The Plane Ride by Will Higgins

        She is a pretty women. She has a clean hair cut; the hair falls just upon her shoulders.  She is a brunette. She leans back in her wooden chair and takes a sip of coffee from a plain white mug. The whole room is wooden.  All of the wood is knotty pine; it is like being inside of one giant tree.  The room has a high ceiling. It is made to replicate a log cabin. The fake logs meet at an angle at the center of the room. She is alone. We do not know her name. She is wearing a gray sweater, the button up kind.  Though she has all of them un buttoned.  The buttons themselves are black and some what rounded.  They have enough weight to dangle, but they are not heavy because of course they are in fact buttons.  Having a heavy button would be use less.  She also has a pair of blue denim jeans on. There is a large glass chandelier in the middle of the room.  The light is very strong against the dull morning sky.  Outside across the lake the sun has still not risen.  That is where she is watching, over the lake at the large pines.  All she can see is the gray out line, but she knows them by heart.  The camera slowly zooms out. It is still focused on her, but moves to reveal the next room. There is a small couch and a t.v. Beside the couch is a tall metal lamp.  A small oval rug covers the distance between the t.v and couch. ( which is a very small distance. )  The rug is one of those kids where it is all rings.  they seem to bee all sewn together.  Every three rings in a row are roughly the same colour.  The rug is clearly old,  with many of its wooly strands sticking out.  It would prick at your feet and be very uncomfortable if you were to walk across it without socks or light slippers.  Now we can see the whole house.  Due to which the camera had been continuously moving out during the time the rug was
described.   The house itself is in fact on the lake.  The only thing holding it up is a group of pillars that extend out of the water. The house is the same as the inside, it replicates a log cabin.  Except for the roof, the roof is of modern design with dark blue navy shingles. They have little bit of a rough texture, at least that is what we can speculate from this far away.  The camera extents up a hill.  It brings into focus a mail box.  We leave the house the background. Suddenly it becomes brighter.  The sun has risen.  The little plastic red flag on the side of the black mail box suddenly shoots up.  The camera sprints like a jack rabbit.  We are back to the women.  She quickly gets up.  As the gets up she leaves the coffee cup on the knotty pine table.  It skates a little and the coffee almost comes out.  She lets go of it before it hits the table letting it drop for about an inch.  She is trying to button her sweater but she is not moving fast enough.  So she wraps one side inside of the other and hurries out the door up the hill.

         I take my earphones out and look at the seat in front of me.  It is all blue.  A tight knitted sort of cloth with speckles of silver randomly dotting the landscape .  It is cheap.  The woman on the small screen in the middle of the isle continues to move.  She is rushing for something.  The movie looses my attention as the stewardess blocks my view.  She has very pale white face.  Her hair is a shocking yellow.  It would appear to have been unnaturally colored, but on second glance, due to her fair skin, it may be real.  The issue is debatable either way.  The stewardesses jacket is navy blue.  There are gold trims on the shoulders and on the cuffs.  Dull gold button are also following in line with a gold trim that runs from the bottom of the jacket and connects to the shoulders.  The line continues up under her large collar. The collar comes our way to much for how tight it is around her neck.  The gold carries around on the edge of the awkward collar to the
shoulders.  The skirt come just above the knees and is plain with no trims or buttons of any kind.  It retains the same navy color as the jacket.  She is about ten rows up.  Just the perfect amount that her high heels make it impossible to see past or around her.  Without the three inch heels however she would have to come to six rows before I was blocked out.  She hands a green can of soda to a passenger, followed by a wide, clear, plastic cup.  After which walking a foot she remembers to give the passenger a small square napkin with the same logo that is embroidered in gold on the top right corner of her jacket.  She continues down the isle and returns to the same methodical process with each passenger.  The movie was lake house, a fake story.  It featured Sandra Bullock, who plays a fake character in a fake movie.  The dark out lines of massive clouds outside my window are not.   They are the realist thing up at 30,000 feet.  Full of immense  energy that has been collecting for over a month.  I try not to think about the storm that has just engulfed the plane.  I look away just as everything becomes total darkness.  The clouds had blocked the light of the moon just like the stewardess had blocked my view of Sandra Bullock.  

        "Can I get you something to drink?" The stewardess repeats to a man who has just taken out his earphones one row ahead.  She has moved at a surprisingly fast rate.  Then the loud speaker crackles over the plane.   The captain speaks dry at first then more confident as he works out his vocal cords.  He tells us very calmly that we will be experiencing some turbulence.  I am not surprised.  He heads a warning to return to our seats and fasten out seat belts on, while at the same time the small orange seatbelt sign lights up over a hundred places around the cabin. Those clouds were huge.  The stewardess returns to her seat as fast a she can.  She leaves the man with
the earbuds in a promise that she will return with his drink.  He is still oblivious due to the temporary hearing impairment caused by his loud music.  A slow grinding sound can heard from right behind me.  It hurts to listen to.  Slowly but surly it picks up speed.  Then the grinding is put to a sudden silence as a fierce crack of metal against metal rushes through the air waves.  I turn in my seat as fast as I can.  I am shocked at the sight.  A woman just exited the bathroom, I could have sworn it was something more.

        Time stops. I don't. There is no sound at all.  The woman's foot steps go to rest but I can see that she is still in a slow moving position as I turn to my window.  I don't know why I looked that way.  Ancient human instinct to a present danger one might say.  A happy coincidence is my definition.  There is huge thunderous crack which is accompanied by an explosive array of bright white in the window.  The thunder that is a million times louder then the bathroom door awakens time from its nap.  The crack scares time so that it all happens too fast.  The plane shakes uncontrollably.  My stomach reaches upward in my chest cavity as if to beg the lungs for air as we drop.  We did not drop nor fast. But we dropped enough that it was felt.  I could here the engines the whole time as they pulled as back.  It only took 5 seconds for the lighting to strike.  It took thirty seconds for it all to happen. But it felt like a year.  The longest year ever.  A year that aged me and made me achey and tired from skipping the year before it.  My stomach was made for time travel and I though up into the brown paper bag that I pulled up just in time.  Finally the lights int he cabin flicker as the screams die down.  Sandra Bullock opens the black curtain that she used to cover herself from the tragedy I experienced.  Power surges back to the movie screen.    All of my power is gone and slowly I fall asleep content at last from my 30 second horror.