Short Story: Free Falling

Short Story: Free Falling

“Wow, Colin you should see this.” Jackie gave Colin a nudge.

“What’s that?” Colin replied.

“Take a look out the window,” Jackie told him. “This view is gorgeous.

Jackie shifted back in her seat a little to give her husband access to the window.

Colin sighed briefly and carefully folded the top corner of his page to mark his place before leaning over to see what all the fuss was about. He took a perfunctory glance at the view

“Very nice,” he said before retreating to his own seat. Colin didn’t like to look out of the window too much – it made him queasy. He was a nervous flyer at the best of times. The slightest bump or jitter deviating the plane from a smooth flight profile was usually enough to dampen her husband’s palms with a thin sheen of sweat. Jackie found it quite reassuring to see little chinks of vulnerability like this in his macho armour.

She rolled her eyes at him good-naturedly. Colin was a sweet man in his way but appreciating natural beauty was not one of his strong points. She shrugged inwardly and resumed looking out of the window herself.

Philadelphia spread out beneath her in a rich mosaic of autumn hues. From her window seat, Jackie could see the riot of fiery reds, deep gold and brilliant oranges overwhelming the last few fading green leaves in the acres of trees below her. As they climbed above the urban sprawl of downtown Philadelphia, the regulated grids of the city streets became more evident and then slowly receded until they were no more than a small criss-cross of scars on the surrounding countryside. As it gradually shrank from her view, it looked to Jackie as though the countryside was slowly engulfing the city.

The city grew more distant as they gained altitude and climbed up through the grey clouds. It had begun to rain outside and the water streamed along the tiny window in jet-propelled droplets, accelerated by the fast-flowing air. They were like little moist comets streaking across the surface. It was too bad, she thought, despite their brief sojourn in the sun there was no getting away from the changing of the seasons. The rain streaking outside felt like a harbinger of the chill Scottish winter waiting for them back in Glasgow.

She felt content. The holiday had been just the thing for them both. In the weeks’ leading up to their trip she had been feeling dangerously close to burning out as more and more hassle had piled up at work. Now, refreshed after two weeks in the Florida sunshine, she felt ready to start over when she got home.

She glanced over at Colin again. She was not surprised to see her husband had returned to his book already. As usual, Colin had opted to shut out the world while the journey unfolded around him. His brows furrowed in concentration as he read. The thin white wires of his ipod headphones trailed either side of his sun-tanned head to complete his isolation from her.

As the plane reached cruising altitude, the engines throttled back to a muted roar. Jackie had noticed after a while the sound blended with the discreet electric whine of the air conditioning to produce a kind of omnipresent background noise. She shifted in her blue leatherette seat and tried to make herself more comfortable.

She remembered how, after their first long-distance flight, Colin had felt compelled to share his theory that the seats were some sadistic leftover from the Spanish Inquisition. Jackie had smiled indulgently at Colin’s talent for exaggeration until he had insisted on emphasizing his point by fidgeting all the way across the Atlantic. By the time they landed, she could have cheerfully thumped him. She smiled at the memory, reached into the overstuffed seat pocket in front of her, and took out the in-flight magazine and began to leaf through it.

There was a shiny ping as the seat belt light flicked off. Almost immediately, a constant stream of people began to make their way to and from the toilet further down the cabin. Finding nothing much of interest in her magazine, Jackie stuffed it back into the seat pocket and returned to looking out of the window. The service carts began to clank and rattle down the aisle to begin the first drinks service. As a little girl, she remembered Air Hostesses’ representing an almost alien glamour with their immaculate make up and neatly pressed uniforms. In Economy Class however, the Cabin Crew seemed disappointingly mundane. They were Stepford Stewardesses rolled off the assembly line at some Airline Academy, programmed to talk to you in voices that conveyed an unconvincing tone of institutional politeness rather than genuine warmth. Regardless, Jackie decided she was going to treat herself to a drink and then settle in for a nap. She hoped by the time she woke up they would be closer to home. She fished in her purse for her last few remaining dollars and pushed the “call” button.

She was half dozing when she felt the plane shuddering beneath her. She came fully awake a second later as the 757 suddenly dropped downwards. Through the thick cabin insulation, she could hear the engines whine in protest as they brought the plane back up the correct altitude. An announcement came over the cabin PA.

“Ah, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have just hit air turbulence and the aircraft descended 100 meters. I’d like to assure you that there is no danger of a crash. However, we are likely to experience some more turbulence, so, in the meantime, I’d like to request that you remain seated with your safety belts securely fastened until we get clear of it.” The intercom clicked off again. An excited buzz of conversation circulated through the aircraft as people tried to make light of the incident.

“Oh great,” she heard Colin mutter.

She looked over at her husband. He shot her an intensely worried look back. This was probably his idea of hell, she thought.

A thunderous bang seemed to halt the plane in mid air. The cabin juddered and shook with the impact. Then the plane took a sharp, sickening lurch to the left. She looked at Colin again. His face looked drained of colour. It had assumed a pale, cheesy aspect, giving him the pallor of a waxwork dummy. Now Jackie could feel her own panic rising with every passing second. Without warning, the cabin lights went out. Sitting immersed in darkness, Jackie could hear the engine noise changing pitch. It was becoming more strident. She stared out of the window and saw something that made her bowels liquidize in the pit of her stomach.

The starboard wing, up to and including the engine was beginning to separate from the rest of the plane leaving only a ragged stump of aluminium in its wake. In the rapidly widening gap, she could see trailing wires spitting sparks into the dark sky. The sound of screaming filled her ears and she realized it was coming from her own mouth. Another loud bang and her head was jerked violently away as the plane began to spiral downwards.

The oxygen masks they had both seen in a hundred pre-flight safety demonstrations dropped from the cabin ceiling like an afterthought. They dangled and spun in front of the terrified passengers, flapping uselessly as the plane continued its plunge. Loose personal belongings flew around the cabin, bouncing off the walls. The service cart hurtled down the aisle in a clatter of glass and metal. A passenger flew past them and smashed into a bulkhead. The screams had now spread throughout the plane. Their sound almost matched the hellish shrieking of the remaining engine fighting its losing battle to keep the plane airborne.

Her eyes met Colin’s through the dim half-light of the cabin. She could feel him squeezing her hand in his. His fingernails were digging into her palms sending tiny hot stabs of pain up her arm. It was reassuring somehow. There was an instant of almost pure mental telepathy between them.

“We’re not going to make it.”

Jackie saw the searing white light and raised her hand to shield her eyes. There was silence as the opaque blanket swallowed them. She could feel Colin slipping away from her.

Jackie realized she could no longer feel the firm padding of her seat below her. She was surprised at how calm she felt. For a few moments, her mind was like an overloaded light bulb, its filament glowing and pulsing as an increased current flowed through it.

She could feel every nerve in her body tingling. It was like being plugged into the heartbeat of the cosmos.

A deluge of images flowed through her consciousness.

The way the room had seemed to spin deliriously around her during their first dance on their wedding day, her feet feeling as if they were barely in contact with the floor. Cameras flashing. People cheering and clapping. Colin proposing to her on the beach…

Meeting Colin for the first time …thinking he was a bit up himself but still kind of nice somehow … realizing she was in love with him.

Awkward teenage fumbles at a dozen different discos… Giggly sleepovers at her friend Kate’s house …swapping secrets and practicing kissing on the backs of their hands …swearing they would be friends forever …Crying in the cloakroom at playtime after her first boyfriend had chucked her. . . what was his name again? Falling off the roundabout in the park that time …the pain of the stitches in her knee. Lucy, the rag doll her dad had given her for her third birthday…

The memories became less distinct, more impressionistic; colours, sounds. The maelstrom of feelings, emotions and images spun through her mind gathering all of her life’s experiences, engulfing all in its path.

The images became dim. She tried to concentrate, to focus, but they seemed to slip from her grasp the same way, the same way… who am I?

It was dark. She felt squashed, compressed into a tiny ball. She could hear a dull rhythmic sound. Something was pushing her forward. She was so afraid. What is happening to me?

The shock of cold air hit her naked skin. Her mouth opened and she could feel something swelling inside her as the breath rushed inwards.

Somewhere off in the distance, she could hear a joyful woman’s voice:

“It’s a girl.”

She opened her eyes and saw only the light.