Day 31 - Only Laugh - Chapter 31 (1636 words)

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ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 31

The hum of the engine was getting louder and louder, like it was working too hard to do even the easiest of tasks. It was definitely in trouble, but no one else seemed to notice it. Tony reached for the call button on the overhead panel, getting the stewardess to him, but had to scrabble about for a pen and paper to say anything to her. Minutes ticked by as she went off and got something for him to write on, and in that short time the plane was shaking.

It was only a short flight, on a small plane, no room for first class, not on a pencil thin aircraft for short hops in the islands. It had maybe ten or twelve rows of seats, and it was far from full. Tony was sitting in the middle, next to the emergency doors and had a view to the propellers on both sides. The rattling was getting louder and now a handful of other passengers had hit their lights to attract the staff, who by now were aware of the problem. Smoke poured out of the engine on the right side of the plane.

He sat down, buckled his seat belt and opened the bottle of duty free scotch he had brought with him from Auckland airport. Aida and Oriana had left him in the city at the north end of New Zealand as they were all going to Tonga to buy their own private corner of a tropical paradise and get away from everything. He had caught a cold and the idea of flying a few hours with a cold in a pressured cabin seemed like too much too bear. So he sent Aida and Oriana off ahead, he waited it out and heard from them via email when they arrived and were in the process of setting things up. Tony took some drugs for his cold, enjoyed some time away from everything in a city where few people recognised him and those that did, left him alone.

He had even managed to get out to a dinner or two with some relative privacy and did not feel that he was hunted or wanted or even noticed. Once or twice he saw people recognise him, but then they would look away and move on with their lives, undoubtedly to mention it to someone later, but not feeling a need to press into his life. Of course that was just a few isolated incidents, he did not want to press his luck by going to a bar or a pub and risk the wrath of an uninhibited fan with questions or demands. While it lasted it was nice.

It was a little cold there for a few days and he was looking forward to the tropical paradise of Tonga, where even less would see him, less would care and more would be done to ensure his isolation.

Now he was on a small plane, heading to Tonga, in serious trouble and over the middle of the ocean. He was calm and collected but angry still. This was patently unfair, had he believed in any god any more he'd be angrier still. Why on earth was he attracting disaster, the first few he kind of brought on himself, but being struck by lightning and being in a plane crash? What are the odds? It had to be connected to him in some way, the random nature of the universe and the laws which bind the physics could not ascribe any meaning to it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please get in your seats and buckle up. We are having some technical difficulties with the right engine and we'll be descending quite rapidly to a lower altitude and changing our vector towards the Kermadecs in case we need to make a water landing.”

The cabin crew fell into the rhythm set by their training for situations just like this and set about the task of placing masks and not thinking about death.

Tony looked out the window and saw through the thickening smoke and occasional flame licking out the engine housing. There was an island on the horizon, an archipelago perhaps the one the pilot referenced, and it looked far too small to support any life, but it was land at least.

The angle of descent increased and in a semi dive the horizon tipped the rocks out of view and only water and sky was available. The plane vibrated madly and despite the impending doom of a nose dive to the sea, no one was screaming. They were still quite high up but falling forwards and down rapidly. Ears began to pop as pressure changed and the plane listed ungainly and erratically a few times as the pilot tried to wrest control from gravity and momentum. Tony picked up his headphones and plugged in to listen to some of his favourite Arias, it seemed like the thing to do. He had often felt like he had been chosen as some kind of example, like he was the centrepiece in a cosmic joke where his suffering was the punchline. He didn't believe it of course, life is not as cruel as random happenings in the universe, and they clustered around him in a statistically insignificant manner.

As the shaking grew and the pressure in the cabin lowered, and the plane leveled out to some extent, gliding far too quickly downwards yet still towards the Kermadec group of islands and rocks, coming onto the local horizon now even at a thousand feet still descending, but not quite falling.

“We are getting close, we won;t make it all the way, but the islands are in sight, we'll need to abandon the plane quickly once we are in the water and get on the rafts.”

There was silence for a second but the hiss of the channel reminded people it was still open.

“God be with us. Out.”

Tony heard none of this, yet if he had he would not have cared. What happened happened and there was nothing else to be done about it. He had in the last decade been famous and successful, been stabbed, been hit by a bus, lightning and amnesia. He had survived them all, carried scars from each one but ultimately learned it was pointless worrying about what was about to happen. Things just did, happen.

The plane lurched and an earsplitting popping noise cam with a thump of air next to Tony, from the window. The engine had exploded out side, ripping the wing and the engine itself clean away. Exposed and twisted with the velocity the emergency door next to him buckled and the enormous wrench of metal sounded through the cabin as the air and glass sucked inexorably outwards pulling on every loose thing in the cabin.

Another popping sound, and a snap as the door came away, a gaping hole in the side of the plane itself, Tony sitting facing the gaping maw as the plane corkscrewed around the torn wing and fell the last few hundred feet towards the waters surface, it was like looking at a wall of water, flat and impassable in front of him.

It was quiet in his head, the opera was turned right up and the choir sung with passion, but it was almost as if they were not even there. The pull of air on him, the corkscrew motion of the plane diving and turning like a demented gymnast and the inviting hole in the world were all he saw. He could not hear the screams of anyone in the cabin, the crew strapped down and holding on for dear life. The bags, bottles and loose detritus of the passengers got pulled out the side of the plane and flew off at manic tangents once they made it over the event horizon of the hole.

The music played on and the water grew closer, seconds dragged on like hours and he could see that soon the water would be holding them all intimately.

Unless he left now.

He picked up the bottle of scotch from the seat pocket where he had stowed it. Almost on queue the seat in front of him ripped from its fastenings and dropped out of sight, damaged as it had been when the engine blew, ripping the door and part of the floor away afterwards. He had the scotch though. He took the mobile phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it to the hole, and let go. It danced a jig and disappeared like a magic trick in a tornado.

He undid the seat belt and felt himself lift slightly on the seat. He stood, and before he even got up straight the suction pulled him out and into the air.

All at once a few things happened. The earphones shredded and fell from his ears, cutting on the music. The rushing air and pressure of momentum vanished and he was flying through thin air, peaceful and clear, facing upwards lying down and looking into the sky, though he was undoubtedly falling as well it was the most graceful he had felt in years, like being a god or an angel that he could not believe in. Yet there he was flying, a cherubim made of motion, diving earthwards.

His feet found themselves and he righted his descent as he saw the water he was hitting, which hurt like being hit by a bus, as that was something he could actually compare.

The last thing he saw as he entered the sea hard and fast was the plane skimming the surface of the water a few hundred feet away and then he blacked out.