welcoming. She drifted off never to return for a while. Tammy awoke not too long after to find herself sitting at her usual desk in her classroom. Strange, she could have sworn she was in the River Ridge High School hall. The door to the classroom swung open grandly knocking the wall. The door shuddered at the impact.

Miss Browne sauntered in, her blonde curls sitting high on her shoulders. Her mono-coloured blue scarf complimented her flowered dress. She didn't seem to notice Tammy in the classroom. She fiddled with a large brown paper bag then set it gently on the desk and hurried out quite fidgety. Miss Browne poked her head in again and said, "I hope you find what you're looking for." Then slammed the door closed.

Tammy couldn't make heads or tails of what the teacher could be referring to. She studied the brown bag carefully and just then her imagination tricked her into thinking the bag moved. A nagging feeling prodded at the back of her mind and brought her gingerly from her seat. Taking cautious steps, she advanced towards the teachers desk. The bag quivered once more and she was convinced.

On guard, she picked up the brown bag curiously and turned it over in her hands. Then she shook it to figure if the contents were detachable but there was no sound other than the rustle of the bags paper. Delicately, she opened the bag and warily opened the foldable corners. As a corner came free, she noticed a few sentences of scrawled handwriting. She noted that Miss Browne does not write messily but rather neatly and couldn't think why anyone would write such odd sentences.

They read, Imagination is key, think of somewhere you would be free and your dreams shall carry thee home.

Perceiving this as a joke Tammy followed the instructions and thought of a place she would be free. She knew that this piece of paper couldn't possibly carry her anywhere. Tammy was soon proven wrong.

Suddenly, sputtering engines and heavy machinery echoed and rattled. Tammy stood confused in a bleached room. She spun round and round looking from left to right in a daze. The crackling and hissing sounded to her left and she jerked her head in that direction, but only whitened walls glaringly shone at her. Booming crashes resounded once more. Tammy focused on the noises and thought hard of what the noises might remind her of. That's it! The landing bay of fighter airplanes. Thinking hard Tammy imagined the hubbub of pilots hastily getting into their great machines and zooming off, manoeuvring through the sky. Dipping and diving in and out of the puffy clouds.

The chalk-white room dissolved around her and the bright yellow and streaked red machines replaced it. She was soothed by the gentle hum of an engine beside her. Large wooden boxes overflowing with tools and parts were strewn everywhere and the loading bay was filled with the bustling of the engineers. Diesel burned Tammy's nose as a worker pushed past her with an oil canister. Startled, Tammy jumped at the roar of a starting plane two rows ahead of her. The rush of wind from the powerful propellers dishevelled her hair tossing it this way and that. She squinted her eyes through the stinging blast and backed up to hold onto to something to avoid being blown away by the forceful gusts of wind.

Just then someone tapped her shoulder, "Very odd a girl like yourself should be in a place like this." Tammy whirled around to face a muscular man in pilot's attire. As Tammy had turned he went from speculative to apologetic but Tammy was as oblivious as she was disoriented.

"It is very odd I have reached here. I was just thinking of a place I would be free and the paper just..." She trailed off observing the questioning look the pilot gave her. She started over, "My name is Tammy, sir."

He gave her an even more confused look, "Doesn't say so on your badge, don't you think?"

Tammy glanced down and realised she was also in a pilot's uniform and had on a cap with navy blue and white stripes. A gold badge pinned to her collar stated that she was Pilot Grace. Now she was the one to be confused.