Ken Douglas - Scorpion

The plane jerked with the thundering sound of the explosion, cutting off all talk in the cabin. Broxton grabbed his seatbelt and cinched it tighter. Cold chills laced along his spine. A stewardess going by with a drink tray stumbled. He lashed out with his left arm, circling her waist, and pulled her toward him, spilling the tray from her hand, showering nearby passengers with Coca Cola and orange juice.

“ Hey,” she said, resisting and pushing against him, but he was stronger. “No,” she said, as he pulled her down into his lap.

“ Bomb,” he whispered into her ear. Her body sagged as he wrestled her into the empty window seat next to him. She grabbed behind herself with both hands, searching for and finding the seatbelt. She buckled up and Broxton saw the color fade from her face. She grabbed onto the armrests, her skin pale as the sky on the other side of the window, her lower lip quivering, her eyes wide.

“ Oh, lord,” she said, as oxygen masks dropped down from above each passenger, orange, with clear plastic tubes, bouncing and jiggling, like hula dancers on parade. They were flying at thirty-five thousand feet and losing pressure. Broxton reached up, grabbed the mask and slipped it over his head. The stewardess next to him did the same, her hands shaking.

“ You okay?” he asked, voice muffled by the mask.

“ Yeah,” she nodded, but he didn’t believe her. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and clamped down on it to stop the quivering, her auburn hair, long and perfect only an instant ago, now seemed wild and untamed, her flared nostrils accented the freckles around her nose. She had a fawn-like quality that startled him. He forced himself away from the terror in her eyes and looked over her shoulder, out the window. The mammoth wing shuddered and he was afraid the powerful engines were going to break away, but the shaking stopped as the wing tipped earthward, seeming to drag the rest of the plane with it.

“ My God!” he said as the plane shuddered again, a great spasm running through it, like a death rattle, as the 747 lurched earthward, seeming to pick up speed. The clouds below were moving in a circular direction, but the pilot straightened the descent, added power and pulled back on the yoke. For a few seconds they were in a steep climbing turn. Broxton felt the G force as the plane fought the pilot. He was sucked into his seat, jaws, arms, hands, even fingers weighed down. He dropped his head, forced his mouth open, fought an urge to scream and grabbed oxygen into his lungs.

Then the plane lost the will to climb and started downward again.

He reached into his pocket, feeling for the engagement ring. He slipped the tip of his index finger through it, satisfied that it was still there. He prayed the pilot would bring them in safely. He twirled the ring around his fingertip. Dani, he thought, and he felt the familiar ache in his heart. He should have married her all those years ago.

The plane shimmied to the left, pulling him out of his reverie as the descent steepened. He was afraid it was too much for the plane. He looked out the window, half expecting the wings to rip away, turning the plane into an aluminum tube, spiraling and spinning toward the ocean below. Then the nose eased up, the pilot had slowed the rate of decent, but the sinking feeling in his stomach told him that they were still going down.

The stewardess gripped his hand, nails digging into his palm. He turned to look at her and she relaxed her grip for a second. He couldn’t see her mouth through the mask, but he could tell by the crinkles around her eyes that she was attempting to smile. He forced himself to smile back and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. He noticed the bruise under her right eye. She’d tried to cover it with makeup. He wondered how she’d hurt herself.

A baby cried, the pressure loss playing havoc on its eardrums. He squeezed his nose, held his mouth shut, and tried to breathe out, equalizing the pressure in his own head. He saw the stewardess imitating him, felt her sigh as the pressure equalized.

A woman’s scream shrilled up from deep in second class and it gave him the excuse he needed to turn away from her. He looked around first class. The orange oxygen masks hid the lower half of the faces, but they couldn’t hide the furrowed brows, eyes clenched shut against reality, or the stiff hands gripping armrests. Many were holding their breath. But there was no panic. There was no point.

He felt the pressure on his hand lessen, then increase. He turned back to look at the stewardess, caught in her Christmas green eyes, and he tried to imagine what he looked like to her.

Did his eyes show the freezing spark that was running up and down his spine? Did they betray the electric tingling at the back of his neck? The tight heat in the pit of his stomach? Did she know he felt like voiding himself at both ends? Could she feel the invisible claws raking over his skin?

The plane jerked and the luggage locker overhead popped open. He ducked as a briefcase fell out, bouncing off his shoulder, sending a stab of pain through his arm. He saw her wince, as if she felt it too. The briefcase hit the floor and sprang open. Papers, a cellular phone, a pocket calculator and a Barbie doll rolled out. The traveling executive had a little girl.

The doll rolled against his foot. He bent over and picked it up. Wherever this Barbie was, it was always summer. Her hair was always blond, always long, her eyes always blue and she always had on that pert summer dress. Barbie never worried. Barbie never had clammy skin, and Barbie never died.

He inhaled the oxygen, closed his eyes and wrapped his fist around the doll, tiny breasts digging into the palm of his left hand as the stewardess’ nails dug into his right. He squeezed harder.

“ Hurts,” she whispered.

“ Sorry,” he said and he relaxed the pressure on both her hand and his eyelids. The interior of the plane slid back into focus. They were still going down, but the angle of descent had eased even more. He began to hope as he slipped the Barbie doll into the magazine pouch on the seatback in front of him.

There. She was safe and warm and away from harm.

He leaned his head back against the seat and rolled it slightly to take in the passenger across the isle. She was old, with rouged cheeks and blue rinsed hair, sitting next to a man who looked like he’d been her husband for several generations. Like himself and the stewardess, they were holding hands. She was looking into the man’s eyes. The man took off his mask and mouthed the words, “I love you,” and Broxton felt the stewardess squeeze his hand. She’d seen it, too.

The plane leveled off after what seemed like a forever down slide on the world’s longest roller coaster.

“ Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain’s voice boomed over the plane’s speaker system, “I don’t know what the problem was, but we have it under control. We’ve had some sort of malfunction in the rear of the plane that caused us to lose cabin pressure, but we have the aircraft under control.”

He was repeating himself. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He was lying.

The stewardess squeezed his hand again and he turned toward her. She slipped her mask off and the hairs on the back of his hands started to tingle when she smiled. Full lips, no lipstick, she didn’t need it, perfect teeth. She was gently biting down on her tongue, as if she wanted to say something and was holding back.

“ What?” He pulled his own mask off. He inhaled and smelled a whiff of her perfume mingled with her fear. It assaulted him like a patch of wildflowers on a windy summer day.

“ You didn’t check on them?” the stewardess said.