Chapter 14: Exit, Pursued By A Bee

On tiptoe.

Then a man, a newspaper editor called Roger de Griffe launched into the air, arms outstretched.

He somersaulted, feeling the air ruffling his hair and the g-forces tighten his stomach. The sun shimmered off the water. A perfect flying dream if it weren’t for an obnoxious odour. His nose wrinkled to slow its intake and small blood vessels ruptured. He awoke.

A rush of icy air blasted his face. He couldn’t open his eyes against the pressure until he twisted to face upwards. He sucked in freezing air and the view of consternation. A slow-motion deconstruction unfolded above. The wings, tail and nose were separating; not as if a bomb had detonated but as if the rear had slowed while the front accelerated. It looked like a stretched airplane only with a gap where he’d been sitting. Hadn’t he read and slashed Tabitha’s piece about people jerking back or forward for a second or so?

A few more bits of debris tumbled after him, and looking to one side he was shocked to see a woman in her seat accompanying him a couple of yards away. Her eyes were shut. Probably dead, he judged, by her blue pallor. He started to feel if he was sitting in his seat, but the pressure of the air wouldn’t let him move his arms from being folded. He remembered that he’d been walking back from the toilet.
A Barbie doll drifted close – its fixed smile helloed while a hand reached out.

Synapses roughly calculated he had three minutes falling six miles, more if he flapped. Pushing panic away on the grounds it had no survival features, he wondered whether to hold his jacket open like a sail. But he must already have reached the 120 miles per hour terminal velocity so it would have ripped apart. Fighting wind resistance and numbed fingers he reached into his pocket and switched on his phone. Were three minutes sufficient to say sorry and how much he loved her – or would it be too cruel? He texted: LUV U. But there was no service.

The debris drifted apart. Roger involuntary revolved and saw that he was about to overtake thousands of glass slivers. They brushed his face, a soft caress. It must have been cargo.

The sea looked no closer. The hurricane in his ears blocked out screaming and any explosions. Frozen numbness disallowed the pain of sucking in air. Surreal. He let his phone have its own trajectory; maybe it’d find a signal en route.